Episode 9: Tony Pipa discusses the need to modernize rural policy and make the connections between rural and urban areas visible
Oh, we ain't got a barrel of money. Maybe we're ragged and funny, but we'll travel along singing a song side by side.
Tony Pipa:But when we think in terms of the overall economy in the US, you know, rural places play in a really important role in many different dimensions. It is, for example, where a lot of our energy comes from. And so that energy powers cities, right? Cities don't run on energy that comes from within the city. It often is coming from either fossil fuels or from electric electrical generation, a whole host of things, and most of those things are in rural places.
Tony Pipa:Our food systems are primarily rural, and so all the food that gets eaten in cities is coming generally from rural places. Even the electric vehicles that people are starting to use in suburbs and cities, most of those are being built in rural places. And so there's really strong ties that aren't often seen by people or even thought about by people, but they continue to be there. I think we forget about them at our peril as we create policy.
Ellen Wolter:That's Tony Pipa talking about the ties between rural and urban places that, as he notes, typically tend not to be seen or thought about. Tony is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and is a wealth of knowledge about rural policy and what is happening in rural areas across the US today. At Brookings, Tony leads the Reimagining Rural Initiative. His work aims to modernize how we think about rural policy in the US, which as he explains is as much about reimagining rural policy as it is about just simply imagining rural policy. He shares how rural policy is often wrongly completed with agricultural policy and how outdated regulations hinder rural development and the need for a coherent national rural strategy across federal agencies.
Ellen Wolter:Tony also describes how better understanding and considering the rural urban relationship should play a key role in developing rural policy in the US. Tony reflects on his experience in international settings that integrate rural and urban connections in their policy making, something that's not as common in the US. And he shares examples of recent regional coalitions and economic projects across the United States that have been working to develop collaborative policy making across rural and urban areas.
Music (Jim Griswold):When they've all had their quarrels and parted, we'll be the same as we started just to travel along singing a song side by side.
Ellen Wolter:This is Ellen Wolter from the University of Minnesota Extension, and this is the Side by Side podcast. Tony Will, welcome. Happy to have you on today.
Tony Pipa:I'm really pleased to be here. Thanks for having me.
Ellen Wolter:So, Tony, I'm gonna start with rural policy. Your team recently launched the reimagining rural policy initiative, which seeks to modernize and transform policy efforts in rural areas. And for our listeners who may not be following the ins and outs of of rural policy, can you just describe what is rural policy and what does it do?
Tony Pipa:Well, the approach that I took to this is to look at several different things. One, I wanted to get a sense of the resources actually that the federal government makes available that are available to rural places for their own community and economic development. So when they look at investments that they might need for their economic or social sustainability over the long term and for the future, what are the resources available and where are they available from within the federal government? So that's one piece of policy. Funding programs that are for specific development objectives and that'll enable communities to be able to meet those particular objectives.
Tony Pipa:Another part of policy is that there are policy decisions that get made. Those can be either regulations or they can be legislative decisions. They can be how certain laws are enforced. And I wanted also to be able to look at the implications that some of those kinds of decisions have for small and rural towns. And when I say rural policy, that denotes that there's, like, a coherent frame of reference or strategy that the federal government has vis a vis rural places.
Tony Pipa:But I'm not sure we quite have that right now. I think at one different times in our history, we have had a rural policy, I. E. Almost a strategic frame of reference for how the federal government should support or interact with local small and rural towns. I'm not sure we have that right now, and it often gets conflated with agricultural policy as well.
Ellen Wolter:And so in if you think about reimagining rural policy, why does it need to be reimagined? What are some of the ways in which rural policy is outdated?
Tony Pipa:I started with looking at where all those resources are in the federal government and the extent to which they really effectively serve rural places in the modern age, like in today's economy, in the kinds of challenges and opportunities that rural places have. And on one hand you might say, we need to imagine rural policy because I think what we have is a collection of programs right now. I don't think we have quite a coherent policy overall, a comprehensive coherent policy. I think that's one of the things that makes it difficult for us to be maximizing the benefits of the public investments that might be being made from the federal government to local places right now. But, secondly, a lot of what we do have started a long time ago.
Tony Pipa:Right? Like, their legacies of things like the Rural Electrification Act or rural housing, which were, you know, policies that were created in the New Deal or policies that were created, during the sixties. And, you know, how well do they really match what rural communities are facing today in, you know, both the kind of information economy that we have right now around knowledge and, you know, information, How well do they really fit a transition to a clean energy economy where no longer will do we want to be extracting fossil fuels, but we want to be using renewable energy? How well do they fit an economy in which a lot of capital is getting centralized rather than decentralized into communities across the US. And so I think those are the sorts of dynamics that are at play here, why we have to take a step back and say, how can we be more co more coherent?
Tony Pipa:How can we more effectively sustain small communities? And how do we help small and rural places thrive in the 21st century? How do we take advantage of what they have to offer to the larger economy, to cities, to other places, but how do we also help them ensure that the value of their assets, whether they be human or natural or financial, also allow them to sustain their community life and thrive in their and ensure their community well-being over time.
Ellen Wolter:So what are some of the recommendations that came out of your report and that you're following through with your initiative?
Tony Pipa:One is to develop a national rural strategy. For policymakers in Washington, DC, you often see a conflation between agricultural policy and seeing that as rural policy. You know, agriculture is important. It's very important in some rural areas of the US, but, less so in others. That's one of the things rural is very diverse, and I think it's very hard for policymakers in DC to have a sense of the full diversity of rural.
Tony Pipa:I mean that in geographic sense, in an economic sense, in a racial sense as well. So when we think of rural policy in the United States, rural development is a division of the US Department of Agriculture. So there's a division there that many policymakers go to say, okay, that's what rural development is. Whereas a lot of the resources actually come from many different places, from the Department of Commerce, from the Environmental Protection Agency, from the Small Business Administration. It's, it's really spread into every nook and cranny throughout the federal government.
Tony Pipa:So I think having a coherent sense of 1, the role that we think rural places are going to play in the future of the American economy over the next 20 to 30 to 40 years is really important. I don't think we have that coherent vision right now. And then secondly, reviewing what we do have and make sure that it fits that vision? Or if not, what are the changes that we need to make to be able to fit that vision? One glaring thing that is very evident right now is that rural local governments are not well positioned to be able to be thinking of their future.
Tony Pipa:They have real constraints on their capacity. They're generally volunteer elected officials. They have pretty thinly staffed city halls. They don't have a lot of people who are able to, like, do economic or development planning. Right?
Tony Pipa:There are people who are making sure the services are delivered, that the water and sewer is working, that public safety is in place, emergency services, those kinds of things. But to actually be able to say, okay, here are the investments that we need for where we want to direct, our community for the future. That's very difficult. And so they're not even able many times access the kinds of resources that are available. So even making the even really reducing the fragmentation of all these programs that we have, getting away with some that don't even make sense anymore, but making them much more user friendly and much more sensitive to rural places would be an enormous step forward.
Tony Pipa:That would require some coordination within the federal government. I think also elevating the importance of rural within the federal government, I. E, you know, having a very senior official at the White House, that's kind of your rural czar, who can work with all the different agencies to say how well are we, are we doing by rural, I think would be a step forward. But having, more coordination as well as a lot more sensitivity to the constraints that rural communities face. For example, a lot of federal programs have things called match requirements where, yes, they might offer, you know, say, $100,000 to upgrade a sewer or water system, but then they're asking you to put in, you know, 25 to 50% as well from the local level.
Tony Pipa:Well, for many rural places, that's just an immediate barrier. They don't have the fiscal buffer to be able to do that. They don't have access to philanthropic resources to be able to do it. So all of a sudden, you know, they're not going to be able to do the upgrade that they need to even make sure they stay connected and continue to maintain their quality of life. And because they have limited human capacity, they're not even going to put in an application.
Tony Pipa:They're just going to go on to the next thing. Cause there's only so many things they're gonna be able to juggle at once.
Ellen Wolter:So one of the things we are very interested in on this podcast, of course, is rural urban interconnectivity and interdependence. And as you know, rural and urban issues, they tend to be discussed and addressed as separate economic, social, and political challenges. You know, they're often with separate funding and policy makers driving solutions, and I think there's pros and cons to that approach. And within your report that you launched, one of the recommendations that you noted was that there should be a focus on building rural urban connections. I'm just gonna read quickly from the report.
Ellen Wolter:So the report states, to be successful, a national rural strategy must embrace diverse rural perspectives while breaking down urban rural divides by incentivizing regional approaches. Could you talk a little bit about that recommendation specifically?
Tony Pipa:Yeah. So I'll talk, I'll try to talk in a few different dimensions, but let me just start at the highest level. I think we like to talk about types of localities in discrete terms. Like, like there's an urban economy, there's a suburban economy, there's a rural economy, and we like to think in those terms. Whereas if we look at our and the American economy is not a mono economy.
Tony Pipa:It's in some respects like a series of smaller regional economies, right? That all have different competencies, different assets, different industries, different things that they're really involved in and driving. But when we think in terms of the overall economy in the US, you know, rural places play in a really important role in many different dimensions. It is, for example, where a lot of our energy comes from. And so that energy powers cities, right?
Tony Pipa:Cities don't run on energy that comes from within the city. It often is coming from either fossil fuels or from electric electrical generation, a whole host of things. And most of those things are in rural places. Right? Our food systems are primarily rural.
Tony Pipa:And so all the food that gets eaten in cities is coming generally from rural places. And, and there's many natural resources along those lines, right, that then get used in urban places. And even manufacturing continues to play a pretty strong role in urban places, being predominant in where things are being built. And so even the electric vehicles that people are starting to use in suburbs and cities, most of those are being built in rural places. And at the same time, rural places are places that have a lot of natural assets, allow natural beauty.
Tony Pipa:It's a place where urban people will go to enjoy that, to take a break from all the stimulus that they're receiving in their urban environment. And it's also a way for rural places to to benefit from, you know, those visits as well. Those create an outdoor recreation economy, for example, or a tourist economy. And so even the consume what gets consumed in cities actually often drives the rural economy, and rural economy often provides the basic building blocks for when it is able to actually happen in the city. And so, in some respects, you know, there's really strong ties that aren't often seen by people or even thought about by people, but they continue to be there.
Tony Pipa:I think we forget about them at our peril as we kind of create policy. One of the ways in which we think about rural economic and community development is places have a set of assets. Some of those assets are human. Some of those assets are natural. Some of those assets could be financial.
Tony Pipa:I mean, there's a whole set of kinds of capital that places can have, and you want to be able to maximize those and integrate them into what's valuable, both for the people living in your community, but also maybe for people outside your community as well. And for the people outside your community, if you're in a rural area, you need to be connected for the value to be able to to go to people outside of your community. That connection can sometimes be physical infrastructure. You wanna make sure you've got the roads and the broadband for the information to flow and the water and and those kinds of things. Sometimes it's civic, actually.
Tony Pipa:And so a little bit of what I was talking in the report as well is, you know, it's almost even regional governance. You can look at particular clusters of activities, both the economic activities that are in cities that are really supported also by suppliers or by small businesses that are located in the rural places in that state that are within some kind of striking distance of that city as well. But there often aren't formal ways in which, those regions are planning or thinking together to make sure that they're maximizing the benefits on both sides, even if they grow up organically. And especially in, I think, a modern era and the way in which capital works, I think we're gonna need more and more of that regional mentality to be making sure that we're accessing both the public and the private capital, but then maximizing what the benefits are on both sides. I think rural places have had a history of a kind of extractive economy in many different ways where people outside interests come in with capital and with ideas and with resources that allow the rural place to be able to offer its own assets, to have some of that economic activity.
Tony Pipa:A lot of times the value gets extracted and goes back to the city and leaves the rural place kind of less resilient. You can have a mono economy where you're kind of relying on 1 industry or a couple of major employers. If they go away, boom. How do we make sure that the place continues to thrive? Or am I, you know, kind of a peri urban rural place where I'm sending workers and other resources into the city, and then they come back home to live.
Tony Pipa:But, again, I'm kind of tied to what's actually going on in the city without having much input or decision making or even consultation about what kind of decisions are getting made there.
Ellen Wolter:Tony, what are some of the formal infrastructures or ways in which we could think about implementing policies that support or recognize rural and urban interdependence?
Tony Pipa:Yeah. I think it's and I'm I'm seeing a lot of almost organic things start to pop up and almost experiments. And some of it's incentivized by policy as well. Like, for example, the Economic Development Administration, which is a Department of Commerce, which is the part of the Department of Commerce that's actually focused on creating economic development in distressed places. From money from the American Rescue Plan Act, they ran a competition called the Build Back Better Regional Challenge.
Tony Pipa:And it was a $1,000,000,000 that they put on, that they put on the table for really significant investments so that regions could develop coalitions and use the public investment to either start or expand kind of an industry cluster that would serve the localities in that particular region. And that required kind of a new governance structure to come together. Right? Like you had to figure out, okay, who are gonna be the partners in this coalition that we need to make this industry cluster work well? That might be local government officials.
Tony Pipa:It might be university, might be, you know, some companies, might be civil society, might be philanthropy, whatever. And so we need to figure out how to bring all those folks together, how to get them to have a collective vision where they're all buying into, okay, this is what we're, we're going to do together. And then do decision making and figure out like how they would share those resources, who would be in charge of what projects, what projects would really actually have be effective and have maximum effect and sort of stimulating this new economic activity. And so you see a place like the act NOW coalition in southwestern West Virginia come together, which actually covers 21 rural counties, former coal country in southwestern West Virginia, couple, 3 nonprofit organizations actually in the lead of that coalition, but has elected officials, both from the counties and the cities in that area, has the universities, West Virginia University and Marshall University has representatives from them at the table. And so they're jointly trying to think about, okay, what are the set of projects, which this 21 county area where we've got a couple of cities in them, and then we've got a lot of smaller areas.
Tony Pipa:How do we shift from, you know, what we've been doing and which, economically is reducing less and less, which is, you know, coal and extraction of coal and change it into a clean energy economy and create jobs based on renewable energy with solar and wind. And they're doing a project with drones and it's just, you know, it's kind of looking to the future. But they're trying to work together and say, okay, how do we make sure both the rural and the cities are bringing their best assets to the table? Together, they can think about, they can kind of imagine what the economic future of that region would be and create the jobs that are going to actually meet kind of what the economic needs are gonna be over the next 10 to 20 to 30 years. The Department of Energy is actually asking for community benefit plans to be part of an application.
Tony Pipa:So how how do you make sure the community is gonna support what private companies might be doing to utilize the public investment that's coming from the Inflation Reduction Act, which means you've gotta bring that area together. Like there has to be some way to, to create a collective idea of how to make sure that the benefits are being widely shared and that might be, you know, bringing a rural and and urban elected officials together to be thinking about planning together in in interesting ways. For my own podcast, I'm I'm going to profile a major industrial installation, which is offshore wind on the Pacific coast, off the coast of Humboldt County, California, which is one of the most rural counties in California. And, there's 9 registered tribes there. And so how do you make sure that the tribes are part of the decision making?
Tony Pipa:How do you make sure the rural county commissioners and businesses are all together part of the decision making on this massive installation, which actually is going to provide most of its power to San Francisco. Right? And how do we make sure that they are sharing in the benefits rather than all the benefits just going straight to San Francisco? And it re it's, you know, the community foundation there has created, has raised money to kind of create a table to bring all those different constituencies together so that they can sort of work together and have a collective point of view over how to make sure that the benefits in Humboldt County are maximized. And frankly, that the potential harm is mitigated as well.
Tony Pipa:Because in an industrial project like that, there's always going to be some negative consequences as well. Mhmm.
Ellen Wolter:Mhmm. That's exciting, Tony. I'm really excited to to listen to the podcast and learn a little bit more about both of those examples.
Tony Pipa:So Yeah.
Ellen Wolter:So one of the things we're talking about here is, you know, making the invisible visible, right? This making this rural urban interdependence and connections visible to people in a way that it isn't right now. And one of the ways that we've been trying to do that is looking at the literature and the research available that demonstrates here's what rural urban interdependence is in the United States. And there's pretty limited research and information. And what we found is that a lot of it is in international settings, international development work.
Ellen Wolter:And I know you have a background in that area. And I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about what rural urban interdependence looks like in international settings and what we in the United States could learn from that work.
Tony Pipa:Yeah. And I think it's interesting because when we make investments in international development, generally, we're starting with, you know, national government, right? Like we're engaging we're national government to national government. So we're engaging ministries in the national government. So you're taking our strategy for invest investing in international development will be, how do we help that country sort of be more economically sustainable or grow economically or strengthen its resilience?
Tony Pipa:Right? So we're taking a national perspective. Like, we sort of start with this national perspective, but it's also a place based perspective because we also understand that that nation has a certain history and certain type of leadership, certain culture, that it's going to be different than even its neighboring countries, and there's going to be a lot of diversity even within its country. Right? And so we also have to struggle with that.
Tony Pipa:We have to struggle with the uniqueness of that place, even at the national level and then underneath it, the diversity of places underneath it. But that starting point is very different than like our policy talking about those, those, you know, streams of resources and those programs that I talked about earlier, because there we're just talking about a thing like it's water and sewer or it's infrastructure. And so we're not necessarily thinking about place overall and how places intersect. So I think even just the frame of reference is a shift. Like it's a shift in mindset that's required.
Tony Pipa:It's very natural for people working in international development to have that mindset because they're taking, like, they start from this larger viewpoint. But it's not the same viewpoint that we take when we're looking at kind of community and economic development in the US. We often, we start very local and work up where in international development, we're often starting at the national level and then working, you know, down in some respects. I think the other thing, because you're taking that national perspective, you're often much more sensitive to the dynamics between those places. Like you are looking at migration from rural areas into cities because that's gonna stress the cities and how will the cities be able to grow in a constructive and a sustainable way rather than it stress the city so much that it actually undermines the progress that you're trying to get out of that economic progress.
Tony Pipa:And it actually might create, you know, poorer enclaves like within the city or, or make the city go backwards in some ways. And so you wanna ensure that rural places actually get their chance to thrive and have the opportunity to thrive. But what does that mean in terms of their connectivity to where there might be larger places of economic activity, I. E. The city?
Tony Pipa:What does it mean in terms of sustainability? What does it mean in terms of, again, you're very attuned, like I worked at USAID, one of our major major one of our major signature initiatives when I worked there was Feed the Future, and it was focused on productivity, agricultural productivity for smallholder farmers in different countries overseas using them to be able to be sustainable within the towns and villages they were living, rather than it all just be a migratory pattern into the city, for example. So I think starting from the frame of reference of being sensitive to rural and urban interdependence, rather than seeing rural as like its own discrete taxonomy and urban as its own discrete taxonomy. And that's like how you have to think of it. I think just even having that mindset is really important.
Tony Pipa:I mean, in international development, certainly not perfect, but I think one of the other things that I really valued about that experience, and I continue to challenge policymakers that I'm working with now that are focused on domestic and even particularly rural places, is that I do think international development's kind of at the forefront of how you measure what your impact is of your investments. And even trying to be able to measure what those interdependencies are and trying to understand them quantitatively in some way or even qualitatively, but really rigorously get a sense of what the implication of those interdependencies are and then what that means for your interventions and how much impact your interventions can have, like what your points of entry are on those intervention. I think we can take a lot of lessons actually from that, from international development and, and think about how to apply that. And then there are, you know, there are definitely interventions that could be transferable. Often when people hear that I have international development experience and seeking to apply that to rural, they think, you know, well, yeah, like, the community health worker model works really well in some rural areas, and it's tied to this healthcare delivery in the cities.
Tony Pipa:And we should do that in rural. That's actually not as much as what I personally do because that takes, you know, really specialized knowledge. I'm more about how do we make government work better, around all of that. So.
Ellen Wolter:Tony, you mentioned one of the things that we need to think about is shifting our mindset around rural and urban interdependence, which is really one of the reasons we wanted to do this podcast. And there's lots of ways. I think we could do that. You know, we've already talked about policy, you know, building some infrastructure, formal infrastructure. What are some other ways do you think that we could help to shift the that mindset around rural and urban interdependence and and why it adds value?
Tony Pipa:Yeah. So part of also what's going on in the US and it's not just the US. It's also other high income countries is that there are political implications and even political narrative. And even it's a cultural narrative of a divide between rural and urban. We don't even talk about interdependence.
Tony Pipa:We talk about division and people sort of going to their corners actually, and thinking that they're different and that they're not even, in in the same place. And so that has to be a part of the work. And I think that is both cultural. It's a narrative of how we talk about places and what communities' identities are and and the worth of those communities and places vis a vis other places. And, and I think it's also about how those places think about themselves as well and the value that they have, what the value of their future might be as well.
Tony Pipa:What hope they kind of have for the future. You know, I started the podcast, my own podcast to visit towns where positive things were happening because what I wanted to do was hear directly from them and ask the question, is our policy helping you or hurting you? Like, how helpful, how effective is our policy being and what recommendations would you have to change that? What's taken me by surprise is just how powerful and how important the narrative and the stories that people tell about their communities and think about their communities is for the vibrancy of that particular community and how well it connects up with other places as well. So I think there's actually a cultural aspect of this, right?
Tony Pipa:Like a lot of people who live in cities don't have personal relationships or personal experience in rural places, except maybe for visiting the national park or going to be in a beautiful place to, you know, have a vacation or take a break. They don't necessarily have the opportunity on a regular basis to go to, you know, a rural setting. Rural places, people in rural places might have more of an opportunity. They might shop in the city more often, or they might need to go to the city for healthcare or something like that. So they might have more of an opportunity to do that.
Tony Pipa:But I feel like we are really, we don't have as much direct relationship and even personal relationships between people who are living in cities and people are living in rural places as we might have had at different points in our history. US military is probably the last, you know, place where people come from all different places, both rural and urban in service of something larger. And even that's now sort of probably economically stratified. People aren't in community and in relationship with each other. And so also don't really understand kind of the interdependences that they might have.
Tony Pipa:And actually even the challenge, the, the joint challenges and opportunities that they might have. And I think we can do a whole lot more. I I think we can make it a national project for us to to reweave that. I mean, you could create, you know, a service experience. I mean, heck, I would love for a service experience even to be mandated.
Tony Pipa:I'm just a believer in, you know, one year of of experience even to be mandated. I'm just a believer in, you know, 1 year of, of mandatory service and have it be that you're providing service in a place that's exactly the opposite of what you've grown up in. And maybe even you're being hosted by a family there. And so you just like, I think like, the faith community could be doing a ton of different things. Like, you could be taking denominations from your urban places and your rural places, and you're working on Habitat for Humanity projects together in 1 and the and the other and breaking bread together.
Tony Pipa:And, Like, I think there's just a whole lot more we can be doing culturally around that to create these relationships and see the interdependencies, make the make the invisible visible, as you're saying, and for people to see that concretely, just to be working together on problems together.
Ellen Wolter:Yeah. Yeah. Those are, those are fantastic ideas. I think extension needs to start doing many of those. We're gonna get working on that, Tony.
Tony Pipa:There we go. I'm fault for that. There you go. Let me know how we can help.
Ellen Wolter:It sounds good. That sounds good. Yeah. So and I think you're part of that that work in changing the cultural narrative with with your podcast. So could you share a little bit about your podcast and maybe what folks would be surprised to learn about rural America?
Tony Pipa:Yeah. So the podcast is called reimagine rural. You can get it wherever you listen. Shameless promotion. The podcast is the opportunity for me to, both showcase the diversity of rural places across the United States.
Tony Pipa:So we try to be geographically diverse, try to understand the different kinds of economies that are happening in rural places, different sizes, different ethnicities, and races. I'm visiting places where some positive change is happening. And I talk to people who have been protagonists in that change. And just, they collect the stories of how that change has occurred. What's been challenging about it.
Tony Pipa:What's been entrepreneurial and innovative about it? It's about positive change happening, and our national narrative is often about the challenges that rural America is facing. So we've gotten a lot of positive feedback just to say, oh, right, this is actually happening. And even in some of the places that I visited, you know, poverty is still pretty high. So if you were coming from the outside looking in, you might think, oh, well, we need to write this place off.
Tony Pipa:But yet there's a set of people who are actually making real progress on things and are being very entrepreneurial and innovative. And, you know, when we even use the word innovation today in America, you know, people tend to like think of Silicon valley or, you know, something like that. You know, the new technology that's happening. What's really interesting to me is some of the most innovative leaders that I've met are just people in these towns who are instinctively and organically have done really innovative things. And so one thing I think people don't think about or realize is how much innovation there is that's happening in, in rural America.
Tony Pipa:I don't think people tend to understand how diverse rural America is. And then a couple of other things that really surprised me. Like, so one I'm a small town boy, right? So I understand that change in a small place can feel more disruptive than it might in a larger city, right? And a larger city, you might have your favorite restaurant or a favorite block.
Tony Pipa:And as this has changed on that block, but that churn happens on a regular basis and, you know, maybe a year from now, you kind of forget that because you've adopted a new place to go and, and things have shifted. In a rural place, you know, even small changes can be pretty disruptive or can feel bigger. And so we talk a lot of it about what it is it that helps the community come along with those positive changes that those leaders are making. One thing that's surprised me from last season was the extent to which beauty and quality of life was a recurring theme. Like I came in thinking about, like, economic activity and, you know, economic renewal.
Tony Pipa:And these leaders didn't necessarily start with grand economic plans. They said, look, you know, I bought this building because I we wanted to make it beautiful, and I wanted to bring beauty back to our town. And that pride of place pride of place has caught up with beauty, and we have a lot of things that are beautiful here, but we were looking at everything that was negative. And that just became a rec like, I heard that pretty much in every place I went, which was really surprising to me. And secondly, around that was quality of life.
Tony Pipa:We're like, look, you know, our real focus is not necessarily on creating jobs. It's on creating the quality of life that we really feel like we wanna have as a community and to build the community that we wanna live in. And if we do that, we'll be successful economically. The economics will come, will come from inside. It will come from outside.
Tony Pipa:But if we build the place that we want to be at, we feel like that's the the economy. The economic end of that will will happen.
Ellen Wolter:Any chance you're getting to Minnesota or have you gotten to Minnesota? I can recommend some great places, Tony.
Tony Pipa:I didn't get to Minnesota for this season. I will be in Minnesota for several visits. And I think I will be writing about some stuff that's happening in Minnesota. So let's put it that way.
Ellen Wolter:Great. Great. I
Tony Pipa:don't think it'll be on the pipeline, but I do wanna learn about what's happening in Minnesota.
Ellen Wolter:No worries, Tony. There's a lot of great things, as I'm sure you know. And I'm originally from Montana and North Dakota. So Oh, there you go. Great great places to visit too.
Ellen Wolter:I'm sure you get recommendations all the time.
Tony Pipa:Yeah. No. We do. So one of the things that we're doing for the 2nd season is because we're all, back to our earlier part of our conversation, because rural economies often are also driven by outside interests, We're looking at a lot of places where there's a lot of outside investment coming in. And so how is the community organizing to manage that and try to protect the integrity of the town and make sure the benefits are both shared pretty widely, but then also sustained over time as well.
Tony Pipa:There's kind of resilience in the town. Mhmm.
Ellen Wolter:Well, thanks so much, Tony, for your time today. I really appreciate your expertise and look forward to listening to the 2nd season of your podcast.
Tony Pipa:Thanks for having me.
Ellen Wolter:Thank you for listening to Side by Side. We welcome your emails at sidebyside@umn.edu. Side by Side is a production of the University of Minnesota Extension and is written and hosted by me, Ellen Wolter. Nancy Rosenbaum is our senior producer. Special thanks to Jan Jekyllah, who designed our wonderful logo, and Jim Griswold, who sings and plays guitar in our opening and closing credits.
Music (Jim Griswold):Really doesn't matter at all.
Ellen Wolter:You can find episodes of Side by Side wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back next week with another episode. I'm Ellen Walter, and this is Side by Side.
Music (Jim Griswold):Singing a song side by side.
