Richard Young and Lucas Grindley discuss rural-urban interdependence in Lexington, KY and the value of an urban service boundary
One of the five chapters of our city's comprehensive plan is urban and rural balance. It is fundamental to who we are as a city. You know, we don't really follow along blue and red line. We have a nonpartisan government. But what the major political dividing line is, are you pro growth?
Richard Young:Are you pro preservation? And in many ways, that's a false dichotomy in my opinion. But nevertheless, that is the sort of dividing line that people fall on. Do we grow up or do we grow out?
Lucas Grindley:Because there's this literal boundary around the city in which you cannot easily develop, it forces a regular conversation about how we develop. There's no ability for them to just sprawl as many cities do. It can't just sort of spill out into the farmland. So the people who are maybe outside the boundary will say to the folks in the city, well, you could just build up. And maybe the people inside are like, well, actually, I think that we should build out.
Lucas Grindley:It's a really good clear way to say what's at stake in the way that we are going to develop. Maybe it creates a contentious debate, but it is actually a very well informed debate.
Ellen Wolter:That's Lucas Grindley and Richard Young. Lucas leads Next City, a nonprofit news organization that focuses on solutions for just and equitable cities. Richard leads CivicLex, a nonprofit that focuses on transforming civic engagement in Lexington, Kentucky. They are talking about the urban service boundary in Lexington, one of the few in the country that wraps around the city of Lexington and prevents growth in rural areas outside the city, and the debate to expand the boundary a few years ago. In 2024, Lucas and Richard led the Next City Vanguard Conference, an annual conference that brings together urban leaders working to improve cities.
Ellen Wolter:The conference, which was held in Lexington and focused on rural urban interdependence, included a robust discussion about the value of the urban service boundary, the false dichotomy of pro growth versus pro preservation, and the role rural areas play in urban and regional planning. They also reflect on how conversations at the conference surfaced the need to reckon with history and address harms experienced by marginalized communities, including LGBTQ and Black Americans. Historically, cities often served as a refuge for these communities. And then, as Lucas noted, folks just sort of view things that way forever. It's important to look at history and contend with it in a real way.
Ellen Wolter:To do this, Lucas and Richard emphasized the importance of authentic, localized storytelling that reshape perceptions and demonstrate the current realities of rural and urban communities as they evolve and grow in a way that fosters connection and informs policymaking.
Lucas Grindley:Side by side.
Ellen Wolter:This is Ellen Wolcher from the University of Minnesota Extension. Welcome to the side by side podcast.
Ellen Wolter:Could tell me a little bit about your organizations. So, Lucas, why don't we start with you with NextCity?
Lucas Grindley:Sure. Yeah. We're a nonprofit newsroom. We focus on solutions, doing what's called solutions journalism. So we find examples of things that are working in cities that can be replicated from one city to the next city in the hopes that those places can be made more equitable.
Lucas Grindley:So we cover only solutions that are geared toward creating more racially equitable places, and the people that we serve share that goal. So that might mean that they're building community land trust to expand the definition of ownership. It might mean that they're changing business models for actual ownership of businesses. Right? It could be they're working on food ecosystems, all the different things that we have to do to make a city more equitable to combat something as big as, like, ending poverty.
Lucas Grindley:It can't be done from only one sector. So we try to find the people who care about the work that they do in this way. Whereas maybe historically, places of urban planning and, like, government and things like that have sometimes been about beautification or increasing wealth and luxury and that sort of thing. And these are folks who think about it much more mission oriented.
Ellen Wolter:Richard, tell me about
Richard Young:CivicLex. Sure. Yeah. So CivicLex is a nonprofit organization based in Lexington, Kentucky where we do all of our work. And what what we do is really focused on strengthening civic health here in Lexington.
Richard Young:And for us, that means our community's ability to, you know, to really tackle and solve its own challenges. Our our work sort of spans a number of different things, including including serving as a nonprofit newsroom. But we're really working towards we're trying to grow civic knowledge and capacity for residents. We're trying to help them understand, the issues that impact their lives every day and and what they can do to really influence those issues, to really make their voice and perspective heard in the policy making process. So that looks like covering city hall, but it also looks like a really robust civic education program where we teach thousands of students every year about how our city government works and and how the city budget works.
Richard Young:We bring them into touch with elected officials and and city staff members for them to really build actual relationships. And that's actually the sort of second part of our of our work is is focused around, helping folks really connect with their neighbors and connect with other people in Lexington. There's been a lot of talk in the past several years about our crises of social isolation and loneliness, and there's a lot in that that that really pertains to our community's ability to solve its own challenges. People don't have relationships with people that are different from them or if they don't have relationships with people that are in positions of power or authority or influence. It really limits a community's ability to solve challenges in a productive way.
Richard Young:And so we put a really strong emphasis on on trying to build those relationships with people that come from different backgrounds or from different neighborhoods or from different perspectives is really important to the sort of underlying social cohesion that allows you to really tackle a problem. And the third thing that we do at CivicLex is really focus on on trying to build civic institutions here that are more responsive to the public. For us to really solve help our community better solve challenges, we have to work on it from the public side, but we also have to work on it from the institution side and the sort of relationships that span the two.
Ellen Wolter:So you both partnered together in 2024 in the van Next City Vanguard conference, which focused on rural urban interdependence. First, could you tell me a little bit about the Next City Vanguard conference and generally what it is and how you put it on?
Lucas Grindley:We've been doing it for sixteen years, I believe now. And the idea is it's the physical manifestation of the journalism that we do. It's like if our journalism were in real life. So we don't sit around in, like, a big hotel conference ballroom situation thing going on with breakout sessions. We're going to the places that we would otherwise bring you in our stories.
Lucas Grindley:Right? And then we're hosting a panel there that's, well, let's bring in some people from across town who are working on similar things, and let's have a conversation here in this place that's important. And then this group of people who we select to go with us are learning along the way, but they're also making connections along the way. And so are the people who are the host committee who created the conference, this itinerary to display their city, to introduce their city to these people who come to it. So it's really it's about connection, but it's also about exploring solutions.
Lucas Grindley:And in Lexington, the theme was urban and rural interconnection, but the theme is different for every city that we go to. It depends on the place. Right? So right now, we're organizing a conference actually in Philly that's about ways to alleviate poverty because poverty is, in Philly, the top issue. Right?
Lucas Grindley:And so we've done different themes in different places. In El Paso, it was the truth about the border and the way that people who live at the border feel like their lives are being talked about in ways they don't recognize. Right? And a lot of times, that's also the truth of the conferences we hear from people who say in Newark, you only talk about Newark as if it's all about crime, and really what we're about is working together and how we can come together to solve our problems. So get to know us that way.
Lucas Grindley:Right? And the people we bring are a microcosm of our readers. They come from across all the different silos that work in cities. They might be in economic development or transportation or media or philanthropy because it takes all of us working together to solve any of these things. And there's a selection process, and we can only pick 40 people who come.
Lucas Grindley:And then a lot of times, vanguards, we call them alums, will bring us to a new city because it was such an impactful program. We wanna keep working together.
Ellen Wolter:Richard, I believe you are on the planning committee
Lucas Grindley:Yes.
Ellen Wolter:For this conference. Is that correct?
Richard Young:Yes.
Ellen Wolter:So what was it about rural interdependence that was lifted up as a theme and you thought this is really something we need to focus on?
Richard Young:When we first started conversations with the Next City team about what it would look like to host a vanguard in Lexington, Actually, I feel like one of the I feel like the first conversation was actually in El Paso, when I was talking with, with some of the Next City team about Lexington and about Kentucky and about the transformational work that's happening in this state. And, you know, I think that conversation was really focused around this around rural and urban interdependence. I don't think we talked about it in that way, but, you know, there's this probably will be the the last time that I bring up the Kentucky Rural Urban Exchange that I've been a longtime steering committee member of, part of the founding steering committee. But there's been a lot of work over the past decade through the rural urban exchange to build a stronger sense of identity across rural and urban spaces in Kentucky and help folks understand that the fate of Lexington is tied to the fate of Southeast Kentucky, is tied to the fate of Western Kentucky. It's tied to the state of rural and Northern Kentucky.
Richard Young:Right? Like, all of all parts of our state sort of rise and fall together. And if we don't build more connections and bridges, we're not gonna be able to solve our state's very serious and very real challenges, like persistent poverty and low educational performance and low educational outcomes and the many challenges that face Kentucky. And then as we sort of narrowed in on potentially hosting Vanguard in Lexington, you know, this city in particular, really sort of personifies rural and urban connections. It is a city of 330,000 people, so it is a city.
Richard Young:I think we're, like, fifty ninth largest city, so maybe not, like, capital c city, like, Lowercase c city. That very much feels like a very small town. A lot of the folks that moved to Lexington are moving here from rural Kentucky, from Appalachia, from the very sort of founding days of Lexington in 1775. You know, the city sort of seen itself as, like, rural community. We never manufacturing on the same scale that Louisville or Cincinnati had.
Richard Young:Our entire history has been agrarian, focused on the farmlands that surround Lexington. We're the first city city in the nation to adopt an urban service boundary protecting rural land so that 70% of our county is farmland. And we have massive programs at this in the city level to preserve that. And then I think because the University of Kentucky is based here, which houses our state's extension program, you know, we also have these really deep connections through the universities, both the universities agricultural research and through the extension program and through many other things to the rest of the state. And so those are those are all facets of the city that made rural and urban interdependence a theme that felt like it was important for us to focus on.
Richard Young:And at the same time, we know that Lexington, like, there is despite all of this, right, there is a very real cultural divide between Lexington and the rural communities that surround it. It's a consistent challenge, and we're especially seeing that grow as a challenge as our city continues to grow. And we understand that, like, Lexington cannot grow just inside Fayette County. This whole region is changing together. And if we don't start thinking in more of a regional way across rural and urban lines, we're gonna have some really serious challenges in the next ten to twenty years.
Ellen Wolter:Lucas, what was it about the rural urban interdependence theme that you thought, oh, yeah. That that really fits with Next City's goal to ensure that cities are racially equitable?
Lucas Grindley:You know, I think it's important to be connected to what's happening across the country, and this is a theme where there is a lack of conversation around solutions. And that dearth of conversation around solutions leads to scapegoating and blame and all the things that we're experiencing. Right? And this thing that we call a divide. And that we were really intentional, or I learned to become really intentional about talking this as, like, urban rural interconnection, not some urban rural divide, which plays into the themes that are shaping all of our political conversation right now.
Lucas Grindley:So I felt like it's very connected to everything that's happening in the country to talk about the ways in which we are actually dependent each other. In talking about being dependent on each other, it goes beyond a perceived division between urban and rural folks. It's also this, like, lack of connection that Richard's talking about where it's like we need to have neighbors connect with neighbors because it's easy for us now to ignore the effects of our actions. Right? You don't see the effects of your actions on your neighbors maybe down the street, maybe in the next town over, maybe out in the farmland.
Lucas Grindley:Right? So it it really does take all of us working together and seeing ourselves as a community in order to solve something big, like, take an easy one, like climate change, right, and resilience. You can't do that only from a city. You can't do that only from your town. It's not gonna be solved one group at a time.
Lucas Grindley:Really does take us all relying on each other. Right? It it it's gonna take everybody doing something, but it's gonna take all of us relying on each other to do it. There are actually great examples from around the country. Vermont's a good example where the Green Mountain Power Company serves about 80% of Vermont with power and 78% of it is renewable energy.
Lucas Grindley:And the thing that they pride themselves on is their deep community engagement. So they went to, for example, small town, Lowell. I think there was a proposed wind turbine farm that was needed for the whole state, and it's in this small town. It ends up winning a vote three to one. It was, like, 300 and something votes for it.
Lucas Grindley:That's how small the town is. Right? And it happened because they had public meetings. They went door to door. They, met in people's homes, and they were open to sharing the profits with folks.
Lucas Grindley:So it was about community engagement and also sharing economic benefits with people in a sincere way. And sometimes in smaller communities, it's easier to see how we're all in this together and that you actually do have to go and talk to each other and that you do actually have to engage in a sincere way, which I think is also a crux of Richard's work when he's talking about community engagement is to actually make government function in a way that sincerely listens to the people that it's supposed to serve, not just performs this listening. Right?
Ellen Wolter:I'm really excited to hear about the conference and some of the things that you did to embed this theme of rural urban interdependence. What what were some of the ways in which you encouraged folks to be thinking through this lens? And I guess even to back up further, did folks come in with this lens already? Were they already kind of thinking in this way?
Lucas Grindley:We did actually, I think, let people know that the theme would be rural and urban interdependence before they got there because we wanted to attract people who were thinking about that. We were looking for people who demonstrated an interest in this kind of work. So there was a person from Main Street America, which is in service to all the main streets across the country from big cities to small towns. And I remember she was so impressed by the first day of the conference where we usually spend a lot of time delving into the history of a place. Right?
Lucas Grindley:Like, how did we what momentum brought us to this moment? Because you can't ignore that if you wanna get anything done. And it was Mandy Higgins at the Lexington History Museum. She was talking about the differences between factual knowledge, which she's sort of a purveyor of, and felt knowledge, which she has to cope with often. And I remember the person from Main Street in America saying that the way she talked about that changed the way she thinks about development on Main Streets because you can't take this sort of big city approach that says, you know, what you know doesn't matter, and here's what the real reality of things is.
Lucas Grindley:And what Mandy Higgins was saying is, actually, these are both real versions of knowledge that you have to embrace and not dismiss. You have to speak with them over time, maybe not with the goal of changing anyone's mind. Right? The goal for her was really about if we can have greater understanding of where we came from, it means greater understanding of each other, which leads to greater solidarity, and that's really what we need in order to get anything done.
Richard Young:You know, we really tried to look at it through a variety of different lenses. You know, it's it's really easy with any conference topic or any theme of any kind. It's really flat. And I think one of the things that was really successful about about Vanguard was the different ways that we sort of looked at it. Lucas talked about how the first day is really focusing on this sort of history of the place.
Richard Young:We looked at Lexington's history of the rural and urban connections of this of this community and the rural roots of Lexington. But then we also had a really lovely walking tour with the Faulkner Morgan archive here, which is an organization that's working to preserve and really tell the story of the LGBTQ community in Kentucky. You know, Lexington, from the very beginning, from the seventeen hundreds, was a place that LGBTQ folks moved to. The it was a huge hub of art creation. You know, the sort of original nickname to the city was, like, Athens Of The West.
Richard Young:There's a very deep roots in cultural traditions, and a lot of that came from LGBTQ folks moving here from a very, very early time in Lexington's history. And so I think that's both an interesting and, I think, a really surprising thread to pull on rural urban connections and rural and urban interdependence for folks that were attending. I don't think that's what most people thought of first when they thought about coming to Kentucky. But then we also looked at our city's comprehensive plan, like, which sounds, again, like, very technical. Right?
Richard Young:It is the sort of guiding land use document for us community. But the the cornerstone of our comprehensive plan is our urban services boundary, which controls how our city grows into rural lands. And in fact, one of the five chapters of our city's comprehensive plan is urban and rural balance. It is it is fundamental to who we are as a city. So we really got to explore that a little bit as well.
Richard Young:And so while the, you know, the first day really focused on on themes from, like, a Lexington lens, we also knew it was important to get outside of Lexington, right, and go to a community that wasn't a city. And so we ended up going down to Berea, Kentucky, which is a small community about forty five minutes south of Lexington down in Madison County. And we had an opportunity to talk to a lot of organizations, and individuals that serve Appalachian Kentucky about issues around climate. In the past handful of years, Kentucky has seen really catastrophic weather. We've had two generational floods that have destroyed whole communities in in Southeast Kentucky.
Richard Young:We just had tornadoes that ripped through and killed over a dozen people. So there is a lot of conversation around climate happening in our region, and that is very dependent on on rural and urban conversations happening. We also got to explore Berea College, which is the first integrated coeducational college in the South. It's founded by abolitionists and a deep history of pursuing social justice. For me, the real the real capstone in talking about rural and urban interdependence was was hearing directly from folks that have been through the Kentucky Rural Urban Exchange is when we're talking about about solutions.
Richard Young:All almost all of our challenges are going to require, folks working together across geographic lines. And I think the Rural Urban Exchange is the best example, the thing that gives me the most hope of anything anywhere in The United States on addressing that issue, right, of how we've helped helped equip people to be more culturally competent, to understand that, you know, housing is just as big an issue in Appalachia as it is in Lexington or Louisville, and that that our state is big enough for everyone. Right? That our state has room no matter where you live. Our state has room for you and and wants you here.
Ellen Wolter:And listeners, REX, Kentucky REX is a cultural exchange program where folks from rural areas and then urban areas learn about each other. And I think it's been around around ten years. Is that right?
Richard Young:Yeah. More than that at this point. Good lord. 02/1314 was, like, sort of the start. So, yeah, going on eleven, twelve years.
Ellen Wolter:And it's a phenomenal program. I know I've been admiring it from afar for many years, so we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. So one of the things I'm really interested in is this idea of rural urban interdependence and its connection to urban policy and what that looks like. So I'm really fascinated, Richard, by this urban boundary that you've mentioned a few times. Can you describe that a little bit and how that has benefited both urban areas but also rural areas in Lexington?
Richard Young:Lexington is the first community in the nation to adopt what's called an urban service boundary. And this was back in, oh my gosh, 1954, I think. Hold on. I'm gonna I'm gonna just live fact check myself. Well,
Ellen Wolter:while you're looking that up just really quickly,
Ellen Wolter:are there other cities that have this urban service boundary?
Richard Young:Yeah. So Portland Portland, Oregon was was the second it's 1958. I was four years off. Apologies.
Ellen Wolter:Okay.
Richard Young:Portland Portland, Oregon actually is the was the second community in the nation to Adolphin, and they actually came to Lexington to study ours to develop their boundary. And, essentially, what it is is is it is a line, that goes around the urbanized area. Lexington has a merged city county government, and then and we merged after the adoption of the urban service boundary, but I think that's also really important thing to understand, as I'm getting into the urban service boundary. The so the city cap and county government are the same thing. And so, originally, the actual original purpose for developing the urban service boundary was around reducing the city's infrastructure costs.
Richard Young:Those those costs are pretty significant. They require a significant bonding. And so the the city was like, we wanna really constrain our growth, really not allow us to sprawl out like many other communities in our area. And this boundary was a was a way of doing that. And then sort of since the since the boundary was developed, the idea of it being a cost saving measure has actually sort of taken a backseat.
Richard Young:And what I think a lot of people see it now as is a protection mechanism for rural land in Fayette County. Much like the rest of Kentucky has a history of tobacco farming. It has a history of family farming, some corn and soybean production. But the majority of agricultural land in Fayette County is equine land. We are the forest capital of the world.
Richard Young:Basically, any major racehorse that runs in the Kentucky Derby has, at some point, been reared in Central Kentucky. And so it's very valuable land, and that's because of the soil quality of Central Kentucky. And so people are very protective of that, and the urban service boundaries essentially protected. And the boundaries expanded and contracted over time, but most recently expanded about two years ago. And so that was a very hot topic during Vanguard because the city was in the process of developing the plan to expand the, the urban service area.
Richard Young:And so what that looked like and or what that development will look like and the values that guide it and how it's going to serve communities is very much a big topic at that time, and still is to this day. So, I mean, the urban service boundary is fundamental to Lexington. Like, you cannot understand Lexington's. It is the central political issue of our community. You know, we don't really fall along blue and red line.
Richard Young:We have a nonpartisan government, here. But what the major political dividing line is, are you pro growth? Are you pro preservation? And in many ways, that's a false dichotomy in my opinion, but, nevertheless, that is the sort of dividing line that people fall on. Do we grow up or do we grow out?
Lucas Grindley:Can I say what, as an outsider, I thought was really effective about the urban rural service boundary? I mean, because we heard a lot about the urban rural service boundary before we got to Lexington. And then when I was there and we're having these panels and people are coming in and talking about it, I was like, oh, I see now. Okay. So because there's this literal boundary around the city in which you cannot easily develop, it forces a regular conversation about how we develop.
Lucas Grindley:Like, there's no ability for them to just sprawl as many cities do. Right? It can't just sort of spill out into the farmland. So the people who are maybe outside the boundary will say to the folks in the city, well, you could just build up, like we say to many cities elsewhere. Right?
Lucas Grindley:You could be more dense. And maybe the people in the inside are like, well, I don't really think that's the best use of money to do all these things. And, actually, I think that we should build out. It's like a really good clear way, very clear, to say what's at stake in the way that we are going to develop. And then they can say, look.
Lucas Grindley:We don't have enough housing. So if we're gonna build more affordable housing, you're asking us to build up or we can go out and build some more in a new place, right, like, and pick your topic as to what's missing. So I I just thought it was really maybe it creates a contentious debate every few years, but it is actually a very well informed debate.
Ellen Wolter:Your point is well taken, Lucas, that it forces the conversation. And here in Minnesota, we have we see that urban sprawl, and we see small towns and folks worried that their role way of life for agriculture, as you say, Richard, will be infringed upon with suburbs. So, Richard, does Lexington then have fewer suburbs and kinda sprawl than than other communities?
Richard Young:We certainly have suburban style development. We have a a pretty good amount of single family housing, entire large neighborhoods developed all at once. The big distinction is that there with each expansion of the Urban Service Foundry, there has been a very fixed amount of land that is able to to grow. And the urban service boundary is also paired with another policy that I think is actually really important to understanding the success of the urban service boundary, and that is the Purchase and Development Rights Program. So our our city also has a program where the city government will purchase the rights to develop farmland in perpetuity from current property owners.
Richard Young:Doesn't mean they own the property, but it means that that property, once it gets passed down to kids or for whom wherever the property goes, can never be developed. And so across the rural part of Fayette County, which is about 70% of the land mass, there's this patchwork quilt of of farms that are in the PDR program that have been that will never be able to be developed. And these PDR farms can't ever be developed. And so they they're kind of these, like, rocks out there that when the boundary hits them like a wave, like, it kinda has to go around it. And so it really eliminates long term, you know, for the next hundred years, the ability for Lexington to sprawl out in the same way that most Midwestern cities do across the county.
Richard Young:But I think this is where the rural and urban interdependence thing comes back that's really important to understand. Kentucky is a 120 counties. Fayette County is is the second largest. We are surrounded by counties that do not have urban service boundaries. So they can do it.
Richard Young:They can sprawl all they want. And so this, I think, is where it where we where it is becoming increasingly clear to to civic leaders in our region that Lexington needs to be talking with all of these counties that surround us so that we have more of a regional strategy for how we provide housing while also preserving the farmland that powers the tourism industry here, which represents so much of the economic activity of our region.
Ellen Wolter:Richard, I wanna get back to that regional strategy point in a minute, but I also wanna go back to something you said about you feeling like pro growth or pro preservation is a false dichotomy. And I'm just curious your perspective on why you feel that's a false dichotomy.
Richard Young:There are ways to grow while preserving. Right? Like, there like, we can grow we can even grow into rural land while still preserving the things that are really important and essential about it. And I think we can look back on Lexington's history and see the places where we really missed the mark. Like many communities near us, Lexington has a history of enslavement.
Richard Young:And, you know, after the civil war and the end of and the end of slavery, a lot of newly freed black Americans moved into rural parts of Hitt County. And they established Lexington's rural black hamlets. They are small rural enclaves that have, since the eighteen hundreds, been historically black. They're really important parts of of community pride in our in our city because they represented this first generation in many contexts of black land ownership in Kentucky. And, you know, because many of them were in rural parts of Fayette County, some of them have been subsumed by suburban development.
Richard Young:And so you'll have these sort of historic centers that are tucked away because of how development worked at the time and people's perspectives on the importance of those places. You know, there'll be just be a major road that goes right by it. It cuts that these these rural hamlets, once rural hamlets, off from the rest of the sort of connectivity of our city. And as our city continues to grow, and we just expanded the urban service boundary for the first time since 1995, a couple years ago, and certainly in the next ten to twenty years, expansion conversation will begin again. And I think about, like, Uttingertown, which is right on the border of the urban service boundary.
Richard Young:And, like, what will happen to to Udingerton as we grow? And I think we have to be having this conversation about preserving really important spaces like that. But but, you know, we're going to grow. People Lexington has never had population decline. You're going to continue to grow at a linear rate for a very long time.
Richard Young:And so we have like, it is if in many ways, having it be about this false dichotomy between growth or preservation eliminates a lot of this really robust, rich, nuanced conversation that we need to have, we can't preserve everything. What are the things that matter to our city? What are the things that that we need to hold sacred and make sure are preserved physically, culturally, spiritually for the next hundred years? And and I think that making it about this growth or preservation one or the other, you lose what's going to happen, which is something in between.
Ellen Wolter:Thank you for for sharing that, Richard. And I think it's a great example too of just the many false dichotomies that exist in our narratives today, including the rural urban divide. Right? Also a false dichotomy, I think.
Lucas Grindley:Yeah. Thank you. A good example of that is affordable housing, right, where we especially over this last election cycle, had a lot of conversation around supply and building new housing. There's a lot of talk about how to add because we have a housing crisis and how to housing shortage. So people often in their minds start to think, okay.
Lucas Grindley:We have to add. We have to develop more, go new places. And, you know, that housing this will talk about the three p's of affordable housing, which is really, yeah, one is sure about, you know, production, but there's also preserving the existing affordable housing, which shouldn't be just about cost, but also literally the buildings themselves, right, that need to be preserved. And then you have federal programs like the green and resilient retrofit program, GRRP, that are now facing cuts for the federal government. When you face cuts for federal government like that, they face everybody.
Lucas Grindley:And that is one way, again, that we're all in this together and that rural and urban communities benefit from programs that preserve affordable housing or construct new affordable housing. And when they are facing cuts, the first thing you hear from people who work in cities or elsewhere is, oh, we have to find more ways to tell the stories of how these things are being used, especially in rural places so that we can to red state lawmakers and help close the divide because it's really about just amplifying the fact that we're all in this together. And the the more you ignore that, the easier it is to cut these things that help everybody.
Ellen Wolter:Yeah. That's another another great example. Thank you, Lucas. So regional planning, I think, is is a really important piece of rural urban interdependence. Right.
Ellen Wolter:And I'm curious where you see and Lexington seems to be a great example of this, but where else you see cities and rural areas and suburban areas doing this regional planning well that really incorporates thinking about the needs of rural and the needs of of urban and suburban areas?
Lucas Grindley:That's a good question. Where is their good regional planning going? I'm sure someone listening is like, I have the perfect example. The one that comes to mind for me is one place where we did Vanguard. We talked about regional planning a bit.
Lucas Grindley:We used to Greensboro, North Carolina. And the reason we wanna go to Greensboro is because it's like a lot of cities where it used to be dominated by a particular industry. In this case, it was textile industry. That industry disappears. How do we spur new job growth?
Lucas Grindley:Right? So a lot of times, regional planning will even be about the workforce and how do we spur actual job growth. And then I think Greensboro was an example where the conversation wasn't as much about urban and rural and that it was more about small versus big. Right? I can't say that Greensboro had it all figured out.
Lucas Grindley:They were still focusing on how do I bring a lot of these larger employers to, for example, the airport, right, and the airport region and create this sort of hub for new jobs and growth because they're all near each other. And then how do we connect that new industry with the many universities they had in the relatively, you know, mid sized city so that then the workforce that we're developing is going to stay here and feed into this industry and then contribute to all of our growth, and then the money is staying in the area. And then you'd have people who said, well, that's all great. You wanna attract Toyota or you wanna attract whatever large manufacturer to this area could just create a repeat of history. Right?
Lucas Grindley:And they were saying, well, we have all these small businesses who are really what make Greensboro special. Why don't we actually just create programs to support the the growth of these small businesses so they go from five people to 12 people to 20 people? So and that's a conversation I think you hear all over the place, but I don't have an answer to who has done it best yet. That would be an interesting vanguard. If someone's out there and wants to reach out and be like, I have the perfect city for you.
Lucas Grindley:It's the Lexington of urban rural interdependence. It's the regional planning example.
Ellen Wolter:Listeners, I wanna know that too, so let me know as well. Richard, any ideas on that one?
Richard Young:No. I and and no. I don't have any ideas. I actually think that we're not doing a great job of it here. I think that there are some efforts, and I think that our city's division of planning certainly is doing their best to try and understand how our community is growing in relation to the other communities around us and how the how those two things are tied together, how to build better bridges to other counties.
Richard Young:I think our city's chamber of commerce is also trying to do the same thing. I think there are some other organizations that are trying to work on this. But, ultimately, one of the biggest challenges that I think people don't think about enough, particularly, you know, I don't know what the sort of county structures are of of all of the communities that are listening to this, but we have pretty small counties in Kentucky. Kentucky is not that big of a state.
Ellen Wolter:Can. Yeah. That's amazing. We have 87 in Minnesota. So that's really incredible.
Ellen Wolter:Mhmm.
Richard Young:It's it's incredible. One of the challenges of that is that there are so many governments. So we're really lucky, right, in in in Lexington that we have Lexington Bay and Urban County government. We have a merged city county government. So there's one one government in the county and the city.
Richard Young:It's all the same thing. But any of the counties surrounding us, they're all they're all county governments and then city and town governments. And so there are some counties that have four or five governments. And so how you get all of these different governments, right, if you were to take the Central Kentucky region of, I don't know, 10 to 15 counties and or they're involved in planning or economic development or transportation or all of these different facets that are so important to planning, you know, I don't know how you would get all those people in the room. And so to me, regional planning is tough in a context like Kentucky.
Richard Young:And so I think we actually have to create these systems that are outside of our government, right, where we are having greater conversations across county lines. We need things like rural urban exchange to help build a sense of common understanding so that when we go into conversations about regional planning, we're not immediately batting heads. So there is a sense of connection and a common understanding that I think is so important to hard conversations.
Ellen Wolter:As you think about some of the things that folks from the conference took away, what were some of the key takeaways for the attendees, do you think? And, you know, maybe some ahas for them and for yourselves too.
Lucas Grindley:I mean, one of them that Richard mentioned was I could elaborate more on, which is this we did this tour of LGBTQ history in Lexington, and I think some folks were glad to see that LGBTQ history was being celebrated and remembered in the city. And they thought, oh gosh. What am I doing in my city? It was like, we thought we were so progressive and so far along, we're not doing anything. So it was special to see that, but it's also important because it's important to think of the connection between rural places and cities even through the LGBTQ residents because a lot of times, the reason that we do have this connection because cities were seen as a place of safety for pick your group.
Lucas Grindley:Right? And LGBTQ people, at least for me, I'm the formatter of the advocate magazine. It's very clear the history that gay people had leaving rural places where they didn't feel safe to head into cities where they hope to find each other and didn't feel alone, and they created all these different neighborhoods across the country. But, you know, the history goes way back. It could be like the the great migration, right, where black families moved from farmland to cities.
Lucas Grindley:They're escaping racial violence and Jim Crow laws of the South in the hope of better life, more economic opportunity. And what did that create in cities, but also what did it leave in rural places. Right? Like, we did a whole, series around the interconnection of farmland and farming and our food system to cities because and people will be like, why is next city covering farming? Like, well, because we have this history of where people came from.
Lucas Grindley:Right? And that we went from 14% of all growers being black farmers to today less than 2%. And then that, you know, inequality leads to inequality in the food systems that we rely on today. So it's important to know where you came from, and I sort of wonder if some of the condescension or maybe looking down on other parts of the world comes from this history of feeling like we had to escape for safety reasons, and then you just sort of few things that way forever. Right?
Lucas Grindley:And I think if we could address the harms that we've all been through in our all of our different places where we live, rural urban cities, counties, towns, there's always a push where someone says, oh, I wanna move. I wanna have progress. Why why can't we just get pick your thing done? Right? And there's usually some leader who's just, like, really trying to push, and that's what leads to an inauthentic community engagement process is this desire to push past history, right, and not really recognize where we came from.
Lucas Grindley:And everyone else is that they're trying to push is saying, you haven't listened to me yet at all. So I I think that everywhere we go, Lexington, no exception. It's important to look at the history of what led to this moment that we're living in and try to contend with it in a real way so that people feel listened to and then they can move on, trust each other, build the solidarity that Mandy Higgins was talking about, because you can't do that without actually understanding another person.
Ellen Wolter:Yeah. That's so important, Lucas. Yeah. And there are LGBTQ plus folks in still in rural communities, right, that are trying to navigate these spaces and and how to move forward. I know that's certainly something that in some of our small towns in Minnesota, people are saying, hey, I don't want to move.
Ellen Wolter:I want to create space in my community for me and for the people that I want to be with. And so remembering that happens in rural communities too, I
Ellen Wolter:think, is important as part of
Ellen Wolter:that conversation as well and providing that support. What about you, Richard? What were some ahas for you or for others?
Richard Young:Well, a couple of things. Like, one, it is always exciting for me to bring people to Kentucky. Being able to bring folks here, have them see that this is actually a really rich, deep, dynamic place that is very different than what their assumptions are of it. Be they in Lexington or coming to Lexington or going down to Berea or or taking them out to Duston County or taking them to anywhere in this state, I think people are continually surprised. And that's because the sort of traditional media portrayal of our state is really derisive.
Richard Young:Right? You only see Kentucky in the news when it's something bad. And so I think one of the takeaways that was maybe slightly engineered on our part was to give people a little bit of surprise, right, to change people's perceptions a little bit, not by trying to convince them that this is a place that it isn't because we have challenges just like every other place, but by showing them the people that live here and that are working to make this place better. And and I think similarly, I think there were some folks that were in Usher's vanguard that have some sort of connection to a rural place, but not a lot. And so getting to have that conversation with folks, right, and, like, helping people understand that, oh, yes.
Richard Young:Of course, next city should cover agriculture. People in cities eat. Like, right? There is a right? They depend on the farmland that surrounds them in many ways for food.
Richard Young:We, as a country, we really tend to think of ourselves as not being tied to anything beyond the place that we live in. And there is no avoiding that here. You just can't like, you cannot not see farmland, and and you cannot not see the connections of agricultural industries. Be they big flashy industries, like the equine industry or the bourbon industry or whatever, or just like farmers setting up in a parking lot for, like, a farmer's market. It is unavoidable here.
Richard Young:In addition to sort of dispelling some myths and preconceptions about Kentucky, I think it was also encouraging to see people's, like, conceptions of what their place is and how it could be tied to rural places expand a little bit. And I think in that, what better success for convening focused on rural urban interdependence than to have people thinking about their own place differently.
Lucas Grindley:And that idea that this is not the real true story of us, we hear in Vanguard all over the place. And to tease what's coming next, CivicLex and XCity are joining together on a reporter who's based in Lexington for the next year to continue covering these stories so that we can keep telling the true story of what it's like to live in these places.
Ellen Wolter:Oh, congratulations. That's great. And that's a really great note
Ellen Wolter:to end on because I
Ellen Wolter:think that's what we're hoping to do here with this podcast too is telling those those true stories that you don't you don't hear enough about. Lucas and Richard, thank you so much for your time and expertise today and sharing more about your work.
Ellen Wolter:It's been just a pleasure to talk with you.
Richard Young:Thank you. Thanks so much.
Ellen Wolter:Thank you for listening to Side by Side. We welcome your emails at sidebysideumn dot edu. Side by Side is a production of the University of Minnesota Extension and is written and hosted by me, Ellen Wolter. Special thanks to Jan Jackola, who designed our wonderful logo, and Jim Griswold, who sings and plays guitar in our opening and closing credits. You can find episodes of side by side wherever you get your podcasts.
Ellen Wolter:We'll be back next week with another episode. I'm Ellen
Ellen Wolter:Wolter, and this is side by side.
