So, What’s a Small, Rural Town to Do? 

Finding Someone Who Cares is the Place to Start. 

The Challenge. There are different types of small cities and towns. The smaller, older, free-standing rural towns that are some distance from a metro area offer a unique challenge. They are, by definition, beyond the corona of a big regional city or metro area; beyond the reach of the regional economic and social spheres. The future of rural towns is not connected to the systems of an economic metro area and they have fewer opportunities and resources to build their independent economic, social and physical systems. 

Kurt H. Schindler, Michigan State University Extension, 10.27.14, offers ten ways for rural towns to fight regression and stabilize their social and economic systems. However, the presumption is that rural towns have the resources, economic and civic, to activate the needed actions. Free-standing, rural communities not connected to a larger metro area have few options for arresting their decline; but, they do have a few.