July 12, 2010

One of the more gratifying aspects of the growing embrace not just by the Obama administration but Congress of regional innovation strategies (including those supporting regional industry clusters) has been the increased recognition among rural thinkers and actors that such strategies are in no way exclusively “urban” or cosmopolitan or high-tech.

Now, that recognition on the rural side has yielded a solid gain. Just before the Fourth of July, the House Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee marked up their fiscal year 2011 bill and included in it $176 million to support Sec. Tom Vilsack’s creative Rural Innovation Initiative (see page 14 of the of the USDA Budget Summary)—a plan to increase the economic viability of rural communities by promoting a regional outlook in the planning and coordination of rural development programs at USDA. (See Chairman Rosa De Lauro’s statement on the markup).

Intended to make available a pool of money to support regional planning and coordinate USDA assistance in rural communities, the Agriculture initiative is potentially a watershed for its thoughtful synthesis on the rural side of ongoing “metropolitan” concerns as regionalism, planning, and program integration.

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Source: The Brookings Institution