Aspen is a place for leaders to lift their sights above the possessions which possess them. To confront their own nature as human beings, to regain control over their own humanity by becoming more self-aware, more self-correcting, and hence more self-fulfilling.
Walter P. Paepcke, Aspen Institute Co-Founder
Aspen Institute
Blog Posts, and Publications
Rural Development Hubs: Strengthening America’s Rural Innovation Infrastructure
June 5, 2020
Community Strategies Group
This report focuses on the role — and aggregates the wisdom — of a specific set of intermediaries that aredoing development differentlyin rural America. We have chosen to call themRural Development Hubs— or Hubs for short. We focus here on Rural Development Hubs because they are main players advancing an asset-based, wealth-building, approach to rural community and economic development in this country. They are the most visible actors in rural America designing and implementing efforts that simultaneously:
Increase and improve the assets that are fundamental to current and future prosperity: individual, intellectual, social, cultural, built, natural, political and financial capital.
Increase the local ownership and control of those assets.
Always include low-income people, places and firms in the design of their efforts — and in the benefits.
In short, Hubs focus on all the critical ingredients in a region’s system that either advance or impede prosperity — the integrated range of social, economic, health and environmental conditions needed for people and places to thrive.
