7 Underlying Principles
What Principles Guide This Work?
This playbook is built on 7 underlying principles that can help communities across Appalachia strengthen and build thriving downtowns.
Flexibility
At times investing in rural places like Appalachia can feel like trying to solve a puzzle. To get the various elements and individuals aligned and working together, patience and flexibility are needed to enable community-determined projects to move forward.
Communities Lead
Ultimately residents must decide what is best for the vision and development of their own community. Approaches and strategies must be customized by local residents to fit their own needs.
Care for Rural Assets
These principles must be essential design features of downtown revitalization efforts from the start. We must investigate innovative ways to revitalize rural downtowns while protecting the natural, cultural, and historic assets that make both Appalachia and rural America national treasures.
Investing for the Long Haul
Most downtown revitalization projects have a double bottom line. For example, a historic downtown building is revitalized into a boutique hotel, thereby preserving a beloved building and generating a financial return to investors. Innovative approaches to investing that layer different types of capital with different social and financial return expectations can spark development in a way that grant funding alone will not.
Skin in the Game
Successful projects have what some locals refer to as “skin in the game.” Investing by local residents, foundations, and local businesses demonstrates to outside investors that this is a community that is willing to invest in itself.
Building Community Wealth
Downtown revitalization is a community wealth-building strategy, and successful efforts require more than just financial assets. Building community wealth is a cyclical process in which growing communities build on and invest in their assets which in turn builds more community wealth. Community wealth encompasses the eight different forms of wealth in a region. These include:
Individual - Health, well-being, and skills of the population.
Intellectual - Knowledge, creativity and innovation of the region.
Social - Trust, relationships and networks between people and organizations.
Natural - Natural resources such as land, plants, animals, water, and air.
Built - Physical and information infrastructure like buildings, roads, and telecommunications.
Financial - Cash and financial investments.
Political - Connections and influence of individuals and organizations.
Cultural - Values, traditions, and identity.
Better Together
The expression “better together” applies to downtown revitalization. All types of organizations must work together to ensure that investments are truly designed by and for all local residents. We cannot waste community manpower and good ideas by excluding them from the action.
