Economics and Multicommunity Partnerships‪.‬

Throughout much of the rural heartland of North America, survival has replaced development as the focus of regional economic initiatives. Over vast areas, the restructuring of agriculture and other primary industries, which supported rural economies for generations, has not been offset by alternative development. Job loss and outmigration have been accompanied by business failures, school closures, and a diminished capacity to cope with economic and social problems (Ryan et al. 1995). Improved transportation and communications technologies have made it possible for those who remain in rural areas to conduct much of their business in distant, but larger, urban centres (Stabler and Olfert 1992; Leistritz et al. 1992). There is a general recognition that in the future a smaller and more mobile rural population will require a less dispersed infrastructure and fewer rural communities to support it. A coordinated response, concentrating rural infrastructure as well as trade, service, and future development into a smaller number of preselected centres, would undoubtably preserve more viable communities and retain more secondary and tertiary jobs in rural regions than would an evolutionary process wherein each centre continued to struggle to retain its share of an ever diminishing requirement for community services.