This post contains the results of a report by UMM Professor Cristina Ortiz and UMM alum Natalie Hoidal, which includes information from a focus group conducted by Natalie Hoidal and interviews with a group of Latina mothers.

Read more "Latinos and Housing in Morris, Minnesota"

Center for Small Towns is beginning a series of projects on rural housing, in response to the great amount of interest and enthusiasm on the topic around western Minnesota recently. One topic of focus for this project was the nature of housing studies in rural Minnesota- how do they work and how useful are they for communities?

Read more "How Can Small Communities Make the Most of Housing Studies?"

by: Timothy Lindberg, Assistant Professor of Political Science, and Roger Rose, Director of Center for Small Towns The blog here at the Center for Small Towns rarely dives into political patterns, largely for practical reasons. As our work centers mostly on the challenges confronting regional communities and organizations, it is hard to draw meaningful conclusions and […]

Read more "The Rural-Urban Divide is Clear, but Major Policy Change May Have to Wait"

Roger Rose and Tim Lindbergh comment on “the promises and problems of county fair survey work” from their experiences with a survey research project at county fairs in Minnesota last summer.

Read more "Do County Fairs offer a Good Place for Survey Research?"

CST student Marcy Prince writes about the midwestern poetic tradition, and how it ties into global concepts of rural poetry. Like rural communities, rural poetry from different parts of the world have their own backgrounds and idiosyncrasies, but there is also a common ground to be found among them.

Read more "A Common Ground: the Minnesota pastoral poem"

This is part 3 of a series by Kelly Asche discussing resorts in Otter Tail County. This final installment contains an outline of suggestions for Otter Tail County on improving conditions for resort business.

Read more "Otter Tail Resorts: Part III"