9.1.24 Rural or Urban? The importance of remaining rural

While reading – it hit me – we here in Harbor Springs are a rural town among a county with shared community services. Seasonal population fluctuations, distances between those shared services (like the hospital, and the box stores), are common to all of us yet our Harbor Springs centric issues solutions may be different.

The challenges are balancing those seasonal fluctuations in population and service industry’s needs with housing issues.  Also attend to the desire to attract families on a longer-term basis to an area where some communities have 65/35% 2nd home/permanent resident numbers which supports our locally funded school (rather than State funded).  Some issues are issues common to urban areas in the State and some are unique to our rural community ‘up North’.

As this report points out, solving these issues requires a unique perspective.

We can ask ourselves here in Harbor Springs questions like:

What are our unique attributes?

What can we contribute to County growth?

What can we contribute to County preservation and stewardship of the natural and cultural environment?

Does our zoning reform serve these unique issue or does our zoning reform create even more disparities between the problems and the solutions?

 

Roadmap to Rural Prosperity 

https://www.michigan.gov/leo/-/media/Project/Websites/leo/Documents/ord/Michigan-Roadmap-to-Rural-Prosperity_Report-FINAL.pdf?rev=6b56495a03584368ba09bb6e9ad0497d&hash=5A7E1BD1DFF096D8E0250AC172776E6D

 

https://gandernewsroom.com/2024/02/16/report-5-big-problems-facing-rural-michiganders-and-how-to-solve-them/ 

How do we solve those challenges?

1.Grow and diversify the workforce across sectors

  1. Improve individual health and economic well-being
  2. Support local and regional capacity to deliver services
  3. Expand quality and attainable housing opportunities
  4. Build and maintain resilient infrastructure
  5. Enhance regional economic development efforts
  6. Protect, conserve, and be a responsible steward of natural assets

Preserve and Protect Keeping Harbor Harbor! Working now while the community is engaged, for the future.