Over the past several years, a set of partners in Old Fort, North Carolina, has been developing a network of elite mountain bike and hiking trails that was starting to put the town on the map. In September 2024, Hurricane Helene left the place in ruins, damaging homes, trails, and more than a dozen businesses that had opened as the outdoor recreation economy took hold. In this episode of Reimagine Rural, the first of season 3, Tony Pipa visits this small western North Carolina town to learn how it plans to keep its vision for a just and sustainable future intact as it continues to rebuild after the storm.

See also Tony's interview with Matt Calabria, director of the Governor's Recovery Office for Western North Carolina, to learn more about how state leadership is coordinating recovery after the most devastating storm in state history.

Episode transcript and show notes.

Reimagine Rural is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback to [email protected].

Season three of Reimagine Rural podcast launches soon with new episodes. Once again, host Tony Pipa is visiting small towns from coast to coast, talking to local people, capturing their stories of the changes unfolding in their hometowns, and exploring the implications and intersections with public policy.

From disaster recovery in North Carolina to downtown revitalization in Kentucky to cleaner and cheaper energy in Minnesota, plus healthcare, data centers, immigration, and a whole lot more across the country, Tony is telling a whole new set of stories from rural America on how local places are organizing themselves to meet challenges and find ways to help their communities thrive.

Episode transcript and show notes.

Reimagine Rural is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback to [email protected].

As the Trump administration prepares to take power in Washington, Senior Fellow Tony Pipa, host of the Reimagine Rural podcast, looks at what has happened in rural policy under the Biden administration and what shifts in federal policy and emphasis might ensue under President Trump. No matter what changes come, Pipa notes, local communities will continue to solve problems locally.

This episode is a replay of an interview Tony did on The Current podcast in late December.

Episode transcript and show notes.

Reimagine Rural is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback to [email protected].

The importance of public investment, and the difficulty rural places have in accessing it, are recurring themes in the stories we gather for the podcast. Communities often lack the time and staff to navigate the maze of available resources and match them to their project plans and aspirations. Policymakers are beginning to recognize that strengthening local rural capacity is a key to unlocking the investment that these communities need to thrive. In this final episode of season two, Tony Pipa sits down with state and federal leaders to learn how they are developing new ways to support rural America and the impact it's having.

Episode transcript and show notes.

Reimagine Rural is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback to [email protected].

Innovation and entrepreneurship are fundamental to America's national identity, yet they are commonly associated with big cities and areas like Silicon Valley. As we've encountered numerous times in past episodes, rural America is full of innovation and home to countless examples of ingenuity. In part two of our special innovators episode, rather than capture the story of a rural place, Tony Pipa hears from rural entrepreneurs who returned to revitalize their hometowns through the boundary-pushing use of agrovoltaics, a worker-owned approach to revitalizing the local textile industry, and business development fueled by narrative change, storytelling, and financing.

Episode transcript and show notes.

Reimagine Rural is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback to [email protected].

Innovation and entrepreneurship are fundamental to America's national identity, yet they are commonly associated with big cities and areas like Silicon Valley. As we've encountered numerous times in past episodes, rural America is full of innovation and home to countless examples of ingenuity. In this episode, part one of two, rather than capture the story of a rural place, Tony Pipa hears from entrepreneurs from across the country who have created ventures to bring the digital economy, affordable housing, and childcare to rural places.

Episode transcript and show notes.

Reimagine Rural is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback to [email protected].

Rural America is facing a national affordable housing crisis, and nearly half of rural renters are rent-burdened. With the unique characteristics and challenges of housing in rural America, but also with policy solutions that are often designed for urban and suburban communities, rural communities are pursuing innovations in collaboration, financing, and construction to meet their residents' needs. In this episode, Tony Pipa visits Coachella Valley in Riverside County, California, to learn about an ambitious collaboration that is on track to increase affordable housing production in the region by more than twenty-five times, and also talks with a housing developer in rural Colorado who is creating new housing for the local rural workforce.

Episode transcript and show notes.

Reimagine Rural is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback to [email protected].

The land and resources needed for the transition to clean energy are found disproportionately in rural places. Many rural communities now find themselves faced with a potential for clean energy development that brings both economic opportunities and political tensions, especially with the implementation of the Infrastructure and Investment in Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. In this episode, Tony Pipa visits Isabella County, Michigan, to learn how a small group of farmers came together to create a community-minded revenue-sharing lease that helped overcome the controversy and resulted in the largest wind farm in the state.

Episode transcript and show notes.

Reimagine Rural is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback to [email protected].

Intel Corporation is building two multi-billion-dollar semiconductor chip fabrication plants in Licking County, Ohio. While this industrial installation, the largest private-sector investment in Ohio's history, promises to create thousands of jobs, it will also bring big changes to the area, affecting nearby rural places that were not part of the siting decision. In this episode, Tony Pipa talks with local leaders about how they are meeting the challenge by creating a shared vision for equitable development that seeks to protect the integrity of their towns as they face inevitable changes.

Episode transcript and show notes.

Reimagine Rural is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback to [email protected].

Rural America disproportionately lacks access to high-speed broadband, an essential component of modern life. Though the issue—and many attempts to address it—go back much farther, the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act appropriated $42.5 billion for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program to close the gap once and for all. In this episode, Tony Pipa visits Macon County, Alabama, and also talks with leaders from Jal, New Mexico, and Humboldt County, California to learn how they have overcome their challenges to bring broadband to their rural communities. And the director of the new BEAD program lays out the federal government's broadband agenda.

Episode transcript and show notes.

Reimagine Rural is part of the Brookings Podcast Network. Subscribe and listen wherever you listen to podcasts. Send feedback to [email protected].