![]() ![]() Efforts to initiate rural revitalization strain institutions and distressed communities. The barriers to change are real and persistent. ![]() What’s needed is what we like to call a “long lift”…that simultaneously addresses immediate challenges…while building civic scaffolding.Ĭombined with other data that reveal our rural communities to be sicker and poorer than the state and nation, these facts have by necessity moved the search for solutions from activities and projects to systems and structures. 1 Unfortunately, these distinctive communities share a common feature of often being excluded from the benefits of economic development. Our communities are rich in history and diversity, including sizable Black populations in urban hubs like Texarkana and Beaumont, a rapidly growing Latinx population, and the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe. Despite press accounts about the past decade’s so-called Texas Miracle, rural East Texas employment is still lower than where it was more than a decade ago.Įast Texas is a sprawling, largely rural region consisting of 38 counties and over 1.9 million people. The graph has a clarifying quality, disabusing any suggestion that our regions (represented by the green, blue, and orange lines) are on the right track. Comparative Employment Growth, 2008-2020, from Rural East Texas Economic Opportunity Analysis, T.L.L. ![]() Temple Foundation report and shows 13 years of comparative employment data for the United States, the state of Texas, and three East Texas regions. When we talk about economic development in East Texas, we often like to start with the figure below, which comes from a T.L.L. ![]()
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