* Profiles Ecuador as a broadly applicable case study to explore grassroots development initiatives * Stresses how macroeconomic conditions must change to achieve equitable development How do rural development programs, especially those run by nongovernmental organizations, contend with the forces of structural adjustment programs and economic liberalization? Rural Progress, Rural Decay asserts that NGOs make little progress in promoting equitable development and "poor people’s entrepreneurship" in an economic and political environment dominated by big business. The editors probe the adverse consequences of neoliberal macroeconomic policies on development in low-income countries. This illuminating study is a necessary read for those interested in local communities in Latin America and other parts of the developing world.

"Chapters in Rural Progress" by Kenyon L. Butterfield Butterfield was an American agricultural scientist and college administrator known for developing the Cooperative Extension Service at the Land Grant Universities. This book served as a timeline and history of how rural areas of the United States developed and slowly became more and more inhabitable as time went on. Though still behind cities, these areas became more welcoming and vital to the American way of life.

In the last decade, rural development emerged as one of the prominent challenges facing the United States. Strong support for rural development is now found in both major political parties and at federal, state, and local levels. There is little doubt that the development of rural America will become even more important in the future. Despite unprecedented growth, both urban and rural areas in the United States are greatly deficient in many aspects of quality living conditions. The nation’s cities are slowly strangling themselves, jamming together people and industry while spawning pollution, transportation paralysis, housing blight, lack of privacy, and a crime-infested society. Rural areas simultaneously suffer from the other extreme: lack of sufficient employment opportunities, outmigration and depopulation, and too few people to support services and institutions. The migration from rural areas contributes to the problems of both the city and countryside depopulating rural places at the expense of overcrowded cities. This book focuses on rural development processes, problems, and solutions. Seven prominent specialists in the field, including agricultural and regional economists, demographers, and administrators, discuss the development of the open country, small towns, and smaller cities (up t fifty thousand population). They present an integrated approach to rural development problems, not a mere collection of readings. Valuable guidelines for policies to benefit both rural and urban areas are provided. Since rural development involves interdisciplinary scholarship, this book will be of interest to a wide range of social scientists working in rural areas both here and abroad. Economists, sociologists, and political scientists, as well as community leaders and planners, legislators, government officials and interested laymen, will find this volume useful in understanding the rural development effort. Chapters on the following topics are included: the Philosophy and Process of Community Development; The Emergence of Area Development; Demographic Trends of the U.S. Rural Population; The Conditions and Problems of Nonmetropolitan America; Systems Planning for rural Development; Use of Natural Resources in Community Development; and Rural Poverty and Urban Growth, An Economic Critique of Alternative Spatial Growth Patterns

Ob in Europa oder Nordamerika - ländliche Gemeinden kämpfen in den Industriestaaten überall mit ähnlichen Problemen: Der Niedergang der landwirtschaftlichen Familienbetriebe durch technologieintensive Bewirtschaftung führt zur Abwanderung der Bevölkerung in die Städte. In diesem Buch findet nicht nur der Politiker oder Städteplaner Anregungen, wie die Attraktivität der Kleinstädte wieder gesteigert werden kann. Ausführlich werden spezielle Aspekte von Vorstädten und Nahtzonen zwischen Großstadt und Land diskutiert.

In the post-World War II era, widespread rural poverty, most notably among farmers, dominated rural policy concerns. The Eisenhower Administration's Undersecretary for Agriculture, True D. Morse, began a rural development program in 1955 to assist low-income farmers. Because agriculture was the major economic activity in many rural areas of the time, a focus on farms and farm households became de facto rural policy. The war on poverty during the 1960s continued the focus on rural poverty as a central policy issue. When agriculture began to decline as rural America's dominant economic activity, policy attention shifted to rural revitalisation. The 1980s farm financial crisis and economic dislocation in rural America brought the importance of rural structural change to the forefront of policy concerns. The further decline of farming to less than 8% of rural employment and the loss of many manufacturing jobs during the past decade have highlighted the growing gap between many rural areas and the Nation's urban/suburban areas. While no overarching framework guides rural policy at the federal level, adequate housing, employment creation and business retention, human capital concerns, poverty issues, medical care, and infrastructure development remain key foci of federal rural policy.