Giving Compass' Take:

• Jenna Temkin explains how a rural town called Wytheville, Virginia, uses entrepreneurship to boost its local economy by providing a large grant to the winners of a small business competition. 

• Town leaders in Wytheville invested in community capital to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem that focused on skill-building for small businesses. How can donors help small enterprises expand by providing capital for training? 

• Read about the impact of supporting underserved entrepreneurs.

America’s unequal geography of opportunity is widening: big, dense metropolitan areas are leading the way in employment and wage growth, job density, and prosperity, as many small towns and rural areas are still struggling to recover from the Great Recession.

Given these social and economic cleavages, rural Main Streets today evoke a complex sense of place. On one hand, they are often thought of— even romanticized—as tight-knit communities with distinct local culture, homegrown businesses, and a more laid-back lifestyle; on the other, they represent a way of living that, to some, seems at odds with our globalized, networked digital economy.

Indeed, these communities face deep structural challenges—including low population density, long distances to major job hubs, declining manufacturing activity, and resource constraints—that aren’t likely to be overcome with traditional approaches to economic development.

So where does this leave small rural towns looking to revitalize their communities in the face of widening geographic divides? And what role can transformative placemaking play in reinvigorating their local economy?

A look at Wytheville, Va.—a small town of 8,000 situated in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains—provides some insight.

To address these challenges, Wytheville adopted a person- and place-based approach to leverage local assets, build regional partnerships, encourage community capacity-building, and ultimately revitalize its regional economy.

It completed a major downtown streetscape renovation, improving sidewalks, lighting, and crosswalks on Main Street, to create a more vibrant downtown. But leaders realized that Wytheville required more than physical changes to its landscape to spur revitalization: it needed human capital and the necessary skills to drive small business development and growth.

The town decided to start with what it had locally: aspiring entrepreneurs looking to launch their own businesses.

Read the full article about how entrepreneurs can boost a local economy by Jenna Temkin at Brookings.