Recommended Reading, (Re)Connecting

Whether it’s been a day, a week, a month, a year, or more, I always feel like it’s been too long since I’ve written something. In the case of this Substack, it’s been two years and a day since I posted something here.

That last post from two-plus years ago was about a small city with big ideas that I found inspiring and thought you might find it so, too. It’s about a place I very much admire and appreciate and have written about before and hope to make it to again. It’s the kind of story I’m eager to follow up on, and the kind of news I want to resume sharing here.

While nothing’s been happening here, a lot, of course, has happened and changed in two years — some of which I’ll work to look back at and catch up on, some of which doesn’t bear rehashing or revisiting. But, starting today, I’m going to work to get back into a groove of doing what I set out to do here: Offer missives, musings, reporting, and recommended reading/viewing/listening — starting with the latter.

So, with that, let me give a full-throated (and biased) recommendation that you Subscribe to the Heartlands Transformation Network Substack to be able to read the valuable publications and interact with the network:

Heartlands Transformation Network

What is the Heartlands Transformation Network, and why am I recommending that it’s worth your time to subscribe to this new Substack?

Why does this work matter, and why is this worth your time?

No doubt, much has been written and said about “left-behind places.” Aside from assuming the phrase is self-defining, it’s important that we ask: What are they? Where are they? Why were they “left behind”? Why does it matter? What is being done about it?

It is important because the answers to those questions are worth seeking if we believe in building a more just world where opportunity is available to all and not limited to some. And, the answers to those questions are, of course, complex.

In short, though, the economic divides between the “haves” and “have-nots” have been widening — and it’s happening here in the U.S. and abroad. The clear links between those divides and the political and cultural implications that follow is what the Heartlands Transformation Network is focusing on in the spirit of understanding how we got here and how to narrow and close those divides to reconnect residents of former industrial communities and rural areas to economic opportunity.

HTN does so through idea-sharing on a global scale, because, again, these divides are not one country’s problem alone. The belief is that through learning exchanges, convenings, events, presentations, publications, and study tours, we can learn and teach each other to inform decision- and policy-making.

I’ve seen the power of this firsthand.

In one of the earlier posts here, I wrote about my 2023 week-long participation in an international study tour at the invitation of German’s Federal Foreign Office that included representatives from some-dozen countries. We were there to observe Germany’s approach to structural economic change while offering insights to how our respective nations were approaching transitioning economies.

The year before, I got “hooked” on this idea of the power, potential, and impact of transatlantic idea-sharing thanks to an international panel discussion we hosted at the JES on “Rejuvenating Industrial Heartlands.” That program happened amid a U.S.-based international study tour with U.S., U.K., and European participants that yielded this report on “‘how-tos’ of effective place-focused strategies for renewal of heartland industrial regions.” (The Heartlands Transformation Network was then-known as Transforming Industrial Heartlands Initiative.)

Since then, the JES has hosted a number of virtual events, including this one on the rise of “greenlash,” a movement encouraging residents to believe that the promotion of policies and practices to support the green-economy transformation is detrimental to rural, industrial, and extractive region residents and their ways of life. That then yielded an article John Austin, a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Institute and senior non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, and I co-authored for the Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal.

More recently, it also includes a discussion between leaders and economic change makers from the U.S., U.K., and Europe about ways historical industrial communities have experienced economic restructuring, job loss, and decline are managing a rebirth, in part building on unique assets and attributes of their industrial heritage, arts, and culture. That led to this report, co-authored by John and Gettysburg College student Adhara Ayndrila, co-published by EI and JES.

These are just two examples among the many contributions the folks involved in the Heartlands Transformation Network have been making and have been available far and wide. The new Substack aims to serve as the central location for past works and new ones.

So, again, I invite — and encourage! — you to Subscribe! I also invite and encourage you to engage with the network — share your thoughts, attend events, participate in discussions.

Yes, it has been loud out there in the world… And it’s seemingly tough to keep up with the news and all information and material competing for your limited time and attention.

But this initiative, I believe, is one making a real difference in real ways. The growing threat of autocracy is on the rise. But so has been a movement to strengthen democracies. I hope you’ll join it.

PS: Thanks to all the continued subscribers for sticking ‘round here and to the new ones that have since subscribed only to find radio silence. Both have been encouraging in that prior posts must have had — and still have — some value. My goal is to live up to and exceed that in the days, weeks, months, and years to come.

PPS: As to the why it’s been quiet here: It isn’t that I haven’t been writing (more on that to come), or been busy with other things (yeah, that, too), or had something I wished to write and share (many writers know the pain and frustration of thinking up something and carrying it around for days, weeks, months, or longer with the disappointment and regret that follows when it never makes onto a page or screen). The Why is a multitude of reasons — some I hope to get into here, others that aren’t worth the time because there’s more important, more urgent things to share and discuss.