Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism (https://www.iowawatch.org/tag/rural-iowa/)
Small towns around Iowa have been fighting to support themselves as rural populations continue to decline, while state government has been investing more in larger cities where the population is growing.
Rural Iowa is facing several challenges, notably as its population grew a little more than 4 percent from 2000 to 2010, while the rest of the nation grew a little less than 10 percent during that same time. These challenges are being addressed in several ways, as we learn in this IowaWatch podcast.
Civic leaders in Iowa in 1869 were proud of their state. It offered some of the most fertile soils and flourishing towns and cities. Railroads snaked across the landscape north and south and east and west. It was believed there were inexhaustible amounts of coal beneath the earth’s surface in Iowa.