Communities in the lead

This book was crafted as a resource for local rural development professionals in the Pacific Northwest but is an excellent rural development primer for many readers. The book has two main aims. First is as a capacity building resource, an aid for local activists that presents and discusses basic rural community economic development strategies and resources. Second is value added business development, which entails strategies to squeeze jobs back into natural resource sectors through marketing, design, and processing; this part of the book focuses particularly on network (i.e., cluster) strategies for rural business development.