Putting It All Together

As this toolkit emphasizes, economic development via outdoor recreation is a coherent strategy for the future of rural America. With millions more Americans spending time outdoors, every community, both urban and rural, should be considering the role they want outdoor recreation to play in their economic growth and sustainability.  

Action Plans from Real Communities

Hundreds of communities around the United States are making progress in these efforts, and below we have aggregated a variety of their plans to help illustrate the vast array of creative and dedicated approaches to rural economic development through outdoor recreation from around the United States. These are aggregated from participants in the Recreation Economy for Rural Communities program and students supporting the Rural Technical Assistance Program (RTAP) in the State of Colorado, which partners teams of graduate students from the Masters of the Environment (MENV) program at CU Boulder with the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office and RERC to support rural communities across the state.

As you read these examples, notice:

• Composition of steering committees and planning assistance teams
  
• Strategies and facilitated exercises for public engagement 
• Methods for asset mapping (see appendices)
  
• Goals and measurements for success

Other Leading Resources

And fortunately, there are other great resources like this one to help guide communities through the process. The Utah State University Gateway and Natural Region (G.N.A.R.) Initiative is a best-in-class collection of resources, toolkits, and webinars to go deeper on most of the topics covered in this toolkit. They offer both a network of practitioners in communities around the U.S. and an online toolkit organized by topic area to serve your research.

Additionally, the Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group released a report in April 2023 called "Mapping a New Terrain: Call to Action" which profiles outdoor recreation as an economic development strategy and importantly provides community perspectives on how to proactively address challenges related to wealth inequality, housing, transportation, and utilities.

The future of this strategy as an economic driver rests on the outdoor recreation community's ability to identify areas of opportunity and bolster existing leadership through targeted funds, diverse collaboratives, and professional development support, while proactively identifying pitfalls related to economic development to prevent unintended consequences.

By bringing traditional economic development perspectives together with the opportunity for rural communities to invest in existing natural assets, the outdoor recreation community can turn these visions into sustainable economic realities for rural communities across the United States.