Driving Regional Transformation through Inclusion
The Arras Foundation in Lancaster, South Carolina, is using resident input and data to empower whole-of-region progress.
Town: South Carolina
24 posts
Great Falls Reimagines Its Identity through Nature-Based Tourism
With community partnerships and resident input, the small South Carolina town is writing its next chapter.
How a Community Center Helps a Town Rise Again
Residents of Fort Lawn, South Carolina used a community development model to identify 51 actionable goals to improve their town. Today, they’re checking off the list, one by one.
Inside Our Towns: Scott and Tiffany Whaley
Feeding, sustaining, and building community in Kershaw, South Carolina through KARE.
Kershaw Invests in Community with New Ideas in Old Spaces
A train depot that’s a museum. A bank branch building that’s become a library. Another former bank that is serving as an early education center. Here is how this South Carolina town is repurposing buildings of the past to build up its future.
To Both See and Tell the Country: From the Road through North Carolina to South Carolina
Why seeing more of America matters.
Looking at Libraries
Continuing the photo essay about public libraries, which showed many examples of children’s rooms and adult spaces, this collection shows some of the multitude of activities happening at public libraries. It also…
The Modern Women of Rural America
Along the way of our reporting for American Futures and Our Towns, I ran into the stories of some remarkable women—living and dead. Eliza Tibbets, who planted the first navel oranges in California; Isabella Greenway,…
With the PBS NewsHour, in Greenville, SC
Last night the PBS NewsHour ran a 10-minute segment hosted by Judy Woodruff and shot in Greenville, South Carolina, where Deb and I have visited frequently and reported extensively over the past few…
A Public Library Tells the Civic Story of a Town
Greenville's public library puts its past and present on full display: mills, racial history, internationalism, public-private collaborations, and culture.
Tech Meets Art in Middle School
A South Carolina public school gives tech-savvy students a sense of humanity.
A Song of America’s Downtowns
A heartening surprise of our travel so far: the breadth, seriousness, and—in some places—success of the effort to revitalize small-town downtowns. Or, what 3 programmers from Uzbekistan taught us about America.
‘Where Do You Go to Church?’ The Video and Mapping Versions
More ways of taking the measure of this vast country.
The Vermont Lake Monsters, and Other Updates From the Road
Are people in smaller towns "nicer" than cosmopolitans? No. But their political structures are working better.
Greenville, Burlington, and American Futures
"I loathed it with the heat of a thousand million suns."
What My School Means to Me: Essays from 3 High Schoolers
How students at an unusual school think—and write—about their experience.