Premium
A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR RURAL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT *
Author(s) -
Cummings Ronald G.,
Grigalunas Thomas A.,
Seay Edmond E.
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
canadian journal of agricultural economics/revue canadienne d'agroeconomie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.505
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1744-7976
pISSN - 0008-3976
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-7976.1974.tb00918.x
Subject(s) - library science , citation , resource (disambiguation) , sociology , management , computer science , operations research , economics , engineering , computer network
Issues associated with the “optimal” geographic distribution of population and economic activity have long been of central concern to national planners, economists and others. Legislation in Canada and the United States calls attention to the need to encourage the revitalization of rural areas [6, 7, 9, 101. One result of concern at the national level with the social desirability of rural development has been a renewed interest in development strategy at the local level. The difficulty arises in translating national sentiments into terms that can provide a framework to guide the resource allocation process at the community level. A wide variety of models have been proposed for dealing with the economic development and growth of subnational areas [ l , 2, 4, 5 , 81. In this paper we suggest a programming framework which allows one to confront directly the issues involved in evaluating (as opposed to resolving) alternative strategies for rural community development. The model, presented in Section I, is designed to focus on the allocation of the community’s limited resources among development activities, where the community’s resources are specified within a qualitative, as well as a quantitative, context. Properties of the optimal solutions of the model are discussed in Section 11. These properties are the basis for obtaining insights into the nature of community resource interrelationships of interest in evaluating rural development alternatives; these aspects also are developed in 11. Concluding comments are given in Section 111.