Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Americana
Demography is destiny, the old saying goes, but if the last few years have taught us anything, it is that destiny is rarely a straight line. Demographic trends used to feel like slow‑moving background noise—births, deaths, and migration quietly nudging our communities from decade to decade. Now those same forces are front‑page news, from aging […]
Things we love we want to protect, but everything changes. We can’t live by exclusion. We have a responsibility to the places we live and the power to make them better. Ryan Short at CivicBrand is not a planner by training. He’s taken a roundabout journey. He started off doing branding and design work for […]
Visioning is where planning feels less like a technical exercise and more like a shared act of imagination. It is the point where a community pauses long enough to ask, together: “What kind of place do we want to become—and what would it feel like to live here if we got it right?” Visioning is […]
Communities and organizations of all sizes are looking for new ways to make better decisions. In this post, we compile a broad overview of fresh trends, tools, and ideas shaping community engagement and public participation in urban planning and local policy — blending technology, inclusivity, and truly collaborative decision-making. Many of these ideas are much […]
Public participation in planning and public policy is where democracy meets daily life. It is the process of involving citizens, stakeholders, and affected parties in decisions that shape their communities—from comprehensive plans and zoning ordinances to capital budgets and infrastructure projects. In small towns and rural counties, where residents know each other on a first […]
If you don’t know where you want to get to then, as the Cheshire Cat told Alice in Wonderland, “it doesn’t matter which way you go”. In rural and small-town America, the challenges are familiar: aging infrastructure, shifting demographics, and limited budgets. But the real story isn’t about what’s missing—it’s about what communities are doing […]
Small Town & Rural Comprehensive Planning: JCShepard.com’s Theme for 2026 Comprehensive planning in small towns and rural counties is not a big complicated urban process writ small. It is about neighbors deciding what kind of place they want to be in the future… and then putting that promise in writing so the next subdivision, the […]
Music is life… if you believe the hashtags. I certainly believe music is one of the finer points of life: The Pursuit of Happiness. Or in my case, the Pursuit of Americana. The blog here at JCShepard.com is a bit of a sandbox, where I share my professional and creative interests, as well as family […]
It’s the end of the year. A good time to set goals and list our achievements. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but Americans love lists. The Top 10 this, and the Top 20 that. We seem to be constantly trying to get back on the teacher’s Student of the Year list, […]
This has been a great year for our blog here at JCShepard.com. A lot of things to discuss regarding Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Americana, wherever you may be. Now the holidays are upon us, let’s take a look back at the posts which you, our readers, have given the most interaction over the […]
