Asset Maps & the Digitization of Rural Development: Designing for Sustainable Opportunity

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Abstract
Recent geographic shifts in high-tech labor markets have redirected attention toward economic growth in small cities and rural regions across the United States. We examine how this shift has spurred economic development organizations, think tanks, and rural municipalities to leverage digital data in local economies as a strategic tool for attracting investment. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research on rural development policy and practice, we turn to the design of a new type of development tool: the digital asset map. In this paper, we describe how nationwide mapping and data visualization initiatives push for the digitization of rural community-based asset data, from broadband infrastructure to breweries. While these systems are intended to promote sustainable rural development, and to help leaders in their efforts to repopulate and revitalize rural communities in decline, their design often encourages comparison across communities in ways that reify divides between the rural “haves” and “have-nots”. By privileging quantifiable data, digital asset maps risk marginalizing communities whose strengths are less easily captured in datasets, potentially reinforcing existing patterns of uneven rural development.

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