Community-Driven Solutions for Smaller Cities and Towns

Cities have long been laboratories of democracy, but the ideas and innovations that come out of larger municipalities don’t always scale down to smaller communities. In this Route Fifty special report, Executive Editor Michael Grass looks at community-driven efforts in a handful of smaller cities—Cortez, Colorado; Gardiner, Maine; and Minot, North Dakota— designed to improve the lives of their local citizens and the relationships they have with the places they call home.