There are many issues that face rural communities across Oregon. By selecting one of the menu topics on the left, you can learn about economic, social, and environmental issues in rural Oregon. Key to understanding rural communities, their sustainability, their changes, and their resilience is knowledge about the dynamics of the influential social, environmental, and economic systems that underlie them.

 Natal Grange on Highway 47, Columbia County
Photo by: Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives

Rural communities face an extraordinarily complex set of challenges due to sparse human population settlements, geographic isolation, and an often subordinate relationship to urban centers within the current economic system. The challenges faced by rural communities can be exacerbated by globalization and technological change in the interdependent urban-rural system, as well as the conditions that prevail among residents, the local economy, and the local environment. Despite the many challenges faced by rural communities, these places also share some unique attributes that many residents and outsiders cherish, like close-knit relationships to neighbors and family, strong senses of place, shared and preserved histories and culture, and ties to a land that is valued for its ability to provide in many ways to the needs of humans, plants, animals, and other species. The challenges faced by rural communities interact with one another, with the positive aspects of rural communities, and with the actions that may or may not by taken by the community itself, all of which produce distinct outcomes for the community.

In this section of the Rural Communities Explorer you can learn about the social, economic, and environmental challenges and opportunities that rural communities have faced and continue to face. In the menu bar to the left please select the topics of interest to you and gain access to data, information about factors that are associated with each topic, scholarly articles, and narratives about each. In the future this section will also provide the opportunity for users to map the prevalence of the various issues across the places, census tracts, and counties of the state.

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