This chapter seeks to debunk the myth that rural disadvantage does not exist, or is unworthy of investigation, because rural populations hold disproportionate political power. Noting other scholars’ efforts to challenge common assumptions regarding rural voters’ inordinate power in legislatures and the Electoral College, the chapter takes an alternate approach by exploring widespread challenges rural local governments have encountered in the face of economic transformation over the past several decades, which, for some regions, has come with regional depopulation, high rates of property vacancy, broad socioeconomic distress, and strains on municipal and county budgets. Officials in distressed local governments often struggle to provide even the basic services needed to keep a community afloat, such as enforcement of the building code. Rural local governments’ struggles challenge the stereotype of the overly empowered, enraged, conservative rural voter holding the rest of the country hostage to his political whims. The story this chapter tells is one of a shrinking public sphere, the limits of law’s efficacy in places with few resources, the role property plays in regional prosperity, local efforts to work with little to achieve what they can, and the national abandonment of places no longer deemed useful for extractive purposes.

The basic components of Resiliency Theory – risk exposure, promotive assets and resources, and the dynamic interaction of risk and promotive factors over time – can be applied to the study of community well-being when communities face challenges. Although community well-being is often studied relative to acute risks, such as a natural disaster, it can also be threatened by chronic risks. Chronic risk exposure for a community includes factors such as economic decline, property vacancy, and crime. Over time these risks become additive in nature and interact with one another to adversely affect individuals, families, neighborhoods, and even entire cities. Economic decline of a given area, for example, can result in neighborhood instability and disadvantage that results in greater risk of crime. We argue that communities exposed to chronic stressors over time face slow disasters. Slow disasters create vulnerability and increase susceptibility to risk factors that generate barriers to community health and well-being. We apply these ideas through a case study of the postindustrial city of Flint, Michigan and discuss possible mechanisms to enhance resiliency in the face of slow disaster to achieve community well-being.