Not to Late to Register for the WIRE: The Great Divide

8:35

Benchmarking Urban/Rural Trends

This presentation will cover urban and rural demographic and economic trends. Benchmarking these trends will provide a clear picture of the state of rural communities in Kansas and set the background for the other presentations at the event.

Evan Habluetzel
Research Assistant
CEDBR
W. Frank Barton School of Business
Wichita State University

8:50

Changing Policital Environment - Redistricting

The next round of legislative redistricting promises to increase the representation of suburban areas in both the Kansas Legislature and Kansas's U.S. House delegation, with rural areas losing representation.  Census projections predict a difficult challenge for state government in fulfilling its constitutional obligation to adjust district lines to match population growth and decline.  With divided partisan control in Topeka a near-certainty during the Laura Kelly administration, Kansas is set for another chaotic round of redistricting debate in 2021.

9:00

Changing Policital Environment - Role of Rural Kansas

Kansas is a state with a mostly urban and suburban population, but with a rural heritage.  The November 2018 elections saw a surge of suburban voting for Democrats, but conservative Republicans made gains as well.  No matter what emerges from the 2019 Kansas Legislative Session, a stable coalition in state government will have to include rural support. 

9:40

Identifying Economic Linkages

While rural and urban areas are geographically separated from each other, commerce connects them together. This presentation examines the connections between rural and urban counties in Kansas through retail sales.

Mike Busch
Senior Research Economist
CEDBR
W. Frank Barton School of Business
Wichita State University 

10:00

Exploring Interconnections of Communities

There are varying degrees of interconnection between the metropolitan, micropolitan, and rural counties in Kansas. This presentation is a look at the similarities and differences in the movement of people, level of production, and the flow of money between Kansas counties.