What Post-pandemic Repair Could Look Like

Editor’s Note: This article previously appeared in a different format as part of The Atlantic’s Notes section, retired in 2021.

The pandemic ravaged America’s big cities first, and now its countryside. The public-health and economic repercussions have been felt everywhere. But they have been hardest on the smallest businesses, and the most vulnerable families and communities.

This is an update, following a report last month, on plans to repair the damage now being done.

1) What the federal government can do: The Institute for Local Self-Reliance is a group concentrating on the business-structure, technological, political, and other obstacles that have held small cities and rural areas back—and how they might be reversed.

This month the ILSR released a report on steps the federal government could take to foster business and civic renewal, and . The larger argument is designed to: