It was Mark Twain who wired this cable from London to the Associated Press in 1897: The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. And so it is with the reports of rural demise in America, and in Illinois.

Don't talk about rural demise to the folks in Marion. They're too busy growing their economy to listen. They have aggressively courted more than 800 new jobs, using a variety of methods, including Tax Increment Financing (TIF).

Some towns think they can't change, that they're mired in a rut and destined to continue in that same rut forever. They should look to the example of Danville, which long had a struggling, blue-collar, manufacturing image. In the 1990s they developed a "Bricks to Chips" image campaign, the bricks signifying part of the town's history, the chips - as in computer technology - representing the new vision. That vision has brought in many new industries and several hundred new jobs.

Then there's my hometown of Effingham. In the late 1990s I felt that my company, Agracel, Inc., could offer companies a competitive advantage in locating a new plant along our newly-built short-line railroad. The Class I rail executives said we were crazy. We built the railroad anyway. The line has facilitated the creation of several hundred high-paying jobs, attracting such projects as Krispy Kreme's national manufacturing and distribution center.

There are many small communities in Illinois that are like diamonds in the rough, shining in the prairie sun, prospering while many towns around them struggle to maintain a status quo that is not so good.

I call these prospering small towns agurbs because of their direct tie to agriculture and their representation of the next step of population flight: first to the cities, then to the suburbs, and finally to the agurbs. I detail the difference between an agurb and any other small town in my book, "Boomtown, USA: The 7 1/2 Keys to Big Success in Small Towns." Briefly, those keys are:

1. Adopt a Can-Do Attitude. Agurbs see solutions where others see problems.

2. Shape Your Vision. Agurbs shape a vision for their town, a plan to make that vision happen, and then they go after it.

3. Leverage Your Resources. Agurbs know their strengths and use their resources to their advantage.

4. Raise Up Strong Leaders. Agurbs raise up strong leaders and come together on essential issues including employment, education, and quality of life.

5. Encourage an Entrepreneurial Approach. This approach impacts a community's economy and its employment figures. (For example, Robinson in southeastern Illinois created a business incubator project to develop and support entrepreneurs.)

6. Maintain Local Control. Agurbs don't depend on large, bureaucratic organizations halfway across the country to make their decisions for them.

7. Build Your Brand. Agurbs build a brand for themselves, so that communities around them know what their strengths are, what their community offers to others. (Mattoon, home to Lender's Bagels, is known as the Bagel Capital of the World, and hosts a Bagelfest each July.)

7 1/2. Embrace the Teeter-Totter Factor. Those towns that succeed are those that can sense something shifting and can turn a negative into a positive. Galesburg, with its loss of Maytag, Butler and others, is in such a situation now. How Galesburg rebounds from that loss will determine whether it can remain one of the 13 agurbs in Illinois. Those agurbs are: Danville, Effingham, Galena, Galesburg, Marion, Mattoon, Mt. Vernon, Nauvoo, Paris, Peru, Quincy, Robinson, and Tuscola.

Perhaps you live in one of these forward-thinking communities. If not, maybe you can take a role in helping shape your community into an agurb - a strong, thriving community, among the choicest small towns in Illinois.

Jack Schultz, CEO of Agracel, Inc. in Effingham, IL, is the author of "Boomtown, USA: The 7 1/2 Keys to Big Success in Small Towns" (National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, 2004). To order the book, visit www.boomtownusa.net.

The opinions and views of guest commentators arc their own and may not represent those of the Association of Illinois Electric Cooperatives or the electric co-ops of Illinois.

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