Some small towns in Iowa continue to thrive even as their populations drop and those towns are the subject of research by a team from Iowa State University. Kimberly Zarecor, director of the interdisciplinary design program in the I-S-U College of Design, says the outlook in these towns is overwhelmingly optimistic.

Zarecor says the communities are being referred to as “shrink smart” towns.

I-S-U has won a one-year, $100,000 planning grant from the National Science Foundation to study these “shrink smart” communities in Iowa.

Work is underway to identify some of the communities. Since 1994, I-S-U has polled residents in 99 small Iowa towns, one in each county. Researchers hope to choose a half-dozen or so towns from that list.