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Vanessa Fry publishes with Western Rural Development Center

Vanessa Fry, IPI Interim Director, Saleh Ahmed, Assistant Professor in SPS, and Elizabeth Eklund, Visiting Scholar, School of Anthropology The University of Arizona, published “Population Growth, Inequality, and the Digital Frontier in the Shadow of the Pandemic in the American West” with the Western Rural Development Center. The article discusses population growth in the Intermountain West and how an already divided society saw a widening gap between sectors as some businesses, particularly in the service industry, closed while ‘Zoom Towns’ thrived. The authors also discuss that with an eye to social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, the ‘New West’ could become a template for the digital era.