Ruston

RUSTON, LOUISIANA RUSTON, LOUISIANA RUSTON RE-IMAGINED R onnyWalker has been the mayor of Ruston, Louisiana for a little over two years. But it has been a momentous span with an entire re-imagining of the city’s social network, leading to growth in industry, population, and quality of life.This city is, in its own words, open for business. “If we back the story up,”explains Walker,“it all began about a decade ago with the city going through quite an extensive visioning process. It was called Ruston 21, and they had formed committees, looked at where the city was going, all that kind of stuff.There’s a great document. The problemwas, it was about 242 pages long and no- body read it.You know, it was mostly AT A GLANCE RUSTON, LOUISIANA WHAT: A city of 24,000 WHERE: In Lincoln Parish, in the East- ern Ark-La-Tex region WEBSITE: www.ruston.org