SD Town Tapping Architecture Students For Ideas

SIOUX FALLS, SD - Thomas Unterseher is on a mission to make South Dakota's small towns more attractive, and he's starting in the place he knows best: his hometown of Mobridge, S.D.

A former city councilman, Unterseher said South Dakota's small towns need to improve their design and city planning if they want to attract and keep people and businesses. In Mobridge, that includes revamping the boxy steel buildings lining the streets and developing 30 acres of lakefront property.

But there's little money in the city budget for architects or designers right now, so Unterseher is turning to an untapped resource: architecture students.

About 50 first- and second-year architecture students traveled from Brookings to Mobridge recently to begin the process of creating a new vision for the community.