Rurality
2006
September
01
What do you imagine when you hear the word ‘rural’? When I hear it, I imagine a rolling patchwork of farms in the Appalachian foothills, spotted with silos and steeples.. maybe some Mennonites are driving their horse and buggy down the road, or maybe I can hear faint bluegrass music and can smell the aroma of burning wood on a chilly autumn afternoon.
The definition of a rural place is not concrete. It may mean something different to you than it means to your neighbor or your best friend. For example, a rural place may be defined by dense evergreen forests to a Canadian, but could be identified by a sprawling desert to somebody in Arizona.
For the purpose of governance, governments attempt to define rurality by statistics. The United States defines a place with less than 2,500 residents as rural. In England, however, any place with up to as many as 10,000 people is considered rural. But what really makes a place rural is if the residents consider their land rural and believe they follow a rural lifestyle. In other words, the definition of rurality is socially constructed.
In many instances, regardless of the existing geography, it can be agreed upon that a rural place should be sparsely populated, isolated, slow paced, peaceful, close to nature, and rooted by traditions. These ideals create the rural idyll.
In America, rural land is rapidly disappearing, as residents of high-density cities and even crumbling suburbs escape to the pastoral privacy of the country in search of the rural idyll. Fatefully, when everybody has a piece of the country, it isn’t the country anymore.
Is the rural idyll sustainable? Should urban planners attempt to preserve rurality? Or will our society’s capitalism, materialism, and widespread mobility inevitably eliminate rural places?
