The Rural / Urban Variable
 Objectives for these notes
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describe early work in defining rural
describe current meanings of rural
describe early work in defining urban
describe current meanings of urban
Discuss the potential impact of rural and urban
life on residents
Exploring the meaning of rural
 Rural comes from the Latin rus
• means room or open space
• rustic also comes from rus
– rustic means simple or unrefined
• rural community usually means “small town”
– rural places are wide-open and big spaces
Exploring the meaning of rural
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1915 Charles Josiah Galpin
• The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural
Community
• Core and the rural hinterland
• The “rurban” community
 The Rural Life Studies (1941&1993)
• El Cerrito, NM
• Sublette, KS
• Irwin, IA
Lancaster, PA
Landaff, NH
Harmony, GA
Exploring the meaning of rural
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Willits and Bealer (1967)
• An Evaluation of a Composite Definition of
Rurality
– Occupational
– Socio-cultural
– Ecological
Exploring the meaning of rural
 Jacob and Luloff (1995)
• Exploring the meaning of Rural
– Rural as Residual (anything not urban)
– Identified rural places
– Natural Resource Images
– Written words
Current meanings of rural
 Non-Metropolitan County (residual)
 Frontier County
• population density (ecology)
 Natural Resource Dependent county
(occupation)
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farming
mining
forestry
fishing
 officially, not a census defined place of
2,500 people or more (residual)
Exploring the meaning of urban
 Urban comes from the Latin urbs
• means city
• urbane also comes from urbs
– urbane means sophisticated or of the city
• Urban Renewal
– urban centers have decayed and there is an effort
for redevelopment
Exploring the meaning of urban
 Georg Simmel (1903)
• Metropolis and Mental Life
• Negative views of city life
 Wirth (1938) founded Urban Sociology
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Urbanism as a Way of Life
Large size
Density
heterogeneity
too deterministic
Exploring the meaning of urban
 Claude Fischer (1975)
• Subcultural Theory of Urbanism
– “critical masses” that foster unconventional
behavior (next slide)
– Attracts those with special talents and interests
• density increases “unconventionality” and
pathology but not from crowding
Exploring the meaning of urban
 Claude Fischer (1975)
• Subcultural Theory of Urbanism
– “critical masses” that foster unconventional
behavior (next slide)
– Attracts those with special talents and interests
• density increases “unconventionality” and
pathology but not from crowding
Exploring the meaning of urban
 Leo Srole (1980)
• Mental Health in New York
– City life does not produce mental illness
– urban mental health is better than rural
– social networks
 Mark Granovetter (1973)
• The Strength of Weak Ties
– primary
– secondary
– acquaintences
Current meanings of urban
 Places of 2,500 or more
 Urbanized Areas (not confined to MCD
boundaries)
• Extended City
• city and surrounding area of 50,000
 MSA
• single incorporated city of 50,000 plus in a
urbanized area or 100,000 or more in county
Current Confusion
 Tendency to equate rural with our
agricultural past
 Tendency to equate urban with modern life
 Rural still persists in modern society
 Urban still capable of rural-like
interactions
There are elements within society
that have made the maintenance of
community difficult...
 Improved Transportation
 Telecommunications
 Sense of community is coming more from
interacting with those who share common
values or with whom we do similar things,
not from those living in the same town.
Two Key Features That Have
Distinguished Rural and Urban Areas:
 Size
 Isolation
 But…
 The decreased isolation has created a need
to move beyond simple urban/rural or
metro/nonmetro designations.
 New typology utilizes both size and location.
Community as a
Geographic Area
 Two units of analysis are commonly used in
reference to community as a geographic
entity:
• County
• Place
 County
• Metropolitan/Nonmetropolitan Area
 Place
• Urban/Rural Locality
Metropolitan Counties
 0 - Central counties of metro areas of 1
million population or more.
 1 - Fringe counties of metro areas of 1
million population or more.
 2 - Counties in metro areas of 250,000 to 1
million population
 3 - Counties in metro areas of fewer than
250,000
Nonmetropolitan Counties
4 - Urban population of 20,000 or more, adjacent
to a metro area.
 5 - Urban population of 20,000 or more, not
adjacent to a metro area.
 6 - Urban population of 2,500 to 19,999, adjacent
to a metro area.
 7 - Urban population of 2,500 to 19,999, not
adjacent to a metro area.
 8 - Completely rural or fewer than 2,500 urban
population, adjacent to a metro area.
 9 - Completely rural or fewer than 2,500 urban
population, adjacent to a metro area.
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Benefits of New Typology
 It helps us to better characterize if a
county’s population is located in larger
cities, or is dispersed in small towns of
fewer than 2,500 persons.
 It helps us understand the extent to which
residents have access to urban services
since it considers their location relative to
metropolitan areas.
Rural Communities and Change
 Rapid Growth
• Describes rural communities having growth
rates that have exceeded the national average.
• These communities face challenges in
managing growth and ensuring that rural
residents benefit from that growth.
Rural Communities and Change
 Population Decline
• Applies to counties that lost population over
the last decade or more.
Rural Communities and Change
 Persistent Poverty
• These are counties whose per capita income
has placed them in the bottom 20 percent of US
nonmetro counties since 1950.
Rural Communities and Change
 Rapid Growth ... affects 25% of nonmetro
population
 Persistent Low Income … touches 41% of
nonmetro people
 Declining Population … affects 27% of the
nonmetro population
Changes in Rural Communities
 Automobiles
 Better roads have allowed schools to
consolidate.
• Social institutions less attached to their
communities.
 As rural communities broaden their
economic activity, people’s roles have
become very different from one another.