Rural versus Urban Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The differences be tween urban and rural appear to be as simple as day and night, yet there are also similarities between the two areas. Contrasts between urban and rural manifest themselves in a number of different ways; the most striking are the landscape, people, and economy. The similarities emerge at the interface of the urban-rural fringe.

The definition of urban and rural according to the U.S. Census Bureau is stated in terms of metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas. The U.S. Census Bureau defines metropolitan areas as an urban nucleus with 50,000 or more people and a population density of 1,000 persons per square mile and may contain adjacent territory with at least 500 persons per square mile. Nonmetropolitan areas are outside the boundaries of metropolitan areas. Overall, approximately 79 percent of the U.S. population live in metropolitan areas (222.4 million) and the remaining 21 percent (59 million) live in non-metropolitan areas.

The county or its equivalent, however, is the general unit of measurement for the U.S. Census Bureau. Of the 3,141 counties in the United States, metropolitan counties total 1,099 (35 percent) with non-metropolitan counties the remaining 2,042 (65 percent). The most striking difference is the amount of land in each category. Metropolitan counties account for 897,094 square miles (25 percent) of the land area in the United States, while nonmetropolitan counties cover 2,640,344 square miles, or 75 percent of the land. Thus, nonmetropolitan or rural areas dominate the landscape, even though they only contain 21 percent of the population.

Landscape

The U.S. Department of Agriculture conducts a study of land use across the United States every five years. The most recent study for 2002 identified six major land uses: Forest (28.8 percent), grassland pasture and range land (25.9 percent), cropland (19.5 percent), special-uses parkland and wilderness areas (13.1 percent), miscellaneous lands (10.1 percent) and urban lands (2.6 percent). These statistics provide more detail as to the use of land than the metropolitan/non-metropolitan county difference. Within a metropolitan county there can be forests and croplands along with high density residential. Thus, the urban lands may be a small subset of the metropolitan county.

Some combination of forest, grassland, cropland, special uses, and the miscellaneous lands will generally dominate the rural areas of the United States. The predominate type of land use will vary based on topography, climate, and economic activity in the United States; croplands in the Midwest and eastern Great Plains, forest lands in the east, Rocky Mountains, and northwest, and grasslands in the western Great Plains and southwest. The rural landscape will also have residential, commercial, and industrial activities, but also very small land partitions. Rural landscapes provide the majority of the habitat for biological resources preserving genetic diversity; this includes wildlife, plants, and microbes.

The urban areas of the United States are concentrated in the region east of the Mississippi River along the coastal regions of the northeast and southeast, the upper Midwest, and along the major river systems. In the western United States, southern California and the Pacific northwest are the major areas of urban concentration, along with the front range of the Rocky Mountains and the desert in the southwest. Urban areas are generally composed of residential, commercial, industrial and transportation land uses, with a mix of parks, open space, and river/coastal corridors. The proportions of the different land uses will vary across the urbanized area, with less residential near commercial and industrial centers, but with an increase in transportation access. Residential lands will have some commercial to meet local demands, but generally will not have industrial activities. The downtown business district will be the focal point for commercial and financial businesses, and also the center for the performing arts and cultural exhibitions.

People

The urban-rural dichotomy is most obvious when examining the concentration of people. Urban areas are defined by a concentration of 1,000 people or more per square mile. Urban centers with high-rise apartments, however, can produce densities as high as 69,873 people per square mile. In rural areas, the number of persons per square mile can be as low as zero in wilderness areas. These are the extremes, however; the average in metropolitan counties is 558 persons per square mile, and in the non-metropolitan counties the average is only 18.5 persons per square mile. For the entire United States, the average population density is only 79.6 persons per square mile; however, the population is not evenly distributed. The highest population concentrations are east of the Mississippi River and along the California coast. The lowest population densities are in the western United States and Alaska.

There are two major “megapolitan” areas in the United States, one on the East Coast and another on the West Coast. Along the eastern seaboard the urban area stretches from Boston to Washington, D.C., including the metropolitan areas of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. A similar urban concentration is developing from San Diego northward to Santa Barbara, California. Adjacent counties to these urban concentrations are influenced by the synergies generated by the high density of people, economy, and social activity.

Economy

Historically, urban areas focused on manufacturing, finance, retail, and service sectors of the economy. In contrast, the rural economy emphasized natural resources, agricultural, recreation/tourism, and cottage industry activities. Two major changes over the last three decades have altered urban and rural economics: Technology and the expansion of transportation networks. Advances in electronic communication have made it possible for corporations to decentralize their manufacturing operations, diffusing their plants across the globe and into rural areas, and freeing workers to live away from their employment center. Advances in agriculture have forced small-scale agricultural operations to become large-scale operations, ending the era of the family farm and beginning the era of the corporate farm. Expanded transportation networks have allowed workers to commute to their employment and at the same time allowed businesses to migrate away from urban centers. These two phenomena have changed the historical employment base to a less manufacturing focus and to a more diverse service configuration in urban areas and a corporate culture in the rural areas.

The rural economy is still dominated by agriculture, natural resources, recreation/tourism, and cottage industries, but the employment structure has changed. Fewer workers are dependent on employment in these activities, and because of the expanded transportation network, are becoming commuters to adjacent urban centers. No longer are rural citizens totally dependent on agriculture. Agricultural-oriented counties are currently defined as those counties with at least 20 percent of the income from agriculture. Agriculture is not the sole income generator for rural America.

Urban centers are becoming less dependent on manufacturing but more dependent on production services and the use of electronic communication for business transactions. In a recent survey more than one-half of employment in major cities is production service oriented. The concentration of retail and manufacturing has become decentralized and has moved to suburban and rural areas, while only management and financial activities have remained in central business districts. The movement of employment and subsequently workers to the urbansuburban fringe has increased the interaction between urban and rural.

Similarities

Three trends are making urban and rural areas similar, producing housing densities, open-space conservation and expansion, and agricultural preservation. Rural areas have low population densities, but a growing philosophy is to increase residential density by using cluster developments to preserve open space and wildlife habitats. Cluster developments are not approaching urban densities for large areas, but they do approach them in small areas of 10-160 acres. Within small areas, they can average 200-500 persons per square mile.

Similarly, in urban areas, the importance of open space is being integrated into the redevelopment of abandoned industrial sites. Instead of creating just single family units, cities are increasing density by utilizing mixed density residential units with the intent to provide open space adjacent to the housing without forfeiting the needed housing units.

Finally, agricultural preservation policies in both rural and urban areas have increased over the last decade. The use of zoning, tax incentives, conservation easements, and land trusts have created strategies for local government to protect and preserve agricultural activities in rural and urbanrural fringe areas.

Bibliography:

E. Heimlich and W.D. Anderson, “Development at the Urban Fringe and Beyond: Impacts on Agriculture and Rural Land,” Agricultural Economic Report (no. 803, 2001);
J. Kaiser, D.R. Godschalk, and F.S. Chapin, Urban Land Use Planning (University of Illinois Press, 1995);
N. Lubowski et al., “Major Uses of Land in the United States, 2002,” Economic Information Bulletin (no. 14, 2005);
Ratcliffe and M. Stubbs, Urban Planning and Real Estate Development (UCL Press, 1996).