Rural areas

Category: Grassland, Tundra, and Human Biomes.

Geographic Location: Global.

Summary: Rural areas are considered those apart from cities or towns. They can include a wide variety of landscapes and ecosystems, from farms and ranches to forest or deserts, and are the scenes of various transformation and development schemes.

Rural areas, regardless of where they are located, are defined by the absence of busy roads or other large infrastructure, in direct contrast to urban areas. They may consist of inhabited spaces such as farms, villages, ranches, and small towns, or wilder landscapes such as forests, tundra, grasslands, or desert. While some rural areas are highly isolated from human activity, others are important food producing areas or contain other vital resources such as water, minerals, fossil fuels, forests, and wildlife. Rural areas are also valued for their scenic landscapes and natural environment, which people may use for various recreational activities.

Many indigenous groups with unique cultures, beliefs, and lifestyles tend to inhabit rural areas. Pastoral communities are considered critical to ensuring global food demands and energy security. Rural areas are adaptable to climate change, can help preserve biodiversity, and conserve indigenous cultures. Therefore, many countries are working to preserve them.

Definition

The word rural is complex and its strict definition contested, making it difficult to draw an exact line between urban and rural areas. Derived from the Latin word rus, which means open space, it is synonymous with the words country and countryside in English-speaking countries. Rural also simply means places that have few people or cities. The term is a subjective state of mind for some and an objective quantitative measure for others. The most generalized definition of rural areas, one that has been used for hundreds of years, is that they are not urbanized.

The US Census Bureau’s classification of rural formerly included all territory with a population density of less than 500 people per square mile (2.6 square kilometers). In 2000, it changed its definition of rural to mean a population, housing or territory not defined as urban; urban areas, in turn, were broken down into "urbanized areas" with populations of 50,000 or greater and "urban clusters" with populations from 2,500 up to 50,000. In 2021 the United States, urban areas made up only 3 percent of the country's land but were home to more than 80 percent of the population. About 19 percent of the population lived in rural areas.

Transformation

Many rural areas have been transformed rapidly, especially since humans settled and adopted agriculture. It was around settled areas, mostly surrounding river basins, that several human civilizations evolved. Over time, as civilizations evolved and cities were established as centers of commerce and administration, rural areas became thought of simply as sources of food.

The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century accelerated the creation of cities throughout the world. Since then, cities have grown, attracting millions of migrants from rural areas. Even though the world has become increasingly urbanized with more people living in metropolitan areas, rural communities still play a significant role in sustaining the urban population. The rate of urbanization varies by country, as developed countries are more urbanized than developing nations. In the United States, for example, over 80 percent of Americans live in cities—but in Nepal, only 21 percent do (according to 2020 estimates). The type of urbanization also varies, but rural areas today, except in a few countries, generally have at least some access to technology, transportation, commerce, and communication.

Hybrid Spaces

The rapid transformation of both rural areas and urbanization is blurring the distinction between the two, resulting in hybrid spaces, which have characteristics of both types of communities. Hybrid spaces include networks of agricultural production that combine human, nonhuman, and technological components, and they have processes of development for social or economic transformation purposes.

Some of these areas include recreational activities that depend on complex technologies and on particular landscapes and climates, transportation patterns comprising human-machine relations, and hybrid networks of local and extralocal agencies. The pervasive influence of urbanization and adoption of nonagricultural economic activities, urban cultural practices, and consumption patterns have made rural a hybrid concept.

In North America, some such areas are known as suburban or exurban, and they are characterized by rural landscapes and settlements that are tightly linked to urban labor markets and service centers. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, real estate developers have attracted urban residents to suburbs by invoking images of an idyllic rural lifestyle, proximity to nature, solidarity and community spirit, high-quality public services, and cultural diversity. Such development also has raised concerns about environmental sustainability and inefficient use of resources.

Characteristics of Rural Areas

Despite rural-urban overlap, rural areas have several distinct characteristics, chiefly the closer attachment of people to nature. Often, rural areas are regarded as the last frontier, full of wilderness and open spaces. People who live in rural areas are often viewed as being simple, hard-working, innocent, virtuous, peaceful, and living in harmony with nature, though these are largely stereotypes with little scientific basis and many counterexamples. Also, rural societies are considered to have tightly connected structures of families and communities. Over time, these characteristics have been idealized and mythologized through art, literature, media, and movies.

The expansion of urban areas in the United States and Europe led to the growth of this romanticized version of rural areas. During the colonial period, Europeans exported their version of rural areas to colonies worldwide. They even tried to convert the existing landscape to reflect their ideas of countryside. British rulers, for example, established rural estates to re-create English country gardens in India, South Africa, and the West Indies. The transportation of rural ideas was not all one-way, but also flowed back from the colonies to Europe. For example, several crops were introduced to Old World rural areas from the New World, most notably potatoes, beans, maize, and various spices.

Economic Factors

Economically, rural areas are attached to natural resources, mostly agriculture and extractive industries such as mining, fishing, and forestry. In the past, these activities were the chief source of food and income for rural families. Even today, millions of people in developing countries depend on subsistence agriculture to support their families. This dependence on traditional agriculture is considered the primary reason for nondevelopment of rural areas. However, such theories are contested. As cities grew and became associated with advanced economy, rural areas became synonymous with "backward" economies plagued by poverty, traditionalism, and lack of opportunities, regardless of the experienced realities of rural people.

Several factors are thought to have contributed to the underdevelopment of many rural areas. Historically, the abundance of resources in some rural areas resulted in the exploitation of those resources through farming, forestry, mining, quarrying, fishing, hunting, and energy production. The growth of cities, industries, and expansion of a capitalist global economy facilitated the extraction of resources from rural areas. In the process, rural people abandoned traditional agriculture and became part of the global economic system by working for companies and corporations. This transformation brought drastic changes to rural economies.

In many cases, when the natural resources of an area were exhausted, rural dwellers, instead of going back to traditional occupations, looked for other means of income. Many communities attracted industries at the cost of environmental and cultural degradation. In the United States, for example, some rural communities now depend on such enterprises as waste facilities and penitentiaries for employment and revenue. In pursuit of a better life and economic opportunities, thousands of people migrated to urban areas. Many of the families remaining in the rural areas, especially areas that have transitioned away from fully agriculture-based communities, came to depend on government subsidies to fulfill their basic needs.

As the cities grew in size and population, the press of urbanization weighed heavily on some groups, causing a reverse trend of suburbanization in societies such as the United States. This was largely carried out by wealthier residents rather than the poorer rural migrants, creating the phenomenon known as "white flight." The trend was accompanied by further romanticization of rural life, even though most of those leaving urban areas moved to suburban rather than rural communities. Some rural populations began to show division between older, original residents and newer urban transplants, at times causing social and political conflict. Another effect was the rise of rural tourism, which also benefited from the growth of interest in outdoor recreation. Rural communities all over the United States have adopted tourism as their major source of income. Rural tourism particularly flourished in places that contain unique culture, biodiversity, and natural settings.

Even with the benefits of rural tourism, however, many rural areas are economically vulnerable as they become dependent on a single industry or activity. The dependent economy, along with other factors, has made rural areas lag urban or suburban areas in development scale. As a result, rural development has been seen as a major objective for governments in both developed and developing countries, though not without controversy. Some advocates suggest a return to small-scale, self-sufficient rural communities with highly localized economies is necessary for environmental sustainability, even if it means giving up the level of globalized economic development held as a standard of living in the Western world.

Rural Development

Rural development strategies differ from country to country. The strategies depend on the nature and availability of natural and social capital that can be mobilized for development. Conventional approaches to rural development were based on the concept of modernization, which assumes the underdevelopment of rural areas. It assumed that underdevelopment could be overcome with sustainable economic growth that eventually would improve the living conditions of rural people and raise those areas to national standards of development.

From the mid-twentieth century, many governments have been trying to update and improve living conditions in rural communities through enhanced agricultural services, economic conditions, infrastructure, and social values. Agricultural modernization involves mechanized farming practices, application of agrochemicals, and adoption of biotechnology. Economic modernization often entails diversifying rural economies by establishing small industries. Infrastructure updates include expansion of roads, electrical lines, telecommunications, and increased housing options. Social modernization promotes modern education, challenges superstitions and traditional beliefs, and raises awareness about civic rights.

After 1950, this four-pillar process became the dominant rural development paradigm in many parts of the world. Despite decades of investment, however, many rural areas have not been successfully developed along these lines. Since the early 1980s, criticism of this model has focused on environmental degradation versus sustainability, and the drawbacks of dependency on transnational banks and corporations.

A number of alternative paradigms have been proposed and applied. These approaches center on sustainable development, community participation, involvement of nongovernmental organizations, and environmentally friendly approaches. However, there is no universal model to achieve these goals, which have become vague and broad.

Future of Rural Areas

The future of rural areas depends on sociopolitical decisions as well as environmental changes associated with climate change. Policies of local, national, and international agencies on rural areas will influence the appearance of rural landscapes, the structure of their economies, the pattern of their settlement, and the dimension of the populations. The future also depends on the status of biodiversity, construction of infrastructure, commercialization of rural resources, and the quality of life of rural people.

Policies can have positive or negative effects. The greatest threat to rural areas, however, is widely considered to be climate change. On the positive side, rising global temperatures could increase the yield of a few food crops such as wheat, rice, corn, and sugarcane. The negative effects of global warming include possible water shortages, reduced soil fertility, pest mobility, and increased frequency of flooding and wildfires. Such changes will disrupt the human-nature relationship in rural areas.

Rural tourism, which depends on the natural environment, will be hit hard by climate change as nonagricultural economic activities are forced to relocate, putting millions of people at risk. The response will be migration. Thousands of people have already moved out of rural areas and are living in urban slums or in neighboring countries as climate refugees. Rural areas, despite their crucial role in the urban world, have never been so vulnerable in recent history.

History also suggests that rural areas have the capacity to fight back through resiliency and adoption of new techniques. The fight against climate change has begun, for example, as rural areas from Africa to Asia are responding to the challenges facing them by adopting new techniques to conserve water, growing drought-resistant crops, and planting trees.

Rural communities also are diversifying their economies and moving away from dependence on a single activity. There are programs being implemented to raise awareness about the impact of climate change and ways to reduce carbon footprints. These efforts will take time to yield results. In the meantime, rural areas depend more than ever on the reduction of hydrocarbon gas emissions around the world.

Bibliography

America Counts Staff. "One in Five Americans Live in Rural Areas." US Census Bureau, 8 Oct. 2021, www.census.gov/library/stories/2017/08/rural-america.html. Accessed 1 Sept. 2022.

Halseth, Greg, Sean Markey, and David Bruce. “The Next Rural Economies: Constructing Landesa.” Rural Development Institute. http://www.landesa.org.

Mansfield, Lois. Managing Upland Resources: New Approaches for Rural Environments. Whittle Publishing, 2018.

Shucksmith, Mark, and David Louis Brown. Routledge International Handbook of Rural Studies. Routledge, 2016.

Shucksmith, Mark, David L. Brown, Sally Shortall, and Jo Vergunst. Rural Transformations and Rural Policies in the U.S. and UK. Routledge, 2012.

Woods, Michael. Rural. Routledge, 2011.