Lipschitz, Forbes; (2014) Not in My City: Rural America Urban Dumping Ground. Architecture_MPS , 6 (2) pp. 1-21. 10.14324/111.444.amps.2014v6i2.001.

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Abstract

The ideological divide between urban and rural is deeply rooted in the American consciousness, fraught with tensions stemming from false memories of a pastoral past on the one hand and the American yearning for progress as exemplified by the industry of the city on the other. These tensions have figured prominently in design discourse, from Ebenezer Howard's Garden City to Patrick Geddes Rural-to-Urban Transect and Ian McHarg's Design with Nature. Over the last twenty years, however, rural issues have been wholly overshadowed by design's fixation on urbanization. Though urban design and planning are well established subdisciplines of the design professions, rural issues receive limited pedagogical or practical emphasis. Across design disciplines, the contemporary city is touted as the key to technological, economic and cultural innovation while rural decline is accepted as inevitable, if not necessary. This resignation to the eventuality of rural decline has facilitated an exploitative relationship between urban hubs and their rural hinterlands. Rural America which encompasses roughly seventy-two percent of the nation's landmass has seen slower population growth for a decade as more young people move to urban and suburban areas for jobs and aging retirees seek out more densely populated places to live. The 2010 census revealed that nonmetropolitan counties officially lost population for the first time. The economic landscape of rural America is also in a state of flux. Rural areas have traditionally relied upon resource-extractive industries, such as agriculture, forestry and energy production. However, technological advances, outsourcing, and the decline of manufacturing have forced rural communities to reevaluate their local economies. Declining populations coupled with limited economic opportunities characterize a number of rural communities across the United States. Looking for stable economic investments, policy makers and officials in rural areas across the country actively court landfills, prisons, and meat production and processing facilities in hopes of creating new jobs and generating revenue for towns in need of economic revitalization.

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