Urban? Rural? Who knows? Do you care?

It seems to me that Dee Davis’ (publisher of the Daily Yonder and president of the Center for Rural Strategies). review of White Rural Rage plays a little fast and loose with terms, especially conflating metropolitan with urban. Here’s some examples scattered throughout the review:

• "They do not talk about national Democratic Party decisions in 2000 and 2004 to move resources away from the rural battleground and to metropolitan strongholds, opting for base strategies over outreach."


• "Nor do they mention that Texas which is 83% metropolitan, and Florida, which is 91% metropolitan, both rejected Obamacare."


• "Two would-be terrorists living in major metropolitan urban areas with over a million residents each, yet the rage narrative is about rural insurrection."


• "Those relatively few Capitol insurrectionists were disproportionately metropolitan, not rural, but who’s from what Zip code is not what’s alarming."

It is unfortunate, to put it mildly, that the Federal Government has something in the neighborhood of three dozen different definitions of rural. However, the distinction between urban, rural, and metropolitan becomes clear if one scans the maps of Minnesota displaying Three rural definitions based on Census Urban Areas and compares it to the map of Rural definition based on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) metro counties. It looks to me as though there’s quite a bit of nonurban area in metro counties.

is this road urban or rural?

Photo by J. Harrington

If, as I hope we do, we truly want to manage to bridge and heal the urban rural divide and/or split, I strongly suspect it would be helpful if all of US were talking the same places. I’m disappointed Dee Davis doesn’t appear to share that perspective.

Full disclosure: I live in what, not long ago, was a township in an OMB "metro county" that’s not part of the official 7 county Twin Cities Metro Council area. The township in which I used to live has been annexed [in]to a city because, in Minnesota, townships are considered little more than holding areas awaiting urban development. If it’s not clear, that’s not my view of what  should be the role of rural area townships. My perspectives are more in alignment with those of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison in The Founding Gardeners.

The Road Not Taken

By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

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