Rationalizing Rural Area Classifications for the Economic Research Service A Workshop Summary (2016) / Chapter Skim
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4 Changes in Society and Economy and Their Impact on Rural Area Classifications
4 Changes in Society and Economy and Their Impact on Rural Area Classifications
Pages 43-60
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From page 43... ...
STATEMENT BY BRUCE WEBER Weber stated that rural classification systems are created to help characterize how context varies across space and how spatial development patterns affect social and economic outcomes. He noted that a rural classification system should be able to capture both urban hierarchy and the spatial aspects of these patterns.
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From page 44... ...
According to Weber, the country has moved from technology to spatial development patterns. As Weber explained, spatial development patterns have consequences and may generate socioeconomic outcomes that vary across places: • Urban size, the place in the urban hierarchy, and distance from urban centers lead to differential job and income growth and diversification (Partridge et al., 2007b)
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From page 45... ...
He stated that these needs basically lay out the key features of a desirable rural classification system that can distinguish urban and rural areas along such key dimensions as size of population, density, and remoteness from urban centers. Further, he said, it is important for a classification system to capture important spatial development patterns such as urbanization, urban deconcentration, and rural depopulation.
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From page 46... ...
People move around, and he suggested rural people's activity spaces may be larger than those of urbanites. He commented that a metro area is defined to be a place where a lot of people's activity patterns overlap.
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, rural consumers obtain their goods and services differently depending on where their homes are located within the hierarchically nested meshes of market areas. Moreover, Plane said, real-world activity patterns of rural people are even more complex than in the optimal world of Christaller's 1933 central place theory.
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From page 48... ...
Plane stressed people live at multiple scales in terms of their relations with places up the hierarchy. He suggested a revival in interest in central place theory, with more research to identify current critical functions since the thresholds, market areas, ranges, and other characteristics are likely to be very different than when Christaller first did his work.
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In much of Europe, low fertility rates are a main cause of natural population decreases, but age composition is the issue in the United States. The model situation for U.S.
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Brown said it is important to recognize that natural decrease is the result of chronic out-migration of young adults and longterm population decline. Hence, from a policy perspective, chronic demographic decline would be a more appropriate target variable than natural decrease, which is itself an outcome of long-term decline and distorted age structure.
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From page 51... ...
Social scientists characterize this as the "neoliberal period," a period in which state and market relationships have changed to some degree fundamentally. Major Changes: Local Governments and Geographic Diversity Lobao pointed to research on the growing importance of subnational governments in many nations besides the United States.
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From page 52... ...
population into places that offer high-capacity, expert government with better protection from poverty and downturn versus places that do not. For example, she said, even though county governments tend to be the major government for unincorporated areas, rural county governments have less capacity and provide fewer services.
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From page 53... ...
The survey focused on the 46 contiguous states with county governments (Connecticut and Rhode Island lack county governments) , and data were collected from county commissioners and other county officials.
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From page 54... ...
Lobao indicated that their data suggest micropolitan status seems to capture some unique attributes of rural counties. Counties, perhaps even more important than in the past in analyzing key subnational changes, combine policy-making units with population aggregates and capture some conceptualizations of "place" in terms of administrative unit, local social system, and community bond, culture, or place identification.
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Nevada cities are growing, while rural counties are losing population. Defining populations as urban and rural based on population density does not always account for the issues discussed at the workshop, he said.
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. Governance, Knowledge, and Skill Capacity Hardcastle noted that governance does not just mean local governments, but the larger institutional political system within a community.
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PANEL DISCUSSION Brown asked Plane about reconceptualizing density by changing the denominator so rather than a geographic unit, it would be a measure of time such as travel time, and then asked about the numerator. He suggested thinking about density as the number of social interactions or transactions or something else that expresses the reality of the social and economic life that occurs in geographic regions.
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Weber observed that rural classification systems need to assess the impact of context on outcomes. The context people live in affects whether they are poor and whether they have a job.
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From page 59... ...
. That work identified different types of rural places according to the dominant social relations, such as the paternalistic countryside where large landowners held the power, the clientelistic countryside where the state held the power and people tried to get money from the state, and the contested countryside where urban income was moving in and disrupting established social relationships and norms.
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From page 60... ...
But he suggested better communication about the fact that rural classifications, especially in the United States, are fuzzy. Hardcastle ended the session with a suggestion that something like health care services provided in a region be included in a definition to make the concept broader and more usable.
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