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WHAT DOES RURAL AMERICA LOOK LIKE? I

There are other perspectives. Among your readings is Robert E. Howell's "An Introduction to Community Resource Analysis" (Reading 3-2). In this piece, Howell introduces a device that sociologists use to understand institutions, communities and a whole society. They call it POET (Population, Organization, Environment, and Technology). We will use this device throughout the study. The emphasis will shift from unit to unit. And the levels of emphasis move up and down.

Population, obviously, is more scattered and less dense in rural places than city population. The Census Bureau describes rural as a place with fewer than 2,500 people. This includes both open country and villages/towns like Green Ridge or Wobegon. About 60 million Americans live in such places. This is near the highest number ever. So often when we hear of migration from farms to cities, we assume that rural America is becoming depopulated. This is not necessarily true.

I like maps and charts. They help me visualize and categorize things. If you compare the maps in your reading material, "Non-metropolitan Counties with Population Change," (Reading 3-3) it would seem that much of rural America is experiencing loss of population. However, this loss has been counter-balanced by population growth in other rural areas, specifically rural areas within 50 miles of cities and rural areas on sea coasts, in mountains, around lakes, which offer or are being developed as recreational and retirement areas. For example, many nonmetropolitan Texas counties which are dependent upon oil production or farming and ranching would be listed as extraction counties or as agriculture-dependent, have experienced population loss in the 1980s. But other rural or nonmetropolitan counties near cities and in places that attract retirees and/or offer recreational activities have actually grown in population. You may want to study population trends in your areas as part of the group study. Your reader contains three recent articles (Readings 4, 5 and 6) co-authored by Calvin Beale, the accepted dean of rural demographics. You should find them both very readable and insightful. They are somewhat repetitious, but it is helpful to read both and note trends. Beale reveals that some rural areas are growing while others decline. Can you find your county or area on the maps?

The article in your reader, "What You Should Know About Small Towns and Rural Areas," (Reading 3-7) lists 24 other rural trends. How are these trends being experienced where you live? How can you find out? Suggestions are made at the close of this chapter concerning how to do these studies. Consider what has been the application of this discussion of population to the community or communities, county or counties represented in your study group. Look again at the map of nonmetropolitan counties. Note that almost 2,500 counties lie outside metropolitan counties. These include counties with towns and cities up to 50,000 population and counties that may be near a city but where most employees do not commute to that city for employment. About 56.5 million people live in these nonmetropolitan counties, down only about 10 percent from the highs of the 1940s, in spite of the great urban sprawl our country has experienced since World War II. Perhaps an explanation will harmonize these two figures. Some of the 60 million people living in rural America live inside counties that are identified as metropolitan. For example, notice that counties surrounding the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex have many parts, where from the position of the Census Bureau, the residents are considered to be rural. On the other hand, people living in Mineral Wells, to the west of Dallas-Fort Worth, live in a nonmetropolitan county (see Dallas-Fort Worth, Reading 8). But because Mineral Wells has a population of about 15,000, its residents would not be considered rural people. The designation for people in this category, as used by the Census, is "urban" people--people living in an incorporated town and cities with more than 2,500 population. But lacking 50,000 the term metropolitan is not applied to Mineral Wells and its county. Perhaps new designations will appear. But now, just be careful as you study the articles. Urban means both Mineral Wells and Dallas. Rural places and people can be found inside metropolitan places. I will use rural to refer to communities that are less than 50,000 in population and nonmetropolitan in location (this includes smaller "urban" places as defined above). Reading 3-3b by Ron Wimberley expands on this effort to define rural.