Rural and Urban America Need Each Other

Note: This is the lead story to a special edition of BBA Economic Digest on economic development in rural America. Click here to read the entire edition.

Its great vastness is awe-inspiring. With its forests and mountains and rivers and its small towns and hamlets and its farms and ranches, rural America -- comprising 97 percent of the country's landmass -- is as varied as its landscape. 

And while metropolitan areas may ostensibly be the engines of the American economy -- largely because that is where most of the population is based – it is rural America that provides most of the water, food, energy, and natural resources.

Without these rural areas, the United States would not be the prosperous nation that it is. For the great majority of us living in metropolitan areas, in urban and suburban and exurban surroundings, our very way of life is dependent upon rural America.

But so, too, does rural America need its urban and suburban counterparts, which serve as the primary markets for jobs and goods and services sold. Without the cities being their primary customers, rural areas would forever remain essentially primitive places with no chance of growth.

In a 2018 study, Brookings researchers found that proximity to cities contributed to rural communities’ well-being due to the spillover benefits that cities generate. Rural counties adjacent to metropolitan areas experienced fewer job losses between 2008 and 2017 than “non-adjacent” counties. In short, proximity to metro areas acted as an economic buffer for nearby rural communities.

Here at BBA, we know that different communities face different challenges. About one-third of rural counties in America are growing in population, about one-third are losing population and about one-third are neither losing nor gaining population but remaining flat. We have worked in all three rural scenarios.

Assumptions that rural America is all white (Fact: Rural America is increasingly diverse) and dependent on dying industries, (Fact: Many rural communities have assets and opportunities that have them thriving) contribute to the myth of an urban/rural divide in which one is prospering and the other is in decline.

The rural-vs-urban narrative is not only inaccurate, but it is harmful to our collective political and economic future. The truth is that Americans living in rural areas and in metro areas need each other for their economic wellbeing. It is about time we all recognize and respect that.

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