EP 36: Urban Cowboy 2, or Squashing 'Urban Vs. Rural'
For as often as we hear the phrase "urban versus rural" -- like it's an irreconcilable competition between two oppositely distinct regions -- there are loads of examples of urban and rural communities working together to learn from one another, obliterate stereotypes on each end and team up on common goals. It's also fallacious to think "urban" and "rural" describe the whole of a truly complex spectrum of local economies. On this episode we head to Kentucky to check out a successful barrier-breaker called the Rural Urban Exchange before a meetup with the National League of Cities to map out how varied our cities and towns really are -- and how they depend on one another. Show notes: Kentucky Rural Urban Exchange (RUX) - http://www.kyrux.org/ AP story about RUX - https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/kentucky/articles/2017-06-29/kentucky-man-taking-part-in-rural-urban-exchange NLC, 'Beyond Urban vs. Rural' - http://nlc.org/article/beyond-urban-vs-rural-new-report-reveals-five-distinct-local-economies Steve Holt, CityLab, 'What's the Future of the Urban Farmers' Market?' - https://www.citylab.com/environment/2017/09/whats-the-future-of-the-urban-farmers-market/538839/
Top Keywords
- rural 0.022
- urban 0.017
- cities 0.016
- kentucky 0.010
- economies 0.009
- urban versus 0.008
- versus rural 0.008
- economic 0.007
- rural urban 0.007
- farmers 0.007
- growth 0.007
- markets 0.007
Transcript
On this episode of Municipal Equation. Yeah. I think from a political standpoint, you know, over the past year, we've heard a lot of urban versus rural. Right? And it often has been used in an adversarial
polarizing term. You know, it's hard to not feel connected to a place that has welcomed you and valued you as a visitor in their community. You're getting those connections, that network, those relationships,
and you're really seeing parts of the state in a very,
nuanced way. Urban versus rural. We hear it all the time now, this versus word between apparently two different categories of place. We're gonna step inside that context and see what's in between. We're also gonna investigate an effort to overlap the urban rural extremes, so they can check each other out, and not in some kind of footloose way. My name is Ben Brown, and this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns in changing times, from the North Carolina League of Municipalities, episode 36. This is the Raleigh Downtown Farmers Market. I'm just walking through it here with my little voice recorder. I'm in charge of five minutes in the fifth time. The market fills up this plaza area at the end of Fayetteville Street, pretty much the main street that goes through downtown. The market spreads out between tall bank buildings and hotels, restaurants, definitely a city scene. I recorded this on one of the final farmers markets of 2017. The weather was changing, a lot less of that summer feeling, but it was still nice out. It was still crowded and probably could have survived another couple weeks past the October 11 conclusion. By the way, this is around lunchtime on a Wednesday. A lot of cities have downtown farmers markets. Some of the big US cities might have several of them in different areas. Steve Holt, a writer in Boston, had a piece in CityLab recently where he goes over thoughts and data about the future of these urban farmers markets. For example, they're growing. Not evenly across the country, and the growth rate has slowed a bit. But nationally, about 8,700 farmers markets are registered with the USDA right now. And a lot of the newer ones are in these urban or suburban areas. Holt writes that there are even instances of unsustainable growth in the urban markets, like where he lives in Massachusetts. So many farmers markets that the customer base can't keep up. And some of the more historically centralized farmers markets in town have lost foot traffic to other markets that open up closer to where some of the customers live, like in their own neighborhoods. But it's still a thriving and socially protected concept in a lot of areas. You'll recall the episode I did about RDU Baton, that Instagram project. As I was putting this together, a pic came up on the baton of a flyer pointing out all the different farmers markets in the Triangle Region of North Carolina, and saying that no matter what farmers market you pick, you're doing the right thing. And as as far as I could tell, this was created by one of the farmer's markets. So there's collaboration between these markets. And there are even groups that have formed to help cities connect with food growers in their region. So there's this big sense of community that comes out of all of this. You know, people in a central location with a cultural mix and purchases made in person with the farmer responsible for that food or product. Holt, in his CityLab piece, quotes Jennifer Hashley with the new entry sustainable farming project as saying that if you wanna smell a peach, that's one thing you can't do shopping online. But my favorite quote from Holt's article, which I'll link to in the show notes, comes from Darlene Wallnick with the Farmers Market Coalition.
She says The only place where rural and urban really meet are at urban farmers markets. In the era we're in, that's provocative.
Sorry. I didn't have a recording of her voice, so I had to call in a substitute. But I like that concept about rural and urban intersecting in one place. For a while now, I've wanted to do an episode on this whole urban versus rural thing. The versus word. You know, there's a lot in that. An adversarial tone and a win or lose competition between populated areas. Like, that's the connotation. This is not to say that there aren't issues to resolve between different kinds of economies and the resources available to them. That's one conversation. But it doesn't always jibe with what I see in my line of work, dealing with municipalities and seeing them work together across regions. Matter of fact, at our last annual conference, the theme was connect, and it was attended by hundreds of municipalities of different sizes. Yeah. There's a difference between a city of a million people and a village of a 100. Different cultures, different norms, and so on. But to me, that means there's just a lot of special expertise to go around and to merge into something new and different. Stuff they can and do share with each other. We've done plenty of episodes about that kind of thing. Sister Cities. And, you know, the the one about the urban dwellers going crazy for a sunflower field. But we've since found some other much more direct, intentional initiatives lately in this urban versus rural thing, shifting the focus to urban with rural. One of them is in Kentucky.
Within the state, there's there tends to be,
just tension. This is Ada Smith. She's with an Appalachian life and culture organization called Appleshop. Right here, we're talking with her about something she's involved in and helped to co found called Kentucky Rural Urban Exchange, often abbreviated to RUX, r u x. It's a statewide program. And this is Savannah Barrett. She's with a group called Art of the Rural, and she also helped to co found RUX.
It assembles a a diverse cohort to explore commonalities, deepen connections to people and places, and collaborate towards place based innovation. So we started in 2014. It's also supported by the Rural Policy Research Institute and more than 50 Kentucky businesses and organizations, and the mission of REx is to grow relationships across divides to build a more collaborative and connected commonwealth.
Yeah. I mean, I think I think that one of the unique things about Kentucky is that there's a whole lot of people that grew up in the state that stay in the state, you know. And so even though Louisville is a huge city, there's a lot of people from rural areas who grew up in rural areas that live in Louisville. I'm saying with Lexington, Kentucky or Bowling Green. And so I think a struggle can often be that, you know, when people from rural areas move to cities that there's a sense that those cities don't have a an idea of who they are and where they come from. I think a lot of rural areas feel like the cities have kind of taken their people, for economic opportunity. The, lack of financial resources and work opportunities that exist in those places, which then lead to smaller tax base and bad schools and bad infrastructure and etcetera etcetera. And so, you know, I don't even think our cities in Kentucky are doing that well nationally, but within the state, there's there tends to be, just tension about you all have all these things and we don't have any of them. And then also, I think, just a lack of understanding of who each other are and how many similarities there are between them.
This urban rural divide, as Ada is describing it here, has lived conceptually in a lot of states, including North Carolina, for a pretty long time, and it finds its way into the headlines in swells. And we've been on one of those swells here. So just to state what my folks at the League of Municipalities think about all this, well, North Carolina doesn't need policy solutions that pit urban against rural. And that's why our members, our our cities across the state, have adopted these legislative goals that are are focused on transportation and infrastructure investments and incentives meant to keep North Carolina competitive. These are goals that can and should benefit the entire state. Big cities, small towns, urban and rural areas, everybody together. Another piece that we often see missing from the broader conversation is how well North Carolina does with its diversity of places, you know, catering to a wide range of preferences that can bring about a pretty diverse economic footprint. It's probably like some other states. You know, you've got towns that are focused on arts or the outdoors or tech or tourism or beer or or the military or or just being a well maintained historic small town. And even in that mix of individual characters, you don't have homogenization. It's not just one type of voter. You can find links and commonalities between these places even when they seem totally removed from one another. And all this adds up to something great when you link it all together for an entire state.
Ada's organization has a lot of similar observations in Kentucky. The amazing thing is that there's a lot of pride of Kentucky in our state, but I think we haven't always, really understood our state as a whole, and we've more kind of just thought about the place we're from or the place we live now and not the broader, reality. And so, like, when we look at state budget issues, it it can often be pretty, like, well, I need this for me only versus looking at a whole commonwealth, which, really needs to be the priority. So, you know, I don't necessarily think it's all challenges. It's more that we have an opportunity to know each other better, and we I think there's just not many, avenues to bring people together the way that Rux has.
Okay. So Rucks brings people from different parts of the state, rural and urban, together to talk and and work on things as a unit, create partnerships. The way it works is you apply to be part of a Rucks session, and they get all kinds of people who do, government people, business people, blue collar people, culinary people. So anyone can apply.
We do focus on four sectors that we think have great potential to improve quality of life in Kentucky. So that's ag and food systems,
arts and culture, small business and local economies, which includes the public sector, and community health and wellness. And they have a steering committee that that picks a different host community or host city each time, which is great because that allows that city to show the outsiders kind of how they're doing things, what their conversations are, what the projects they're working on are. You know, there are some really wonderful and exciting,
you know, community and economic development projects that have come out of Brock. One that's happening in Harlan right now, one that started in Whitesburg a few years ago. And those are wonderful. That's the kind of work that we expect to be really visible, that we're starting to change the the main streets of our communities. But what's really most important, I think, that's happened as a result of the program is this really deep connection to one another and this, very strong sense of statewide identity and the idea that whatever problem you are having in your community or whatever idea you have, you have the right network of folks from around the state to help you execute it. And this really strong connection to different regions of the state and different communities where it's hard to not feel connected to a place that has welcomed you and valued you as a visitor in their community. And I think that's one of the most important things that's happened as a result of Rex. And like I said, there are some great project examples, and those are important too, but that wasn't nearly as important as the relational aspect of the program.
That was a little phone buzz that I couldn't edit out there. Anyway, I still wanted to know specifically about the projects that have come out of Rucks when two different people or or groups come from different parts of the state to talk about their challenges and what they can do for each other as a unit?
So we, we try to help encourage our participants to team up with each other, across regions and across sectors and then sometimes within a sector to share, some of what they're doing. And so people are kind of diving into a subject or a area of work and, trying to learn more from each other, explore more, read more, etcetera. And then we also have actual hard projects. And so there's been like, this past summer, there were there were two people, one in Eastern Kentucky and one in Louisville, who were working with sets of young people in their own communities doing vastly different work. But through Rucks and their meeting in Rucks, they decided, let's bring these young people together for a weekend that is almost like a little mini rural urban exchange. Right? But an opportunity for their youth, to really see each other in ways that they hadn't had an opportunity to before. And so, you know, they kinda had a a mini rural urban exchange with young people in our state. At the same time, we've had people help create actual architectural plans for a building renovation that's happening. Right? We've also had folks that care about our cultural heritage in Kentucky, dive deeper into for instance, there there's a long term boxer who was mentoring under a kind of elder square dance caller, and was learning a lot from him about, his practice and how it worked. And then he helped get, a a kinda whole new slew of Square Dance events going on in Louisville again. Oh, wow. So it's a mixture of, things when we talk about a project, but it for instance, the Square Dance stuff, you know, it started with just learning from one another and mentoring and trying to have a better sense of, like, what is this cultural, thing that's true in Kentucky, and how do I get more knowledge from it that then turned into actual event based, etcetera. But, you know, I think there's just a lot of that sense of what am I doing? What are the I think a lot of us are just in our work, and we don't even think about facilitation as a skill or Sure. Yeah. Some aspect of understanding how state government works. Right? You know, I think there's just a lot of that kind of skill sharing, knowledge building, information sharing. And so, you know, I think the the type of community intensive that Rucks is coordinating and facilitating with these, place based partners, even gives those of us who've been places before, a sense to more fully understand what the strengths and challenges in each of those communities are, in a way that you know in your own place. Right? And then you can ask harder questions and say, oh, we're dealing with that too. How are you doing that? How how are you making it happen? Because we're really struggling with that. Right.
Savannah mentioned that these sessions are actually really good leadership exercises. And not just exercises, they really do connect the right people together.
For organizations or businesses who want to expand their impact in the state of Kentucky, that's really difficult to do if you don't have local relationships and trust. So for a ton of our members and specifically for some of our steering committee members, as they transition jobs, they've been able in the in the public sector and state government and in community and economic development organization, have a piece of their time allotted to help guide this program, which I think is a testament to how important that is to statewide work.
Both Savannah and Ada said the other powerful takeaway from doing rucks in different parts of Kentucky, in different sized towns and in different economies, is that regional stereotypes get totally smashed. I feel like, at least for me, a lot of the, rural or urban conversations that have been happening
on the national level, you know, obviously reinforce a lot of stereotypes specifically about political leaning. And I think that what I have felt like has been true with Rux is that just none of that holds up at all. And I think that what we know we have to do even across, you know, within a political spectrum is that people just don't know each other over these huge states. They, like, literally don't have a sense of each other. And so I think that, you know, regardless of the, like, getting people to talk across the aisle, I think there's also a real need to, as Savannah was mentioning, I think is really important in Ruxford folks to just spend some time with each other, to eat food together, to go hear a band together. You know? And I and I think what's hard about that is that it takes time. Right? And I think, obviously, we're in a moment where people want very quick change to happen, and I think we know from every social movement in this country that change takes time and it takes relationships. And as Savannah said, it takes trust. And I think we have to to to really shift structural barriers that are in place. We have to be able to wrestle with each other, and we can't do that if if we don't even have a sense of where someone's from. Both sides, rural and urban.
Mhmm. Amen.
Kyrux.0rg is the website for the Kentucky Rural Urban Exchange, if you wanna learn more. So we got into the economic picture a little bit with the rural urban conversation, but there's definitely more. There's definitely a lot that gets left out when we mention the polar extremes of urban and rural. Some research just came out shortly ago looking at what gets lost in this conversation economically, and that happens to come from our usual friends, the National League of Cities. Okay. About to call Christy McFarland, who's the research director at the National League of Cities.
You for calling Christy McFarland.
This is Christy. She was the coauthor of a report that came out at the August. Actually, the press release about it was titled Beyond Urban versus Rural. The report's called Local Economic Conditions 2017. It was based on a survey of 224 cities of all kinds. The big metro areas, small towns. They did some analysis and found five different kinds of local economic characters.
Not just urban, not just rural. A complex spectrum. Yeah. I think from a political standpoint, you know, over the past year, we've heard a lot of urban versus rural. Right? And it often has been used in an adversarial polarizing terms with those in rural areas increasingly disconnected from opportunity and feeling like they don't have a voice in Washington. And then on the other hand you have urban places, you know that have been somewhat demonized as crime havens and other negative characteristics. Beyond that and somewhat connected this image of urban versus rural has been extended to economic terms as well, particularly to describe post recession trends. Urban areas have solidified their place as drivers of the national economy with more rural areas left with significant challenges related to population and unemployment loss. So we know though that many places that may consider themselves rural are actually part of broader urban metros, even if they are on the fringes. They still have some connections to job markets within their region, and also some rural places are also hubs of smaller more rural regions, so they take on characteristics of more urban type cores. So the bottom line really is that urban versus rural can be a useful generalization in some cases, but it really doesn't tell us much about the economic capacity of a place.
Yeah, and, you know, getting into those dynamics, you know, the the city I live in, Smithfield, North Carolina has about, you know, 13,000 people and it's there's a rural feel to it. It has a rural background, but it's not quite rural, you know, compared to, other areas or outlying areas. But when I make that thirty minute commute to Raleigh, North Carolina, which is the city I work in, nearly half a million people live there. So it gets kinda fuzzy and, you know, in in your research, what can you tell us about the current landscape and spectrum of cities and towns and economies out there?
Yeah. That's exactly right. We also wanted to know more about these differences because we've heard stories like yours so many times and in the work that we do we see places that don't fit neatly into some of the boxes that we sometimes, define our cities on. So we wanted to know more about these differences and we conducted an analysis that grouped cities according to their population size and some of their key economic attributes, and what emerged was five types of local economies. We identified, a highly rural clustering of cities, which we coined urban, I'm sorry, rural brain drains. These are very small towns with substantial population loss. We also saw the, very large central cities cluster together and we call those major job centers. A lot of, very strong job growth. Also problems related to housing affordability, poverty and homeless, homelessness. You know, we hear those stories all the time. But we also uncovered three distinct types of mid sized local economies, and I think, these are the types of local economies that often get, get missed in the narrative about urban versus rural. So the first one that we identified was cities on par. These generally are smaller populations around 50,000 to 100,000 in population, but they're also very reflective of national averages or the average city. These cities are experiencing, the general trend of slow positive growth driven by new business starts, but they also have a high demand for poverty related services like homelessness, homeless shelters and food banks. A second type of mid sized city that we identified, are called room to grow cities. They tend to be larger inner ring suburbs, think Scottsdale, Plano, Texas, their economy is driven primarily by shopping malls and traditional office parks and we know both of those are, on their way out in terms of relevance in today's economy. So with both of these on the decline, room to grow cities have a stock of affordable commercial property and interestingly these are the only cities, or the only type of local economy in which affordable housing, is indicated as a positive economic driver. We're also seeing a group of cities that we called, mid sized business boomers. These tend to be a little bit larger in population, and they are the core cities of smaller to midsize metros. These are cities to watch, for several reasons, but they tend to be the, the little siblings of major job centers, like the New York's and Boston. They're hotbeds of new business expansion and new businesses, but it also appears the skills of the workforce in these communities is not necessarily keeping up with this new business growth. So they have a policy strategy, challenge there to better align workforce development with industry.
And with these varying types of of cities or economies, how do they relate to each other and is there a codependency? Does one kind of feed off another, so to speak?
Yeah, certainly. For example, Brewington Grow Cities, which I talked about before as being those places that tend to rely pretty heavily on shopping malls and office parks, they are the the the only group of cities that have readily available affordable housing and in most cities affordable housing is in short supply, particularly particularly the closer that you get to core cities, so room to grow economies, which are mostly suburbs, from what we're seeing here serve as key exhaust valves for otherwise tight regional housing markets. So essentially they reap core of regions, and these affordability challenges really are forcing people out of the central cities and into, these, these room to grow cities and other suburbs. But although they appear to be growing their population, jobs which were traditionally located in, you know, office parks, which are now relocating downtown, means they have a new policy issue that highlights this codependency between the the core city and these more outlying areas, in that they need to be able to find ways to connect workers who are now living in these room to grow cities with jobs that are now more heavily located in downtown core areas of the region. So sustainable transportation infrastructure will be a key, key issue, but it's one of those issues that that certainly is regional in scope and, and requires collaboration across different types of of cities.
And so pulling out and kind of looking at at everything overall in general, you know, how are these economies doing, you know, being almost a decade out from, you know, 2009 where we, you know, supposedly came out of the great recession? How are we trending in these various local economies in general?
So across the board, cities in all economy types, are doing pretty well. They're seeing slow but steady growth. We noticed though that, major business centers, so larger urban cores, are more likely than any others to have very strong economic growth and the rural brain drains are more likely than others to have significant decline.
And so, you know, what else is driving this? You know, based on some of your survey responses, what what seems to be the sort of driving factors? Is it private business or is it policy or is it a mixture of both or
Yeah, it certainly seems to be a mixture of both and what we found is it's really business growth that's driving, that's driving the economic growth in these places. So new businesses, is a top driver which, you know, I think we've there have been a lot of trends over the past twenty years or so that that startups have slowed, but we're seeing, potential resurgence here of new business growth. And we found that even looking across different types of local economies, startups are leading growth in nearly all types of economies except in those room to grow economies. So not to pick on, on room to grow cities, but, given the low density development and the isolated nature of sort of the office parks that are prevalent in these types of economies, it's not surprising that new businesses, which often thrive in more dense, open, collaborative environments are less likely to be strong growth factors in these economies. We're also seeing business expansions and employment as top drivers of economic growth. This is happening sort of across the spectrum, but, very highly concentrated in, in core cities, both, the major job centers and the mid sized business boomers. So we're seeing that core cities of various sizes continue to be, key areas of business growth in The US.
So getting to barriers and, you know, the question of, you know, what could be better, what is holding back additional local growth or improvement? You know, what what could be better about all this?
Well, as we're seeing businesses expand, there's there's a flip side to that. We're also seeing that skills available in the workforce are not necessarily aligning with the needs of businesses. There are a lot of reasons out there as to why this is the case, but the bottom line is that there's a significant disconnect that's impeding economic growth, one that's so obvious pervasive that cities in all types of local economies have flagged it as a major concern. Affordable housing too is a substantial impediment to economic growth and unfortunately is a symptom of economic success like we're seeing in mid sized business boomers and major job centers. So, you know, the most unaffordable housing markets in the country are, you know, the Boston's and Washington DC's, those places that are doing very well economically.
Right. So were there any surprises or anything that shocked you when you were collecting data for this report?
Yeah. I was surprised by a couple of things. First, were again the similarities between midsize business boomers and major job centers, indicating that location as a core city of a region may be more important than population in determining economic outcome. Secondly, as much as we hear about the retail industry troubles, only one type of local economy, again that room to grow, group, is having significant challenges associated with changes in this industry and this is likely a result both of economic, economic and fiscal base in these cities that is tied very heavily to retail sales.
So what's the bottom line or conclusion? You know, why does this kind of data matter? What why is it useful to us?
The bottom line is that there are different factors driving local economies throughout the country, and the best path forward for us as a nation is to give cities the tools to localize solutions that meet their specific needs and harness their assets.
So how do we wrap this up, tie it all together? Well, we talked about the importance of personal connections and intersector appreciation collaboration, and then we turned to research for a closer look at what's happening in the economic spectrum of cities and towns. To mush it all together, the takeaway I get is that we sometimes need to double check our perceptions and strategies from time to time to make sure we're all working with each other in the best possible way. So we're not implementing policies that hurt one region to favor another, and so we're not taking away tools or authority that enable localities to write their own futures. Getting it right takes communication, it takes research, and it sometimes takes working on a project with a different group of people, so you can renew your impressions of how they operate, what they do, and what you can do for each other. A phrase that we use around here a lot is when each of us does better, we all do better. You can read that full National League of Cities report and all the supporting info at nlc.0rg. I'll post a link to it in the show notes to this episode at soundcloud.com/municipalequation. You can find all the past episodes there too. So what's your feedback? I mean, I know you have to have some thirty minutes later, we haven't conquered the urban versus rural conversation. Just want to hit some good ideas and some research. But even within what we talked about, there's there's maybe some things that you want to say or you want to color in. There are plenty of other extremely knowledgeable, organizations and people in this conversation. Like for North Carolina, the North Carolina Rural Center is one of them. Patrick Woody at the North Carolina Rural Center is someone who may have perspective on this and we can maybe follow-up with him in a future episode. Really want to say thanks for the feedback in our last episode about women and government leadership, and special thanks to ELGL for including it in a blog post. ELGL does a lot of really important work in the, in this conversation about diversity in government. Thanks to Steve Holt for letting me steer some of his, farmers market material into this episode. If you have any ideas for any follow-up episodes or topics we haven't covered yet, you know, please reach out to me. Again, bbrownnclm dot org. NCLM stands for North Carolina League of Municipalities. That's who makes this podcast possible. What's making this podcast difficult at least this week is the fact that I think I'm kind of deep into a cold or something, with some of the seasonal changes. So I'm gonna go ahead and sign off. That's why my voice sounds so heavy, but yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and sign off and preserve myself. But, I can still type, so email me, tweet to me, and, I'll be in touch. We'll talk to you next time. This is Ben Brown.
