15 Different Definitions of Rural – September 23rd 2013 – Bengi Atun

http://bangordailynews.com/2013/06/10/news/nation/15-different-definitions-of-rural-makes-getting-federal-aid-more-than-a-little-complicated/

I hope that we will be able to design the exhibition on rural housing as it is a fascinating topic for me and I am very much looking forward to it.  I came across the above article published today in the Bangor Daily News, which delineates the many practical problems encountered vis a vis the funding of rural areas, due primarily to the myriad of definitions put forth by the US Government (15 official ones) for what constitutes “rural.”

It is difficult not to agree with this article which simply points out that confusion, waste of time, inefficiency and unfair outcomes are the result of such lack of clarity in the definition of rural.  I know from living in İstanbul Turkey, that the rate of migration from rural areas to major cities in the country is very high indeed.  Most upper-middle class households in Istanbul employ house help provided by women who have migrated from rural areas in search of better paying jobs in the cities, leaving the countryside and their fields to be tended by those left behind.  They complain that life is too hard in the countryside with little infrastructure to make it tolerable.  Doing housework is a piece of cake for them compared to tilling the land and brings in more income too.  So why not?

While there is an apparent need for rural areas to be better funded, at least in countries like Turkey, in this way also lessening to some extent the saturation of people in the major cities, there is also the issue of what happens to these rural areas when they are funded and over time get developed to such an extent that they start looking like the cities from which they were previously distinguished from.  I believe that most of us know of places from our childhood which we remember as purer, less developed and more beautiful than they are today, which we lament about in our daily conversations.  Development, unless guided by some overriding vision which aims to retain what is beautiful and pure in rural areas, homogenizes all places making them part of the globalized consumer culture.   

So what is it that we lament about when we claim that a specific place was more beautiful before it got developed?  A look at the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of rural gives us the answer to this question. 

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/rural?q=rural

Rural (adjective) is defined as:  in, relating to, or characteristic of the countryside rather than the town.

Countryside, in turn, is defined as:  the land and scenery of a rural area.

So when we talk about a rural area, we are really talking about an area rich in land and scenery.  The word rural conjures up images of rolling hills, clean air and a lifestyle in more daily contact with nature than we experience in the cities.  All the U.S. government definitions for rural, cited in the article above, have to do with the “number” of people who live in a specific area.  I believe it is this quantitative approach to the definition of a place which is the primary reason for the confusion, more so than the disagreement over the numbers.  A more qualitative definition of rural would provide a proper definition of what a rural place is, reminding the officials of why these areas need to be looked after and in what way.  Besides having little to do with what really constitutes a rural area, the number of people living in a specific area is in constant flux based on the change in the local economy, politics, environment and demographics of that area.  To base a definition of a place on the number of people living in that particular area is therefore both meaningless and unrealistic in a changing world.  

But governments and administrations love hard data.  Although this approach is supposed to make running a government more efficient, the above article is a clear indication that this is not always the case.  The approach taken by the US Government to the definition of a rural place, is also indicative of the major ill of our education system which favors one-liner answers, hard data and facts as the tools for understanding our surroundings, in place of the more multifaceted, qualitative and subjective modes of understanding being practiced by a rising number of institutions today.  I believe that more often than not, we need qualitative descriptions and narratives as opposed to numbers, in order to grasp the true meaning of people, places and things and I hope that we will get a chance to exercise this during our ARHA 571 Exhibition Design and Practice class this fall.

See you all in class tomorrow.

Bengi.