On the Utility of the Urban-Rural Distinction

We note without being prompted that we are in or out of and urban setting. Leveling the distinction between city and country is not normally a controversial thing. That said, as the distinction plays itself out as a matter of policy, the point at which one gives way to the other is crucial. At the margin, what defines a place as one or the other? I would argue that among other sine qua nons of urbanity or rurality is connection to infrastructure. Elsewhere in this blog I have argued that retaining the distinction for the purposes of allocating federal stimulus dollars makes a certain sense. At the same time, channeling funding for broadband through the Rural Utilities Service both prejudices the definition of the broadband challenge and biases our approach to resolving it. Yes, the present approaches to providing access where it doesn't exist and improving service and adoption where it does exist suggest a new understanding and definition of urban and rural. Namely, the service areas for high-speed wired broadband service can be taken as the outer fringe of what is urban and what will be urban in the near future. Areas where wired services don't exist (i.e., in those areas where wireless broadband is the only solution on the horizon) can properly be understood as rural. Of course, there are shades of gray. Places where wired services exist along transportation corridors, but where service is spotty away from highways and pockets of population density are likely to already be considered sub- and exurban. So for those of us who are wasting time with labels, perhaps existing infrastructure can be our defining characteristic (since it likely correlates strongly with other attributes.