Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Legislation
Abstract
Rural communities are at a crossroads. On one hand, small towns continue to receive robust support from the federal government. Congress sends billions of dollars in agricultural support, homeownership subsidies, and infrastructure spending to rural places every year. Yet, despite ongoing federal investment, conditions in rural America have deteriorated. Economic growth, educational opportunities, and health outcomes in rural places all lag behind the rest of the country.
This Article asks what has gone wrong. Why do rural communities continue to lose ground despite such significant outlays from Congress? This Article contributes to the ongoing debate about the future of the countryside by highlighting one previously unexamined fault in the ongoing efforts to revitalize rural America: proponents of rural communities—in both think tanks and government agencies— have rarely been forced to enumerate the benefits that the countryside provides. Defenders of small towns simply assume that saving rural places is worthwhile. But why? The lack of clarity matters. Rural people are suffering, at least in part, because policymakers do not have a clear view of why small towns are important or how they can compete with cities.
This Article unpacks the confusion about the value of rural communities. It compiles the first systematic inventory of arguments in favor of ongoing government support of the countryside. There are at least six plausible reasons that rural communities matter. Rural places: (1) grow the nation’s food, (2) produce most of its energy, (3) guard a distinctive cultural inheritance, (4) protect the environment, (5) supply popular recreational amenities, and (6) suffer unique harms from federal policies. This Article assesses each of these defenses and then suggests a new framework for rural policymaking. Going forward, decisionmakers in Congress should abandon the current emphasis on agricultural subsidies and instead focus on the metagovernance of programs that aid rural regions. More specifically, the federal government should set goals for rural development but then turn resources and decision-making authority over to the states.
Recommended Citation
CLOWNEY, STEPHEN, "Do Rural Places Matter?" (2024). Connecticut Law Review. 620.
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/law_review/620