Do rural people understand urban people/issues better or vice versa?

In My Humble Opinion
81

That is the sort of thing that a rural person would think about urban issues.

I think that rural people probably think that they understand urban issues better than urban’s understand rural, because they see urban issues as straightforward and easy to understand, unlike, say how to look up in the US Department of Agricultural’s publications to see how much water a field needs.

Of course, rural people know nothing of what it is like to live in a diverse community, living and interacting with people of different background, religions, views, and even political affiliations and urban people may have less knowledge of what it is like to live in a homogenous community, surrounded by people very similar to yourself.

82

That’s the real issue with dividing the country into only “urban” or “rural”. Where do the suburbs and small towns and all the other places that are not quite rural yet not really urban go? When you talk about 80% of the population lives in an urban area, you’re counting all those areas as urban and they don’t necessarily have the same issues as a more densely populated area. And they don’t necessarily share many issues with the “rural” population either.

I’m sure it depends very much on the rural area you’re talking about - but none of the people I know who live in rural areas are farmers or even work on farms. They work at resorts, commute to work in the nearest city, work remotely at home for a company based elsewhere , or they work for the various employers that exist everywhere such as schools, restaurants, mechanic shops, real estate agencies etc.

83

And quite a number of them don’t have jobs at all, after the coal mine or the factory or the mill or whatever it was that was the economic draw and center of their community has left, never, ever, ever to return, no matter the tariffs imposed on chinese goods.

84

I was amused at John Oliver’s trade segment a while back where aluminum workers in Missouri were happy they had their “jobs back” while a nearby nail factory’s steel costs had skyrocketed leading to lower sales and laid off workers.

85

I’m pretty sure that the definition of “urban” that the government is using is pretty liberal, as in it pretty much includes anything but living outside a town in the countryside, or in a one stoplight town somewhere.

So they’d count everyone living somewhere like say… Palestine, TX as “urban”, because they live in a town of 18,000. In reality, Palestine still has much more in common with “rural” areas nearby than it does with somewhere like Tyler, much less Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston or San Antonio.

I’d like to see a breakdown that’s more along the lines of percentage of people who live in metro areas larger than 100,000 people (or whatever that number ends up needing to be) - I suspect that the urban rural divide really starts somewhere around there.

86

I can tell you one advantage of living in a truly rural area, you can go outside an pee anytime you like and no one is around to see your wang. :wink:

87

You can laugh, but that has always been one of my requirements. If I’m outside working on the yard, I want to be able to take a quick piss without going inside.

88

OP could have polled “indoor/outdoor plumbing?” and gotten similar responses to the original question!

I think the divide is mostly about education. Both rural/urban areas have very smart people who can understand both sides of issues, and equally, rural/urban areas have really stupid people, who understand nothing really, even their own local issues. No surprise I guess.
I live in coastal california and I “feel” like we. both rural and urban dwellers, understand some of the differences, mostly due to the water issues, which are always on the forefront of peoples minds here. It gets the discussions going. IMHO.

89

I think population density is an interesting way to approach this question. For instance the Denver metro area has. Population density of 4,044 per square mile. While 65% of that certainly is smaller i would still think of it as urban as opposed to rural. I was just in the area last weekend in the Petersburg/Williamsburg area and while there are certainly some very rural places I would classify the cities as cities as opposed to a small town I’m used to in the west. I’m sure there is a county wide population distribution that is used to define rural/suburban/urban counties which could be interesting to difine what someone’s point of view generally is.

90

Many Trump supporters are under educated, rural white people.

If by under educated you mean didn’t complete college. Among college educated whites the vote was almost evenly split between Hillary and Trump. Among whites w/o a college degree they preferred the gop by almost 40 points.

Why is that stereotype wrong? That’s like saying democratic supporters are black people who live in cities. That’s pretty accurate too. It doesn’t describe all democrats, but blacks who live in urban areas are pretty strongly democratic.

And whites without college who live in rural areas are pretty strongly republican.

91

My parents live in a rural area and I still have to pee behind the generator so the neighbors won’t see.

I guess by truly rural you mean a house every quarter mile and fields in between. But aside from farmers, do other people live in those houses? I assume if your home has nothing but fields for a mile, you’re probably involved in agriculture. At least that’s how it was where I grew up.

92

Mostly distance, hilly terrain, and trees where I am.

93

My point wasn’t about the undereducation, it was about the rural vs. urban; there aren’t enough “rural” people out there, at least by the government’s metrics, to vote any presidential candidate in.

So there’s one of two thing I think - there’s either something wrong with the definition of rural, or maybe there’s something with the definition of who Trump supporters really are.

Personally I lean toward the rural definition being flawed, and counting a lot of people as urban who any sensible person would consider rural, despite living in a town of some kind.

94

This says there are 60 million people in rural America. I’m not sure what their definition is. My impression is that the cutoff is either population size or population density, but again I’m not sure what the cutoff is.

It used to be 2500 people, but I think that was a century ago. My parents are from a town of 5000 and I’d consider that a rural area because population density was 60 people per square mile.

Either way, 1/5 of Americans means 1/5 of voters. So 30 million highly partisan voters who prefer the GOP by 65-80% can swing elections. Especially if rural areas make up a bigger % of the electorate in certain states.

95

I consider our place and those like it “hobby farms”. A modest home, barn, sheds, a pond, etc situated on enough property to allow a big garden and pasture for horses. We can saddle up, ride into the woods, and spend hours exploring.

A property nearby has a small house in one corner of a six acre perfectly flat rectangle. It’s a weird looking setup. The homeowner used to fly an ultralight aircraft but got out of the hobby. A radio controlled airplane club meets there occasionally.

96

Sure, but roughly half of the voters voted Trump; meaning that more than half the GOP voters were NOT rural (don’t know about their educational status).

That’s why I’m saying that blaming it on uneducated rural people with a smug sneer isn’t going to do the Democrats any favors come 2020; they might have been the swing vote, but they’re not the bulk of people voting for Trump.

97

In my mind, urban is generally reserved for dense, built up areas characterized by at least one commercial core, relatively self-contained neighborhoods of apartment buildings or densely packed single and multi-family homes and access to transportation infrastructure (highways, rail, seaports, airports, public transportation, etc).

Culturally, urban areas can be characterized with a great deal of economic, educational, social, and demographic diversity, often in the same city.

**Suburbs **are the vast sprawl of mostly single family homes, big box stores, strip malls and chain restaurants surrounding the urban centers. I generally characterize suburbs as anchored to a nearby city and more homogenous than urban areas. That is by design. That architectural homogeny tends to foster a homogeny of thought as well, as most people in a given suburb will tend to come from the same income bracket, attend the same schools, work in the same nearby businesses, shop in the same stores and eat in the same restaurants.

And by default, **rural **areas are the vast no-mans land between the suburban sprawl. Characterized by small villages, farms and wilderness. The isolated nature of rural areas tends to breed more homogeny.

There is also the concept of exurbs. These are suburban-ish bedroom communities, often gated, that are outside the suburbs in the rural areas. If you look on Google maps and see a densely packed subdivision that appears to be plopped in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by farms and whatnot, that is an exurb.
I think the main characteristic of suburbs and exurbs that defines their politics is their self-selecting nature. Housing costs create an economic barrier that limits diversity in terms of education, profession and experience. The big mistake of Democrats is to assume all conservatives are uneducated rural hicks. In my observation, there are plenty of suburbanites (who happen to be generally educated, affluent and white) who vote Republican. The reason for this is when you live in a relatively contained, idyllic community, there is little incentive to change it with progressive policies.

98

Exactly. I suspect it’s as much or more educated suburban whites who vote GOP as it is uneducated rural hicks.

That group perceives a lot of cost with progressive policies- tax raises or merely a different allocation of resources that takes away from their communities.

Homogeneity of any kind, tends toward an us-vs-them mentality, which is how you get big chunks of the suburbs voting against the black or poor parts of town.

99

My only real argument is where do you put large towns? Say places like Charleston, WV or Kearney, NE or Rapid City, SD? They don’t seem ‘urban’ to me. They definitely don’t seem suburban. They don’t meet your definition of rural unless you think 60 thousand people is a village.

100

I don’t think many people actually involved in politics on the Democratic side think that. Obviously one big element of GOP support is as it always has been upwardly mobile people urban and rural, not just the newer element of the ‘forgotten men’ of the white working class. The latter is mentioned so much mainly because it’s group which has gotten more GOP leaning, which does merit some mention. The idea of that group as the core of the GOP though is obviously incomplete. And by the same token a lot of the Democratic base is also people of limited education, though less likely to be white, along with some upscale people of all colors. It’s a fairly even battle for well off college educated voters, though more skewed than ever between men and women in that category.

As to what’s urban or rural I don’t think it’s that worthwhile to debate what size of town etc. It probably works just as well to define it circularly. The kind of ‘rural’ tending pro-GOP (and particularly populist Trumpist version of the GOP) is mainly in the areas where the GOP wins elections handily. :slight_smile: Which in all seriousness can be seen on a map of say 2016 presidential voting by county to be generally the counties outside (especially beyond normal commuting distance from) major metropolitan areas. IOW definitely includes places Kearny NE (a nice town I’ve visited a couple of times) even if fairly big towns. It doesn’t include some rural swaths that are predominantly black (in various Southern states), outlying counties dominated by college towns sometimes, retirement areas for a lot of coastal people, and just plain varies by region (not as true in New England), etc. But it’s generally true if you don’t try to get too exact.