ABSTRACT
The cultural and social construction of the urban/rural divide has been very influential in shaping rural policy in both Europe and North America. On the one hand, ancient pastoral ideas of society in conjunction with idyllic and utopian notions of small towns and farms, with their associated traditional value systems, are transposed against depictions of cities as crowded, polluted, industrialized, and anti-human conflict zones. On the other hand, post-industrial cities see themselves as similarly utopian and progressive islands in a more conservative surrounding landscape. This chapter investigates how these contrasting visions have been informing political reality and influencing policy in the United States, especially when it comes to issues such as economic development, urban sprawl, resource extraction, renewable energy production, notions of land, land ownership and land protection, and cultural and political divisions between urban centers and rural areas. The chapter finds the very notion of development itself can be something that is being perceived as a colonizing tool. More development, in the sense of reshaping the rural as quasi-urban, may contribute to more political dissonance, not less. This chapter concludes by asking, is the rural allowed to speak, to participate in shaping its own destiny? More importantly, does the city listen?
