Metropolitan Government: Residents Outside the Central Urban Areas

• DOI: 10.1177/106591296101400312
• Published date: 01 September 1961
• Author: Clarence J. Hein
• Date: 01 September 1961
• Subject Matter: Articles

METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT: RESIDENTS OUTSIDE
THE CENTRAL URBAN AREAS
CLARENCE J. HEIN
United States Department of Agriculture
ECENT
STUDIES of metropolitan governmental problems in the United
States have paid scant attention to the &dquo;rural&dquo; areas, despite the fact
that in 1956 there were 17,057,000 &dquo;rural residents&dquo; in the 174 standard
metropolitan areas.’ It is the thesis of this article that a number of potential
future problems could be alleviated or prevented by giving somewhat more at-
tention to the outlying, less densely populated parts of our metropolitan areas.
These 17 million people comprise a little more than 20 per cent of the popu-
lation of the standard metropolitan areas. Technically, they are rural residents,
but it is clear that many of them differ very little from the suburban residents
who are their neighbors in more densely settled or incorporated areas. Among
the 17 million are such diverse groups as commercial farmers, residents of small
isolated subdivisions, part-time farmers, residents of small villages, wealthy re-
sidents of country estates, and residents of rural slums. All of these people have
a stake in the solution of metropolitan area problems. However, further investiga-
tion is needed to determine whether their interests have been adequately con-
sidered in the governmental arrangements for dealing with these problems.
Certain semantic difficulties complicate the task, because our activities and
our institutions have again outrun our language. Governmental processes and
problems in metropolitan areas, and the residents of these areas, cannot easily be
fitted into the traditional categories of &dquo;urban&dquo; and &dquo;rural.&dquo; In defining and using
these terms in metropolitan areas, the Bureau of the Census has imposed con-
siderable order upon a confusing array of legal usage and governmental organiza-
tion which varies markedly from state to state. In using these materials, students
of metropolitan government need to keep in mind that the chief distinction
between urban and rural residents is often a measurement of how close each
resident is to his nearest neighbor. Even for this characteristic, there may be
greater differences in concentration of people within the urban areas than occur
between parts of the urban and parts of the rural area.
When individuals are considered, it seems clear that the way of living of
farmers and other rural residents has increasingly taken on the characteristics
formerly associated with urban living. Rural homes have many of the urban
amenities, such as telephones and electricity, and the wives of rural residents are
quite likely to have more electrical appliances than have the wives of residents
of the central city.
The problem of defining metropolitan limits in terms of urban characteristics
is illustrated by the effect of a slight modification of the definition used by the
National Conference on Metropolitan Problems held at Michigan State Univer-
sity in 1956. The definition that metropolitan problems arise &dquo;from a large con-
1
United States Bureau of the Census, Civilian Population in the United States by Type of Re-
sidence, March 1956, and April 1950, Series P-20, Number 71, December 7, 1956.
764

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765
gested population, living and working interdependently in a considerable ter-
ritory, rushing to and fro, with governments which do not coincide with the pat-
terns of life,&dquo; 2 can, with one change, be applied to the sparsely settled areas of
the Great Plains. There, governmental problems arise from &dquo;a small, sparsely-
settled populations, living and working interdependently in a considerable terri-
tory, rushing to and fro, with governments which do not coincide with the pat-
terns of life.&dquo; In some areas of western Kansas, between 30 and 40 per cent of the
farmers live in town and commute to their farms,3 &dquo;rushing to and fro&dquo; at speeds
sufficient to incite the envy of metropolitan residents crawling along in urban
...