Bozeman News

When do we shake hands?

Redefining Urban and Rural: Cooperation in a Time of Local Need

By Susan Duncan, 2-19-08

Neighbors need each other, just as agriculture and urban areas need each other. “When they don’t get along, it threatens the security of everyone,” says Susan Duncan. In this column, she discusses our imminent dependence on local resources where rural and urban areas will be looking to each other for products and needs. Where does this leave cooperation?

So far, the efforts to control “growth” have been based on competition. Why didn’t those measures work? One side wants to control the behavior of the other and only dollar values count. The result is conflict between “good guys” and “bad guys.” The rancor produces lots of heat, little enlightenment and not nearly enough progress.

Let’s look at it another way. Think of urban and rural land uses as indispensable, complementary halves of one — a whole community structure. Agriculture thrives on urban markets and expertise: Urban areas thrive on the amenities offered by agriculture. Through integration, urban and rural land uses build a strong foundation of interdependence and a stable community. This cooperative approach requires expanding the definition of neighborhood beyond the “city limits”.

Everyone believes their neighbors are - well, a little odd - maybe even crazy. Look at all the perplexing, inconsiderate, annoying things they do! But suppose you had an emergency – a gas leak, a fire, an accident. Where is the first place you would go to call for help? Your neighbor’s house. Neighbors need each other. If neighbors can’t get along, it threatens the security of everyone.

Let’s expand your neighborhood to include all of your “neighbors” in town and out of town throughout the valley – urban and rural. What do you depend on these neighbors for? What products or services can they provide to you – include the intangibles like scenery, open space, a job with benefits and post-secondary education? What products or services can you offer them? What would your life look like if they disappeared and you were left on your own?

Historically, extractive industries like agriculture, logging, and mining for gravel operated outside of town. The noise, dust, odors and risks did not affect most townspeople. The raw materials were brought to town for use, further processing and distribution. Those activities were proof of “progress” to rural and urban residents.

Since World War II, residential uses fanned out into the countryside and become neighbors to these operations. In town, zoning protected residential neighborhoods from industrial and commercial uses. No such protections exist out in the country. So today, the expectations of neighbors clash in county commission hearings.

The distinct line that separated urban and rural has blurred. Drive out of town and see if you can tell where urban ends and rural begins. We have no choice but to work out a respectful, tolerant, mutually beneficial relationship. Cooperation offers the best option for meeting the challenges ahead of us.

A landscape of blended urban and rural uses is only one of the forces pushing for cooperation. High energy prices and global warming will make it necessary for us to develop a strong, resilient, local economy - parallel, and in addition to, the global one.

James Kunstler, writing in Rolling Stone, April 13, 2005 calls it “The Long Emergency.” He describes life in a world where cheap energy sources are no longer available to support the lifestyle we have created. Ignore whether you agree with his assessment of alternative energy sources, climate change or the severity of the affects he forecasts. Think how these forces will impact your lifestyle over time – perhaps just a little this year, more next year, significantly more five years, ten years from now.

Here’s the key points, I found most interesting:

Kunstler says, “Suburbia will come to be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” We let our towns “rot away” and “trashed our best farmland,” he says. In Gallatin County we are letting the infrastructure that sustains us slip away, as it has in so many other places.

“The way that commerce is currently organized in America will not survive the Long Emergency,” Kunstler says. Transportation of inventory is likely to become prohibitively expensive. Point and click shopping may be convenient, but not cheap. Can we afford food that travels 1,500 miles before we eat it? Rising fuel costs are only part of the problem. Today, commercial drivers are in short supply, locally and nationwide. How will goods be distributed?

Kunstler says, “Our lives will become profoundly and intensely local.” Due to reduced mobility, we will depend more on the skills of our neighbors, urban designs that catch and re-use runoff water, better insulation and renewable energy. We will depend on our local economy for a higher percentage of goods than we do now, especially food production. Large-scale commodity agriculture is very dependent on fossil fuels for labor saving equipment, irrigation, fertilizers, processing and transportation. Methods of agricultural production will have to adapt.

Kunstler says, “The successful regions in the twenty-first century will be the ones surrounded by viable farming hinterlands that can reconstitute locally sustainable economies on an armature of civic cohesion.” The Gallatin Valley is lucky to have some local food production capacity like Gallatin Valley Botanicals, Wheat Montana, Darigold, Big Sky Premium Meats; construction material production like RY Lumber in Livingston and Townsend, Holcim (cement), and Knife River -JTL (gravel); and a new venture to produce biodiesel. We also have working irrigation infrastructure and waste recycling systems.

And note that part about “on an armature of civic cohesion”. I see a “Sense of Place” as that “armature” for developing cohesion between urban and rural. All of us – urban and rural - care about this place and what happens to it. We see that living here is special. We choose to live here. This place has a unique natural and human ecosystem that we have to respect, in order to live in it successfully. This is true regardless of where you live.

Using “Sense of Place”, we can build a strong, interdependent community that respects urban and rural interests. We have to. It’s a survival skill for whatever challenges (major or minor) that lie ahead.

More next time on how to develop a “Sense of Place.”

(For more discussion on adapting to the Long Emergency, see “Beyond Energy Alternatives” the Third US Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions” at CommunitySolutions.org.)

• Redefining Urban and Rural: Agriculture Loses Without Planning
• Redefining Urban and Rural: Why Growth Tools Haven’t Succeeded
• Redefining Rural and Urban: A Community Discussion
• Urban and Rural: Lifestyles Clash Over Differing Views of Open Space

Susan Duncan lives on a 76-acre irrigated farm in the Gallatin Valley of Montana that she and her husband Richard built from a fallow grain field since 1976. They raised registered and commercial cattle, sheep, and hay. Now they are niche market entrepreneurs of Dexter cattle and some produce. From 1999-2004 Susan was a country lifestyle columnist for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle “Fencelines” Section. She holds a B.S. Degree in Forestry from the University of Montana. For the last 20 years she has been an active participant in local efforts to envision a viable future and guide exploding development.

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