Nature,Affordability, and Privacy as Motivations for Exurban Living

Current demographic trends indicate that the 21st century will be one of exurban growth as more Americans seek out countryside home sites and their accompanying lifestyles. Two of the literature's conventional wisdoms regarding exurban migration motivations are critically examined in this study: (1) exurbanites are seeking home sites in close proximity to natural places, and (2) exurbanites are drawn to countryside areas because of the affordability of such locations. This study uses 34 snowball-sampled, semistructured interviews from Indiana and Illinois exurbanites to examine these two commonly held beliefs. Subjects reported that the natural environment did not primarily motivate their moves. Current home sites were, however, attractive due to their perceived affordability. The main, and remarkable, finding of this study is the strong desire for privacy that drew people to exurbia. The desire for privacy was cited as a main motivator by a large majority of the subjects interviewed.     

Uneven urban metabolisms: toward an integrative (ex)urban political ecology of sustainability in and around the city

ABSTRACT

Expanding cities present a sustainability challenge, as the uneven proliferation of hybrid landscape types becomes a major feature of 21st century urbanization. To fully address this challenge, scholars must consider the broad range of land uses that being produced beyond the urban core and how land use patterns in one location may be tied to patterns in other locations. Diverse threads within political ecology provide useful insights into the dynamics that produce uneven urbanization. Specifically, urban political ecology (UPE) details how economic power influences the development decision-making that proliferate urban forms, patterns of uneven access, and modes of decision-making, frequently viewing resource extraction and development through the urban metabolism lens. The political ecology of exurbia, or, perhaps, an exurban political ecology (ExPE), examines the symbolic role nature and the rural have played in conservation and development efforts that produce social, economic, and environmental conflicts. While UPE approaches tend to privilege macroscale dynamics, ExPE emphasizes the role of landowners, managers, and other actors in struggles over the production of exurban space, including through decision-making institutions and within the context of broader political economic forces. Three case studies illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, demonstrating the benefits for and giving suggestions on how to integrate their insights into urban sustainability research. Integrated political ecology approaches demonstrate how political-economic processes at a variety of scales produce diverse local sustainability responses.     

The Growth of Ranchettes in La Plata County,Colorado, 1988–2008

Ranchettes are low-density, rural parcels typically from thirty-five to seventy acres that have proliferated across the Rocky Mountain West. They consume large amounts of land and increase fragmentation, leading to potentially negative impacts on the ecology and cultural identity of local places. Although many anecdotal accounts decry the rise in ranchettes, few studies measure their prevalence or spatial patterns. We use archival and contemporary land ownership data to measure ranchette development in La Plata County, Colorado, an amenity-rich county popular for recreation, retirement, and ranchettes. Results show continual yet slowing growth across the decades with patterns of growth spreading in a contagious effect around initial nodes of development.     

LAND‐USE DYNAMICS BEYOND THE AMERICAN URBAN FRINGE*

ABSTRACT. A deficiency common to both the historical debates over loss of agricultural land and the current discussions of urbanization and sprawl is a limited understanding of land‐use dynamics beyond the urban fringe. Data aggregated at the county level poorly capture the fine‐grained pattern of land‐use change beyond the dynamic urban‐rural interface. Furthermore, current urban‐based definitions are poorly suited to delineate these areas, and low‐density, exurban land use is difficult to measure using existing land‐cover databases. Urbanization and the conversion of once‐agricultural or other natural resource lands to other uses has traditionally been tracked using urban areas, as delimited in the U.S. census. Urban densities are typically defined as areas with more than 1,000 people per square mile, or 1.6 people per acre (U.S. Census Bureau 2000). Assuming an average of 2.5 people per housing unit, this translates to roughly 0.7 units per acre, or approximately 1 unit per 1.6 acres. The analytical units used in the census, however, both overbound and underbound areas with urban densities. About one‐third of urban areas in 1990 comprised lower‐than‐urban housing density, thanks to overbounding. But, then, one‐third of locations that had urban‐level housing densities failed to be included in urban areas as a result of underbounding, which, if counted, would have constituted another 18 million acres of urban area. An increase over time of the average number of acres required per housing unit in exurban and higher‐density locations occurred in roughly one‐third of U.S. counties from 1960 to 1990 and persisted from 1990 to 2000. In 2000 roughly 38 million acres were settled at urban densities, and nearly ten times that much land was settled at rates from low, exurban density (as low as one house per 40 acres) to higher rates (up to one per 10 acres). This represents a continuing encroachment on land previously given over to other uses—habitat or agriculture. Practitioners of natural resource management need to recognize the ubiquity of exurban development and better incorporate the fine‐scale patterns of land use beyond the urban fringe.     

Beyond the Edge and in Between: (Re)conceptualizing the Rural–Urban Interface as Meaning–Model–Metaphor

As examinations of the rural–urban interface move beyond a focus on the rural or urban fringe as a location and move toward examining the patterns and processes that both divide and link rural and urban places, a broader (re)conceptualization of the rural–urban interface becomes increasingly important. Thus far the question of boundaries and interfaces between so-called urban and rural locales has mostly revolved around where and when such boundaries occur (including significant coverage of the differences and conflicts between urban vs. rural people), rather than asking what physical or social functions are being served by the rural–urban interface itself. In response, I (re)frame the rural–urban interface not only as a boundary between two distinct spaces but also as a conduit, a place of exchange, and a flux point between them. Using a particular case of contested ecologies in the exurban Sierra Nevada foothills of California, I (re)conceptualize the rural–urban interface as meaning, model, and metaphor (MMM), situating contrasting people and places in an ongoing negotiation of place and environmental meaning along the (ex)urbanizing edge. Although the differences between rural and urban are increasingly unclear, the division continues to be compelling from environmental and sociopolitical standpoints. I argue that (perceived) boundaries are instrumental in understanding physical–material change and for mitigating social conflicts occurring across them. As such, attention to the patterns, processes, and flows that connect or separate rural and urban areas is critical to forging effective and long-lasting solutions to contemporary social, economic, and environmental problems.