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Rural Policy

Rural pasts and futures: Incorporating time in analyses of rural geographies and housing conditions Tracey Farrigan*, Mariya shcheglovitova, Mariya shcheglovitova,

Regional studies focused on mobilities have recognized how rural and urban places are connected through space by flows of goods, people, ideas, and capital. But there is limited work that explores connections between rural and urban places through time. Obstacles to longitudinal analysis of rural to urban transitions at smaller geographic scales have included changing geometries and historically incomplete coverage of census tracts, which until recently have not been sufficiently addressed. For this study, we draw on a longitudinal database of census tract level housing density from 1940 to 2020 and historic census data to (1) document the shrinking geography of ‘rural America’ and (2) to better understand the extent to which housing conditions in rural areas change as they add housing density. Consistent with other studies, we find an overall loss of rural areas with rural to urban transitions concentrated in urban peripheries. However, trends in rural geographies and housing conditions differ by region and timing of transition. We find that the timing of housing density growth is more relevant to current housing conditions than rural designation. Rural tracts that transitioned to urban density early in the study period have housing conditions that are more akin to persistently rural tracts. This analysis suggests that distinct “rural” and “urban” designations offer a snapshot in time, the addition of longitudinal analysis can help us think about rural and urban areas relationally.