Anthony Averbeck
RURAL RELEVANCE: PROJECTING A FUTURE FOR THE INTERSTITIAL
“The city no longer exists. As the concept of city is distorted and stretched beyond precedent, each insistence on its primordial condition – in terms of images, rules, fabrication – irrevocably leads via nostalgia to irrelevance.” REM KOOLHAAS
Queensland Drones, crop analysis, https://qlddrones.com.au/about-us/
(Left) Saul Steinberg, "View of the World from Ninth Avenue," The New Yorker, March 29, 1976
(Right) "Museum of Extinct Americana," The Arizona Republic, January 3, 1968
By 2050, it is projected that the ratio of global population living in rural to urban areas is expected to grow to a nearly 2/3 to 1/3 gap. In the midst of this mass migration to megacities, a two-fold problem presents itself. First, an unsustainable reliance on the urban core to sustain human life and second, an interstitial ‘other’ space is left behind to con-tend with a state of decline in juxtaposition with the growth. This ‘other’ space between major urban centers is increasingly being comprised of a complex matrix of ‘rural,’ ‘small town,’ ‘mid-size city’, and even post-industrial city in the ‘shrink’. While the non-urban, or ‘rural’ is experiencing the most pronounced state of loss, shrinking cities around the world are experiencing effects of de-urbanization: an unsustainable infrastructure, physical abandonment, and the inevitable return of urban land to the rural. Together, these phenomena have left not only specific places, but the very concepts of ruralism and urbanity in a state of flux. Historically, urban and rural have represented hyper-specific conditions in direct contrast with each other. Characterized by low density, bucolic landscape expanses, and the socio-economic dependence on agriculture, the countryside has existed as a mysterious other to the city, and to a large extent, the person as city dweller. Until recently, the city and countryside co-existed in a separate but equal relationship in the human experience. This urban/rural dichotomy is becoming an increasingly unsustainable condition.
I. PROVOCATION
One conclusion that can be drawn from this phenomenon is that the megacity should inevitably be left to pre-vail as the only viable future option for human habitation of planet Earth. The rural, hinterland, town, post-whatever city and everything else can be left behind to dereliction. However, this is a naively simplistic assumption that negates the pitfalls and limitations of the megacity model, while at the same time ignores the opportunity that is often unrecognized, but lies dormant in interstitial space.
II. QUESTION
If we accept this provocation, then the central question at hand is can the built environment mitigate the decline of the interstitial (rural, small town, shrinking city, post in-dustrial wasteland, and whatever else is in between) in the wake of mass migration to urban centers by directly challenging the urban/rural dichotomy to produce new and radical models for human habitation? Can a new model of ‘urbanity’ or, perhaps more accurate-ly a hybridized or neither-nor ‘(r)urbanity’ be developed to achieve three primary visions for the interstitial:
liveable urbanity for everyone (democratized opportunity, regardless of city, suburb, town or rural living)
green city (hybridization of city and landscape, consumption and production)
five minute city (all needed amenities within five minute walk or ride on public transportation)
III. MEGACITY BOOM : MASSIVE GROWTH, LIMITED BENEFIT CEILING
Urbanization has led to a fixation and fetishization of major urban centers in academic and cultural discourse. Deeply problematic is the fact that the dominant discourse on ‘big urbanity’ often negates the opportunities inherent in interstitial places, rural, urban, and inbetween, and fails to rec-ognize the pitfalls of the megacity model of human settlement.
IV. WHERE PEOPLE WANT TO LIVE
V. RURAL DECLINE
Despite social desire to occupy the non-urban, over the past 50 years, rural areas around the world have experienced an overall climate of decline. Population loss in favor of major urban centers has been accompanied by an increasingly disproportionate urban/rural share of the GDP, unemploy-ment, the flight of industry, and a rural cultural identity in crisis. The Rural U.S. contains 80% of the country’s landmass, but now slightly less than half of the population and by 2025 is projected to drop to nearly 25%.
VI. OPPORTUNITIES
Despite its state of decline, the American middle is a frontline of transformation for future economies, novel politics, and an untapped commons. Intensive resource extraction and production catalyzed development of the territory; from Lewis and Clark’s expedition to the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 to Eisenhower’s interstate highway system begun in 1956. Today, high-tech big agriculture is yielding more crop production than ever, and natural gas production is on the rise. Server farms are moving into cheap, available rural land with sprawling new campuses. International corporate interests are benefiting, while middle Americans see few benefits. A radical rethinking of the territory - how people live, work, and move across the cities and regions - is essential. This unique and timely situation demands attention, and offers opportunity for action.
VII. PROJECTIONS
New models for human settlement of rural territories are necessary; specifically, models that respond directly to a rapidly changing territory with extensive established infrastructural networks. One such proposal is dubbed “TempTown,” taking advantage of existing rail networks and industrial waste in the form of 30,000,000 unused shipping containers worldwide. The projection imagines a future with flexible infrastructure for settlement with inexpensive and moveable containers to house program for a town that moves with resources; from grain harvest to extraction of natural gas.
