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Does Urban respect Rural (and vice versa)?
February 24th, 2010 by Mike Knutson
With the Olympic Games pitting the United States and Canadian athletes and fans against each other, South Dakota native Tom Brokaw offered a smart commentary on the relationship between our two great countries. His comments, displayed in the video embedded below, focus on the commonalities that exist between our countries. The U.S. is lucky to have such good neighbors.
Source location: “Tom Brokaw explains Canada to Americans,” J9406051′s Channel on YouTube,
Social, Economic, and Political. Brokaw shows the connections between run deep. Watching the video, I think most Americans understand that the U.S. and Canada need each other for continued prosperity.
Sadly, I’m not sure that same level of respect exists between urban and rural Americans. Being online as much as I am, I see a lot of news reports, blog posts, and comments suggesting Rural America’s only significant value is that it provides cheap food for cities — where the real economic activity gets done. Perhaps my take on this issue is still jaded by the recent negativity associated the Hazelton, ND story, but I don’t think I’m far off.
So what can be done about this lack of respect?
Respect is a two-way street, and Rural America could show respect by getting over some of the stereotypes we hold about urban culture. That’s probably a good place to start.
I also wonder if Tom Brokaw could be part of the solution. After all, he’s a product of rural South Dakota and has a pretty good feel for both rural and urban people. Perhaps a video production like the U.S.- Canadian piece would help raise awareness of this issue.
But at the end of the day, videos, while helpful, seldom produce transformative, long-term results.
To accomplish lasting change, we may want to consider a model being developed by Minnesota Rural Partners called Rurb.MN. The project seeks to generate conversation about rural-urban connections with the goal of stimulating economic growth and innovation.
I encourage you to check out this blog post describing the project in greater detail. I need to dig into the project in greater detail myself and have fired off an e-mail with a few questions.
I hope the project’s impacts will be substantial and transformative; that’s what is really needed for rural and urban communities.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments ( 2 )
March 13th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Mike:
I need some help. I need the word “URBAN” back. I’m an architect and urbanist. I’ve been in South Dakota for 48 hours and I’ve already heard that the word “urban” is verboten in referring to the urban landscape of majority of spaces in this place. That’s silly. That’s like asking a doctor not to refer to “Public Health” or a lawyer not to refer to “Justice”.
What’s not “Urban” about the main street in Curtis, NE (pop. 750)?
I’m sitting on the Main Street in Brookings as I write this looking at the supreme Post Office here and the incredible street-scape they’ve built here. This place, like both Times Square and the two block main street in Curtis, NE is a rich civic space–space shared by a community and “owned” by the collective (no I’m not a socialist). Its the public stage we all need to act out our exchanges, interactions, and communications.
Here’s why I’m going to stay…I’m the first Head of the new Architecture Department at South Dakota State University. I earned the position with strong credentials in place-making and a history and insatiable curiosity for the urbanism of small towns.
An architecture school certainly is about vapor barriers and the rise over run of steps but it is, more than anything else, about creating and enhancing public, civic space by making smart sustainable buildings that work together in a collective fabric. That public facet of our practice is called urbanism or urban design. That’s like doctors being charged ultimately with public health or lawyers being charged with collective justice. When buildings come together they form an urban fabric whether that makes a village, a town, or a metropolis.
I’ve yo-yo-ed my whole life between what you all are calling “urban” and “rural”. I’ve lived in suburbs (Garland, TX, Dollard des Ormeaux, QC) metropoli, (Manhattan, Denver, Austin, Berlin, Dublin, and Montreal), small cities (Youngstown, OH, Lincoln, NE, Lubbock, TX) and small towns (Norman, OK, New Bedford, PA). What I’ve never done is lived “out” on a farm. I’ve spent my life studying the physical form and space of people living together. To do so I’ve lived everywhere I can and I’ve carefully studied the cross-section of places and spaces that I’ve called home. I’ve also worked for Nebraska Lied Main Street as a Design Coordinator and have spent significant time studying places like Curtis, Kimball, Wayne, Freemont, Burwell, Gothenburg, South Sioux City, and (my favorite) Ogallala, NE.
I’ve come here to practice what I do in this place. As Dave Hickey says, “Architecture only works where it is at”, and I am charged to train the young minds and hands of South Dakota in this discipline, to stock the professional firms of the state with the best and brightest, to produce research and creative work that engages the larger academic and disciplinary dialog, and to serve the community of citizens of South Dakota and the region. I’ve got a penchant for focusing on small towns, fairgrounds, and other such civic spaces in my design work. I’m going to join you all in keeping these young people here at home by helping them see the beautiful, rich urban fabric of the places from which they come.
Drawing a line between yourselves as “the rural” and “the urban” is artificial, unless you deny the place of civic space in our towns and cities. I don’t think that the difference between living in Manhattan and Curtis is as great as you paint it. The first thing you realize when you move to Manhattan is that it literally is a collection of villages on the island. Many of the people who live in them rarely ever leave their village or neighborhood except to work or to visit friends elsewhere. I’d bet you that the needs and differences between the family who lives on a farm in the country and the family who lives in Brookings is far greater than that between that Brookings family and one living in central Denver.
I’d like to suggest (and I’m staking my career on it) that the difference is that your form of collective and civic space is desperately ignored. I haven’t heard any more mean-spirited attitudes coming from my metropolitan friends (the thugs?) than I have my small town colleagues (the hicks?). There’s a beautiful range of civic spaces and places in this world. The problems that face them are all human, civic, economic, political, and social. In what I do the places you and the “Rural” people live in is terribly under-served, ignored, and overlooked. Traditional models of architectural practice haven’t found a sustainable revenue stream or pratice in small towns to support their work. Historically though, some of the greatest urban fabrics in the worlds are fine little towns. The townspeople of South Dakota need and deserve the attention of experts in urban dwelling or they’ll continue to be under served. That’s a benefit of having an architecture program. We’re here! We love to study and speculate.
I’m also here to bring in some great minds to face this challenge from our disciplinary perspective. They’re going to be well trained architects and urbanists with a sincere curiosity about the capacity of buildings in place-making at the small scale. As we arrive we’re going to want our word back so we can make great urban spaces for you all or we’ll end up doing the usual and putting our efforts into Sioux Falls and Rapid City. That’s not a threat but it would be a defeat for all of us. I’m not going to attract good professors if there’s this artificial dichotomy that shaves off the sort of communities that we intend to impact and support in our work. In the history of ideas in our discipline there’s only one sort of “rural” design in architecture–The Villa–and I doubt that’s a burgeoning form of design practice here.
I really look forward to meeting you soon. I’m so excited about the sort of dialog I see you all have built and I really want to be a part of it as much as you all will tolerate me and my crew. We’ll bring a new wrinkle to the mix but we’ll work alongside not against.
I’m only here for two weeks now and two weeks in May before taking 22 Texans to Berlin for a month and arriving here as a full citizen of South Dakota in July. I’d like to come out and visit this week.
Brian T. Rex
Department Head
Architecture Department
South Dakota State University
March 14th, 2010 at 4:26 am
Brian,
There’s a lot to dig into above, and we’d look forward to some face-to-face time. I’ll check schedules and shoot you an e-mail.