Community Assets and Relative Rurality Index: A Continuous Multi-dimensional Measure of Rurality

Keywords: rurality, sustainable development, amenities, services
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 16

Abstract

Rurality is often viewed as presenting challenges to community sustainability, well-being, and equity. In order to address the unique challenges of rural areas, local, regional, and national policies and practices have been designed specifically for application in places designated as “rural”. Yet what is “rural”? In recent years measures of rurality have gone beyond a dichotomous rural/urban divide or threshold-based conception of rural communities. However, these measures still rely heavily on the idea that proximity to metropolitan areas and population density are the primary components of rurality. Few studies have considered the critical role that the presence of services and amenities play in the life of a community. We suggest a new measure based on the concept of sustainable development that integrates environmental, social, and economic resources of local areas. We present the new Community Assets and Relative Rurality (CARR) index for census block-groups in the coterminous United States and illustrate how this measure, constructed using the primary components of previous indices as well as services and amenities available in any given area, is both consistent with existing measures of rurality and yet offers additional insight into issues of sustainable rural development.