Public Service Architecture in Rural Areas
An overview of the gap between urban and rural public services
Michael here. In my last post, Sparse at Home, I brought up the topic of emergency care in sparse rural areas - my grandmother had recently had a fall, and the nearest hospital was nowhere near her home, so the time between the moment of impact and physically seeing a doctor was very long. Healthcare, a key public service that is essential to all, is relatively complicated the further one lives from the nearest municipal area.
Education follows a similar vein. Students from rural areas tend to spend more time on the logistics of education - to the detriment of their sleep schedules. As a child I remember waking up at 6:30, usually well before dawn, to catch the school bus each morning. 50 minutes one way in a big yellow school bus, from what was then known simply as Rural Route 2 to Houghton-Portage Township Schools. At the time, I never really thought anything of it - how some of my classmates could wake up an hour later and still be on time for the first bell, or how others were on the bus already when I boarded, fast asleep. For me, it was all I knew. Now, I look at the huge disadvantage this gave to me relative to my closer peers, and I wonder how this type of problem can be solved for kids like me in the future. As a side note, recent studies have shown that the pandemic forcing school closures did have a positive impact on adolescent health - showing that this is a real problem.
Most public services follow the same trend - the further from the nearest municipality, the tougher the service is to manage, and the worse the experience is for individuals who need to use it. We can break these into a few categories - services that are still provided at roughly an equivalent level of experience for the rural user, services that are provided but are lower quality for the rural user, and services that are not provided to the rural user.
The below is a summary of each of the major sectors listed on the Wikipedia page for Public Service, based on the quality of the experience relative to urban areas. As a note, this is just my take on the below - a discussion on any of these is more than welcome! - Michael
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The category of providing a roughly equal experience is, for lack of a better word, sparse at best. Even then, the experience may not be entirely equal.
Courts - using Michigan as an example, there are circuit, district, and probate courts, courts of claims, appeals courts, and a state-level Supreme Court. Based on where one lives, direct access of these is only limited to driving distance - but direct access to the highest-quality lawyers is likely driven by urban residence. At the federal level, all federal courts are in major cities - again, limiting access to some extent by distance.
Electricity - in 1936, the Rural Electrification Act was signed into law, providing funding for rural areas to expand electrical infrastructure. This has enabled the current state - for the most part, rural residences can get access to electricity. However, the infrastructure to set electricity up in a rural home can sometimes be more complicated than to set up in an urban area - trenches need to be dug or poles need to be installed to make electricity available to a home, primarily because each new resident requires a completely new setup if they build a home. Inclement weather does impact rural areas more than urban areas - if there is a power outage in a rural area, it is almost guaranteed that service restoration will take longer than in an urban area.
Military - one might think this is absolute, but the reality is that the military would not spend a huge amount of energy defending most rural areas in a time of need - instead, cities would be the defensive lines, and rural areas would be fallen back from except those which provide easy defense points… but warfare has changed a lot, so it’s unclear what this would look like.
Environmental protection - rural areas tend to be where environmental impacts are felt, so environmental protections hold strong importance - they aren’t always so out-of-sight-out-of-mind as they are in urban areas.
Even for a roughly equal provided experience, there’s still a gap due to the logistics of the situation.
Most public services are provided to rural areas with a poorer experience - either due to the complexities of the logistics involved or due to a lack of infrastructure.
Education - as mentioned at the start of this post, students in rural areas have to deal with busing to a much greater extent than in urban areas, and so their logistics tend to put them at a disadvantage relative to their peers who live closer to their nearest schools
Emergency services - 911 calls (in the USA) are managed by dispatch centers which may be responsible for wide swaths of land - typically they are at the county or city level, but sometimes multiple counties consolidate dispatch centers to save money. In case of emergency, the dispatcher may be from a distant area from the person who has the emergency, which will cause difficulties when choosing which vehicle to dispatch from where, giving proper directions, etc. Many more rural dispatch services don’t have the resources to invest in technology to mitigate such problems.
Another disadvantage is that there’s no federal agreement on state borders for emergency services, so even if there is a major metropolitan area right across the state border, they have to wait for emergency services based in their state. An example would be Spread Eagle, WI - it is directly across the border from Iron Mountain, MI, but they wouldn’t be able to call for emergency services without some negotiation between the states. There’s no official agreement on this between the two states at the border, so emergency services can take an unnecessarily long time to arrive.Healthcare - as mentioned at the start of this post and in a previous post, healthcare is available to all [who can afford it] in the USA, but service availability and convenience differ dramatically between urban and rural areas. Even for non-emergent healthcare, scheduling appointments (especially anything more complex than a routine checkup) must be taken during trips to the nearest significant urban area, which can be a multi-hour drive away. The services exist, but healthcare centers are far apart, and therefore needing healthcare while living in a rural area comes with costs and risks.
Telecommunications - this can be divided into two major topics - broadband internet and cellular coverage. Rural broadband internet availability is complicated, and internet connection speeds in rural areas are very slow compared to in urban areas. Only in a few major cities are gigabit internet connections available, and maximum speeds decrease with distance from the nearest urban area. Satellite internet is starting to close the gap here, but its propagation is rather slow. Similarly, rural cellular coverage is typically spotty - at my mother’s house, for example, it’s nearly impossible to get a good cellular connection. The availability of rural broadband improves this, as one can set up wifi on their property if they so choose, but that’s an expensive infrastructure to build and maintain if one would like to have service available across anything more than one’s house.
Transportation infrastructure - roads and highways are maintained in rural areas, but typically they are under-maintained, and may not have the most convenient routes available to get to certain destinations. The cost per person of maintaining a road in a rural area is significantly higher than in an urban area - e.g. if the roads need to be plowed of snow - and therefore the service is technically inferior to what it is in urban areas as it has to somehow be subsidized.
Public buildings - most public buildings are located in dense areas, so the rural availability of them tends to be scarce. Even post offices, the most prolific public buildings, can be relatively distant or may only have limited times in which they are in operation. Museums in rural areas tend to be rare, as well as groomed parks, etc.
Social services - social services, like emergency services, are heavily dependent on logistics. Organizations like Meals on Wheels exist in rural areas, but their costs increase dramatically as they have to travel further distances.
A few key public services are outright not provided in rural areas, mostly due to infrastructure cost and lack of required density.
Public transportation - public transport in rural areas in America is, for the most part, non-existent. There is too much distance with too few people for it to be cost-effective to run a transport system.
Urban planning - building permits and zoning regulations still exist in rural areas, but unless incorporated into a city there is minimal urban planning besides the occasional new road and some level of controlled zoning and permitting e.g. for manufacturing. People more-or-less build where they see fit, with some minor limitations on the township or county level.
Waste management - waste management in most rural areas is up to the resident. For trash and recycling, burning or long transport to the nearest waste facility are the only options, and many people choose to dump on their property instead of proper disposal. A walk through the woods in most areas near where I grew up would lead to finding several old cars and large appliances, for example. For sewage, there is a need for each home to have its own disposal method, as there is no central sewage system due to the distance from the nearest processing plant. Most homes have a septic tank and a drain field - as most jurisdictions require one in order to get building permits.
Water supply - similar to sewage, central distribution of water in a rural area isn't possible. Homes must be built on a property where a well can be drilled, or somehow have enough rainwater collection to sustain.