America began as a mostly agrarian nation with a “rural lifestyle.” When the Constitution was ratified in 1787, Thomas Jefferson thought yeoman farmers would be the backbone of the new republic. But the Industrial Revolution had already begun in England, with the resulting urban misery and squalor described by Charles Dickens. When it reached the United States a comparable miserable result was felt in cities of the East, while the Homestead Act propelled rural expansion into the West.

The desirability of owning lots of land and living on it has become emotionally associated with the settling of the West. Thus the “rural lifestyle” is apparently implanted in our collective psyche, a thing so obviously desirable as to need no defense.
Since “rural lifestyle” is so often mentioned in public discussion, it is useful to examine dispassionately what it was and has become in the Grand Valley.

Before rural electrification in the mid-1930s, people in rural areas used kerosene lamps, cooked and heated with coal or wood, and had outhouses. Virtually everyone engaged in some agricultural endeavor to produce income or for personal consumption. There were one-room schools and dirt or gravel roads.

Then came electric lights and stoves, central heating and indoor plumbing with pumped water (from cisterns) for toilets and showers. There were central forced air heating and grease traps and then septic tanks and leach fields. Schools were consolidated and long school bus rides became commonplace.

With widespread use of natural gas and paving of roads, air quality improved markedly. Piped domestic water became generally available. Horses and vegetable gardens became hobbies. Federally mandated abandonment of septic tanks and leach fields is gradually happening.

Most of these changes were enthusiastically welcomed by rural residents, but they can be accurately identified as features of an “urban lifestyle.”

Two things that have obviously not changed in rural areas are low residential density and narrow roads without curbs, gutters and sidewalks. Perhaps instead of referring to “rural lifestyle,” arguments about why a particular density is better in one place than in another should be couched in terms of public benefits, including reasons to prefer narrow roads without curbs, gutters and sidewalks.

With these preferences clearly expressed, governing bodies could decide whether or not particular densities are the best choices for the community as a whole.

WILLIAM E. PUTNAM
Grand Junction

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 5:30 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.