Restructuring the countryside: Core economic dispersion, rural planning's response

The utility of density and functional definitions of rural breaks down when cities deconcentrate, when "urban" activities disperse to replace "rural" ones, and the metropolitan density gradient in core and periphery begins to reverse itself, as it did in the 1950's. How do public planners serving traditionally rural areas accommodate economic restructuring while simultaneously attempting to retain the rural characteristics of their communities? Employing a method of historical, political, and economic analysis which has been used successfully to explain the role of the state in the restructuring of central cities in the United States (Fainstein et al., 1986), I attempt to explain the history of rural development in the Expanded Philadelphia Metropolitan Area in light of federal and state post-WWII development policies. Three rural counties serve as sites for the investigation: namely, Bucks (Pa.), Lancaster (Pa.) and Burlington (N.J.) counties. Each county embodies a distinct heritage of agriculture and relatively concentrated, small town industry. In the post-WWII era, the residents of each have faced the transformative influences of rapid and dispersed economic growth. The administrations governing each county have attempted to preserve critical identifying characteristics, such as: (1) the pastoral landscape and its gentry culture in Central and Upper Bucks County; (2) the working rural landscape and its 19th Century Pennsylvania Dutch culture in Lancaster County; (3) the Pine Barrens and its indigenous "Piney" culture in Burlington County. Bucks County serves as a "baseline" case of regional growth regime planning oriented principally towards capital accumulation. Burlington County contrasts with the Bucks case by virtue of the regional preservationist planning shaping its development. Lancaster serves as the indeterminate case of local accommodationist planning premised upon voluntary municipal adoption of urban growth boundaries and agricultural security districts. The histories demonstrate that in each case independent, a-political, advisory regional planning failed to achieve the generally adopted goal of accommodating growth while preserving the rural characters of the agricultural communities. I conclude that metropolitan-rural scale regional planning based upon a negotiated surrender of municipal land-use prerogatives to a democratically accountable development authority offers the greatest chance for achieving the goal of balanced growth.