Despite conventional wisdom, rural America is thriving across many important measures including higher home ownership, similar median income and similar if not lower unemployment rates than cities.
Rural Americans value our environment, family life, aspire for racial equality, and believe in our democracy. These are not “urban” values or “progressive” values, these are American values.
Through both interviews and statistics, Currid-Halkett shows that many urban and rural Americans share similar values across religion, the environment and family, among other issues and we must focus on those commonalities rather than our differences.
Our value and identity as Americans should not be defined by our politics but rather our shared humanity during this seemly divided time.
In order for this country to truly heal from its divisive politics, we need to value the cultural capital, knowledge and values that rural American holds dear. This may look very different from urban America but that doesn’t make it less important.
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett holds the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and is professor of public policy at the Price School at the University of Southern California. A recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, she recently held Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress. The author of four books, Currid-Halkett’s research focuses on the role of culture in society. Currid-Halkett has studied the importance of the arts to urban economies, the American consumer economy and most recently the role of culture in geographic and class divides in her book The Overlooked Americans: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means for Our Country. She is currently working on a book called Friction: How We’ve Lost Connection in an ‘Easier’ World, forthcoming with Princeton University Press.
Currid-Halkett’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Salon, the Economist, the New Yorker, and the Times Literary Supplement, among others. Currid-Halkett is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network and a former member of the WEF Global Future Councils and Industry Strategy Officers.