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“We would say everything in our area is rural, but we have to follow the rules.”

“Folks are a little taken aback when you say anywhere around here is considered urban, and it’s not,” said Bonnie Prigge, executive director of the Meramec Regional Planning Commission that assists eight counties. Most economic development professionals are resigned to the rules and do the best they can within their inconsistencies. “We’re not the king of rural areas, because some bigger cities are building out and they are wanting things that we have here, and they fit some of the definitions.” “Sometimes our county is called rural and a smaller one isn’t, but sometimes we aren’t included and bigger counties are,” said Dale Martin with the Rolla Regional Economic Commission. While Rolla may be a lot bigger than Houston and still qualify as rural sometimes, Rolla competes with other communities that are much larger and still meet some of the definitions of rural. “If a grant comes down and it’s tied to rural,” he said, “I would probably self-justify it by saying, you know, Rolla and its periphery probably could meet that definition.” He pitches Rolla’s big city-like amenities, such as its airport, numerous manufacturing plants and high-tech sector.Īnd while his city didn’t apply for that particular broadband grant that Houston was shut out of, Magdits doesn’t shy away from grants intended to help small towns. “When I look at the city of Rolla, I don’t think it meets the definition, any of the definitions of rural,” said Rolla Mayor Lou Magdits. The definitions take into account things like total population, population density, distance from a big city and even the percentage of people who travel into a metro area to work. Department of Agriculture alone has more than a dozen different definitions for what’s “rural.”

Those definitions can change from one federal agency to the next, or within agencies across various grant programs. That’s just one seeming inconsistency in how federal tax dollars do, or don’t, get spent on rural problems. Louis - for the purposes of that broadband grant Houston couldn’t qualify for - Rolla is rural. It's home to Missouri University of Science and Technology and its 7,200 students and is a regional retail hub.īut because it’s more than 100 miles from Springfield and St. Meanwhile, Rolla, Missouri, an hour north of Houston, is a town of 20,000 with an interstate highway running through it and a 240-bed hospital with a cancer center. While it’s a one hour, 40-minute drive from Houston on two-lane roads, it’s only 90 miles as the crow flies. The Springfield, Missouri, area has about 500,000 people. “I’m less than 100 air miles from Springfield,” Avery said. Federal money for that’s based on how remote, how rural a place is. The residents pride themselves on a small-town, rural lifestyle with easy access to wide-open, outdoor spaces.īut for some federal grants, Houston is not rural.Ĭonsider when Scott Avery, the city’s administrator, went looking for money to bring stronger broadband to town. It holds an annual festival named in his memory. Houston, Missouri, a town of 2,500 tucked into the hills of the Ozarks near the Arkansas border, takes pride as the hometown of famous clown Emmett Kelly. To a person living in a town of 200 people, that population of 1,000 feels almost urban.īut what the government defines as rural determines tens of billions of dollars a year in spending aimed at propping up America's small or remote places. A town of 1,000 people feels like a rural place to someone from Chicago.