A curious thing happened in the 1970s, at least as far as demographers and sociologists were concerned. Since the Civil War, Americans, including North Carolinians, had been steadily moving from rural areas to cities. In the ’70s that trend began to reverse, and people began to move from urban to rural areas.

That trend — rural areas gaining more new residents than they lose — has continued in North Carolina and across the nation. What’s going on? That’s what Dr. Mitch Renkow, associate professor and North Carolina Cooperative Extension specialist, and Dr. Dale Hoover, professor emeritus, both in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, wanted to know.

Are we in the midst of what some social scientists have called a rural renaissance? According to this school of thought, the emerging importance of service industries in relation to manufacturing as well as technological advances, particularly in information technologies, have made it feasible for business and industry to locate in rural areas. People are simply following the jobs that these relocating businesses provide.

“Historically people left rural areas to pursue employment opportunities in the cities, and many social scientists speculated that they must be moving back for the same reason,” Renkow says.

But after Renkow and Hoover analyzed commuting and migration data, they decided they don’t buy the renaissance theory, at least not in North Carolina.

Renkow and Hoover found that the rural North Carolina counties that are growing tend to be neighbors of urban counties. There has also been growth in selected rural counties on the coast and in the mountains that aren’t adjacent to urban centers, but that growth can be explained largely by the attraction these areas have for retirees.

The economists found that while North Carolina’s rural counties as a whole gained population from the 1970s through the 1990s, a number of rural counties have seen a net loss in residents. Most of these counties are in the eastern part of the state, are not close to urban areas and are heavily dependent on agriculture.

“We found pretty convincing evidence that what’s happening is an expansion of the urban sphere of influence,” Renkow explains. In other words, North Carolina’s new rural residents tend to work in the urban counties next door.

During the ’90s, Renkow points out, nearly 85 percent of the state’s new rural residents set up housekeeping in rural counties immediately adjacent to urban counties. In 1990, he adds, more than 18 percent of workers living in these adjacent rural counties traveled to urban counties to work. In 1960, just 7 percent of rural residents commuted to jobs in neighboring urban counties.

Renkow thinks better roads, more reliable transportation and relatively cheap fuel have convinced many people that commutes they might previously have considered too long are now feasible. As a result, they’re opting for the more open spaces and lower housing costs that many rural areas offer, then driving to the better-paying jobs in nearby urban counties.

“It remains the case that urban jobs tend to pay better,” he said. “In the past, urban residence was a condition of enjoying those higher urban wages. That’s no longer the case.”

Renkow notes that the growth of rural areas next door to urban areas is a trend with both downsides and upsides.

On one hand, rural population growth leads to substantial new housing construction.

“New housing typically requires more in public services than it contributes in property taxes,” Renkow points out.

Yet Renkow also points out that residential growth stimulates construction and retail activity. This creates new jobs that can be particularly good news in areas with high unemployment.

Renkow says North Carolina is unusual in that a relatively large proportion of its rural counties are located near urban areas, particularly along the I-85/I-40 corridor that stretches from Charlotte to Winston-Salem and Greensboro, then on to the Raleigh-Durham area. In most states, large urban areas tend to be more isolated from each other.

North Carolina’s urban corridor cuts a swath across the state, vastly expanding the state’s urban sphere of influence. Gazing into the future, Renkow sees continued growth for the rural neighbors of North Carolina’s urban counties.

— Dave Caldwell