Urbanization in Rural America

Introduction

In 1980s, the United States population in the urban areas started growing exponentially thus surpassing social amenities available, and this phenomenon made people flock back to the rural settings to start life afresh. The suburbs grew as population flocked in and the building of infrastructure, mainly road networks, by the federal government linking the rural to the city made travel easy. More people abandoned the cities as they were attracted to the suburbs which were much more secure, socially homogenous, and even cleaner. Taking into account the ample environs, investors took the opportunity to bring in their businesses and industries to the rural-urban settings and this influx saw the rural regions grow economic-wise to attain the level of urban town status or rather the rural areas underwent urbanization (Urbanization of America, n.d.).

There was also an emergent desire to build decent residential housing units in the already rural-urbanized town setting as the encroachment of companies as well as local government authorities in the regions created a great influx of people from the major cities and other rural areas to settle in the already developing suburbs. This event lead to the materialization of urbanization in such like areas as the living standards within the urbanized-rural areas was boosted and also the residential housing within the suburbs developed from the old fashioned type to the semi-permanent and permanent buildings. Although there cropped up numerous challenges with respect to urban growth in the rural America during the early period, continuous demographic policies, formulated by the country, facilitated to a great extent the speedy urban expansion in the rural setups. The occurrence of urban growth and expansion was mainly due to enactment of comprehensive planning policies as they assured that the exploitation of all the natural resources in the rural-urbanized areas was according to the law and people demands (Neupane & Gustavson, 2008).

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Moreover, the starting and development of extensive urban housing became very influential in the progression of rural area growth. Also the creation of a good security system became dominant in such urbanized areas and as security is a key matter in urban areas its availability encouraged companies and people to move in. Therefore, a research on the urbanization of rural America is of great significance as it outlines the challenges together with the benefits which resulted from such like development initiatives. There was massive rise in substandard housing amenities, which seemingly emanated from the fact that not all people who relocated to the rural-urbanized settings were capable of acquiring the standardized urban housing units. This in effect put pressure on the available suburban buildings as well as an increase in the rate of crime within those settings as influx of people from all walks of life migrated into the forthcoming urban centers (Henderson, 1997).

Apparently, the steep inflow of people into these urbanized rural areas brought with it impacts mainly due to the population pressure impounded on the available bulging amenities and facilities, specifically the housing ones. The issue created a big problem since the development of urban centers in the rural America progressed; this attracted a lot of people from both the rural areas and already urbanized towns who sought a variety of social amenities, political stability, and security not forgetting new opportunities in such newly urbanized settings. In fundamental nature, the growing urbanized rural America was crowded with populace as numerous people started travelling from their rural dwellings to the growingly built up areas. For instance, according to census results done on 2006, the overall population of the Greater Golden Horseshoe, which was once a rural area, was positioned at 8.1 million citizens (Neupane & Gustavson, 2008).

This phenomenon clearly brought the indications that as the region had become urbanized the people were projected to migrate to the urbanized areas so as to secure better livelihood conditions. Therefore the establishment of the reality with regards to the expected population incursion into the urbanized areas, particularly from an economic and social perspective is quite important so as to predict the expected impact to the available facilities as well as amenities like schools, hospitals, and housing. In urbanized areas planning provides a homogeneous density targets for the anticipated population expansion, which sometimes may not be met by the existing residential housing units. Therefore with respect to that phenomenon, there arises a major compelling issue in the whole rural urbanization which is basically the consequence which emerges from the expected urban populace growth on the accessible housing facilities. In addition, the evaluation of all the housing policies is significant as they govern urban development with the aim of catering for the projected increase of people relocating to the urbanized settings as this largely helps in resolution making.

In the analysis of the population explosion and its effect on the residential housing in the urbanized rural areas specific perspectives which include an economical and psychological approach to the matter will be put in place. Under the two respective approaches laid herein, there will be the incorporation of the Hedonic Pricing Model (HPM) which will be of great importance in evaluating the main issue at hand. HPM is a technique applied in estimating the financial tradeoffs for excellence attributes of services and goods, which in this particular case are the social amenities together with housing facilities in the newly developing urban areas. In the real estate market relevance, the technique could be used to evaluate every property by variably decomposing the assets into different qualities, including environmental, neighborhood and structural characteristics amongst others. The demand curvature particularly equals to customer willingness to pay (WTP) which basically is a utility of the attributes (Hedonic pricing model – Moneyterms, n.d.).

The commonly denoted hedonic pricing method (HPM) is widely used to approximate the economic values for environmental services or ecosystem that affect directly the market prices.  It is generally applied to discrepancies in housing prices that mirror the value of neighborhood environmental attributes. In this case the method finds its use in the estimation of economic costs or benefits associated with environmental amenities like the housing facilities within the urbanized rural area. The basic principle of the hedonic pricing method lies in the fact that the price of a marketed commodity is related to the services it gives or its characteristics.  For instance, the price of a house reflects the distinctiveness of that house: luxury, style, comfort, even recreational amenities present.  Therefore, the value of individual characteristics of a house or other property can be defined by looking at the extent of the price which citizens are willing to reimburse, for it changes according to the distinctiveness of a house.  This method is most frequently used to value ecological amenities that have an effect on the price of housing properties (Herath and Maier, 2010).

Initially, in the process of using the hedonic pricing method, data is collected on the residential property sales within the specified region for a particular time frame predominantly one year. The data required include: ecological characteristics that influence prices, accessibility characteristics that influence price, like the accessibility of public transportation, and distances to shopping centers and workplace, neighborhood characteristics that have an effect on selling prices, like quality of learning institutions, crime rates, and property taxes, property distinctiveness that affect the selling costs, like the number of bathrooms, size and number of rooms, and lot size, as well as locations and selling prices of residential properties(Hedonic pricing model, n.d.).

In the fore laid case, the environmental attribute of concern is the propinquity to open space.  The data together with the relevant information concerning the type and amount of open space in a given radius of every property, and also extra data on whether a property is straightforwardly adjoining to an open space are all obtained from a workstation based on geographical information systems commonly known as GIS maps.  The data on housing characteristics and prices is accessed from the multiple listing services as well as in the municipal offices (Understanding Rural America, n.d.).

Once the whole set of data collected and accumulated, what follows is to statistically approximate a function that communicates property values to the specific property characteristics, with the distance to vacant space.  The resultant function then measures the segment of the property value that is attributable to every feature.  In consequence, one is then able to estimate the worth of preserving vacant space by looking closely at how the price of the typical residence changes when the quantity of vacant space changes.

While carrying out a research on the effects of population explosion on the housing facilities in the urbanized rural areas, descriptive research methodology is applied so as to complete the entire analysis. The practical approach is used in obtaining commonly existing data from trustworthy sources for examination. The expansive survey concerning the possible impact of overpopulation on residential housing is administered to a prearranged number of contributors who have been drawn from the objective population, which seemingly is living in the urbanized rural areas. Most importantly, there will be numerous applications of various primary, secondary tools used in research as well as instruments such as interviews, observations, questionnaires, archives, and reviews of past information, which have continually proved helpful tools in the field of research, particularly in the data gathering process.

The questionnaires put across have questions that draw out answers straightforwardly related to the impact of population explosion on the housing facilities within the urbanized rural area. The questionnaires contain both semi-structured and structured questions which are posed to the town inhabitants and concern the specific residing rooms in their houses, the rental price they pay, as well as other relevant amenities found within the vicinity. Furthermore, survey method of collecting information and data from all the participants from the industries present in the suburb town is applied with regard to the standard implementation progression. All the participants in the research will fill in the presented questionnaires by responding to the structured questions. Moreover applicants will reply to questions posed during one-to-one interviewing process with the research assistants. During this activity, the assistants have the obligation to make use of both the semi-structured and structured questions as guides to the interview. In the two cases scenarios, the research assistants then will compile the information and data received and further hand it over for analysis by means of secondary data examination (Hedonic pricing model, n.d.).

The activities of adjoining environment will frequently pressurize some of the available social amenities found in urbanized centers mainly due to the escalating urbanization phenomenon. In this consideration, the technique that will be employed to assess the overall impact brought about by the urbanization will evaluate the sewage or sort out wet domestic dissipate, for instance, pollution by tipped out fuel that obliterates the beautiful landscape of the area. This incident will eventually lead to the decline of the scenery’s ability to draw higher market values owing to the lands diminished economic worth (Hedonic pricing model, n.d.).

Such grave economic issues with time have prompted a variety of environment resource organizations to look for feasible solutions concerning the protection of the specified area. As a consequence, a hedonic examination has been preferred to protect the area from the thrashing of its economic worth, and this is completed with a plan to enhance the housing costs of units existing at the neighboring regions. Housing prices tend to be comparatively lower at time when several vacationers shy away from the area due to underprivileged environmental value, which in this case is caused by environmental pollution. Additionally, the housing costs are influenced by the nearness to other town centers. The hedonic analysis model is applied in analyzing the populace of Greater Golden Horseshoe area.

Seemingly, as the surrounding region has low influx of tourists, the initiative of constructing the Greater Golden Horseshoe huts will be undertaken with aim of encouraging more people to stop over the area given that this urbanized rural area will be nearer to this amusement site. With the commencement of the construction, many visitors flocked on and this saw the increase of the residential housing prices together with that of the land adjacent to the recreation sites, consequently investors supposedly were required to recompense more for the land as well as services rendered within the town. Besides, the housing units existing at the location had spacious rooms; antique shops were also available, and tourists/visitors could buy local products at quite cheap prices. The available opportunities increased the act of trade necessitating the moving of manpower to the developed areas. Thus, people touring the urbanized rural areas did not need to trek for long distances to purchase the required things (Hedonic Pricing Method – Ecosystem Valuation, n.d.).

On issues concerning epistemology, the Hedonic Pricing Methodology in determining the population impact on residential housing makes use of secondary sets of data, whereby some data are obtainable from the tourists visiting the Greater Golden Horseshoe hut sites. Towards the end of the research, the approach has its application in estimating the value of the amusement services offered at the Greater Golden Horseshoe hut sites. Also the technique values the excellence change of services provided at their creational sites. Other essential factors necessary in shaping the worth of the sites are also incorporated. Since travelling costs and time at the site amplify with the Greater Golden Horseshoe hut site stretch distance, it is necessary to note that the data gathered from the guests is crucial for calculating quantity of visits, with their respective prices(Hedonic Pricing Method – Ecosystem Valuation, n.d.).

American rural urbanization was responsible for driving investors together with a large portion of the population into these suburbs. This also saw industries as well as social amenities being builtup in these areas but the common act by the people becoming attracted to the economically developing regions saw much inflow of people in search of good life and new job opportunities and this posed a threat to the already established housing facilities as they continually diminished thus paving way to semi-permanent structures and slums to crop in.

The phenomenon that suburbanization apparently has not affected the entire aspects of American living lies in the fact that for instance, some public functions including art groups, theatres, professional sports teams, research hospitals, universities, courts, or even government bureaus have basically remained in the vital cities, but instead it has seen the establishment of such like amenities, facilities, and infrastructure into the developed urban-rural areas. Trendy shopping, nightlife, and fine restaurants, which were only present in the big urban cities and metropolis expanded and actually became popular in these urbanized rural areas thus revitalizing the whole urban neighborhoods (Understanding Rural America, n.d.).

Actually, in the U.S. statistics covering 20 of the largest cities together with the urbanized areas showed that 41% of the neighboring inhabitants, on average, lived in the city, whereas 59% apparently lived in the adjoining suburbs, towns, as well as in the urbanized rural areas. People migrate to these newly suburban regions as they offer better housing, more space, and more privacy. Although urbanization is seen as the savior of people in terms of bringing social amenities and facilities nearer to them, it is also accompanied by several negative impacts which for instance touch on housing deficiencies which bring in slums, and thereafter social decadence issues like violence and robbery as these facilities burst due to pressure from over-population (Nguyen, n.d.).

Moreover, changing the spatial distributions of inhabitants is extensively changing the human vulnerabilities together with the environmental impacts. Needless to say, the majority of the underprivileged Americans still live in the countryside areas; however the figure of poor populace who reside in the urbanized rural areas is rapidly increasing. Over millions of people reside in urban slums, which are normally overcrowded and lack fundamental services such as sanitation and clean water. As urban areas develop, they can encroach on the surroundings, through urban slump, and they are as well connected with an increasing utilization of resources which include even water. However, the amplification in utilizing resources is attributable mainly to a small divide of households with comparatively high earnings levels. Urbanized rural slum residents are in addition exposed to ecological susceptibility through living in areas with risk of atmosphere change impacts, other ecological hazards, as well as pollution levels which are normally much higher, aggravating many healthiness risks (Urbanization, n.d.).

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In spite of the challenges that are related to rural urbanization, it also poses as a powerful driver for continual environmental, social, and economic development. As human populations are growing within the urbanized centers, it makes environmental and economic sense for citizens to move nearer together within the urban areas. Urbanization facilitates the America to provide indispensable services, including education and health, at lower expenses per capita; it also allows for the comparative economies of scale in the extensive development of fundamental infrastructure, including transport, sanitation, water, and housing. Urbanization can also reduce power consumption, predominantly in housing and transport, and it can help in easing the population pressures found in rural areas (Understanding Rural America,n.d.).

Conclusion

American rural urbanization has remarkably brought much growth all over the nation economically, and this has seen the country become a major economic pillar in the world. Nevertheless, for the initiatives on developing and taking urban setting to the rural areas there is a need in proactive planning involving the urban growth, principally the housing, land, and employment needs of the increasing urbanized rural centers. This intake is the suitable policy response to fast urbanization and a significant component to incorporating the three pillars required for sustainable development. As population intensification in urban regions is more the consequence of a natural populace increase, a most effectual way to sluggish urban growth is by reducing unwanted fertility in the urbanized rural areas properties (Herath & Maier, 2010).

Moreover, the application of hedonic pricing methodology in evaluating the exact impact of population growth in these growing rural centers basically on the housing facilities is quite useful in coming up with the possible demand curves with respect to the willingness of customers to pay for accommodation facilities within the urbanized rural areas. Therefore this approach would assist in evaluating the financial tradeoffs for value attributes of services and goods, which are the social amenities and housing facilities in the newly constructed urban areas.