Courting Coruscant

I'm in a mildly reflective mood this afternoon, thinking on the great changes this country has seen since its founding. One window on these changes--the coming of the Industrial Revolution, the steady evolution of our work force (including the coming and going of unions), etc--is where people choose, or are compelled, to live. It should come as no surprise that since the founding days we've seen a massive shift from living in sparsely populated rural areas to the collecting of folks in close proximity to their neighbors in urbanized areas. The ideal in America shifted from the solitary plot of land to the small, fenced in enclosure mere steps from our neighbors (look to the right for the ideal American relationship and proximity to his neighbor in the late 20th century).

I took a look at Census data (and here for the most recent decades) to see just how much and how quickly that transition has happened:

Jefferson's veneration of the yeoman farmer in the vision of agrarian egalitarianism that came to characterize his philosophy took place in a nation that was more than 90% rural. Decades later, when the visceral, visual manifestation of Manifest Destiny, the driving of the Golden Spike into the ground, took place in a nation shifting its attention from war to industry, and when the first great waves of labor unrest swept through the land, the nation was still nearly three-quarters rural. When the American frontier officially closed and William Jennings Bryan took his brand of prairie populism up against the best financed, most Big Moneyed presidential campaign in history (up to that point and since), the nation was still more than 60% rural.

Even as late as the Great War, which saw future president Harry Truman leave behind his plow for the lure of an overseas adventure, the country was still split roughly 50-50 between urban and rural living. By the time our cities burned in the midst of the massive social unrest of the 1960s, the nation was over 70% urbanized. Today we're over the 80% mark.

Where do we go from here? Do these trends reflect changing economic and social realities or shape them (or both)? How do these changes affect our politics and our polity today (e.g. public awareness of and reaction to the fact that the U.S. is now experiencing the largest drought in a half century, or the unusual inability of the current Congress to pass the Farm Bill). No answers, just questions from me this Sunday afternoon.