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Urban-Rural Interface for State Boundaries?

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Would government be effective if urban areas and those areas in the urban sphere of influence such as the suburbs where separate from truly rural areas, where residents rarely go to city? By definition, the urban-rural interface is the border between the lands within a practical commuting distance for the productive non-farming rural resident and the rural resident who rarely interacts with the city.

As I’ve written many times in the past, urban policies being applied to rural areas rarely make sense, as do rural policies applied to urban areas. The conflict between the rural and the urban is best mitigated by creating and having two separate and sovereign governments, while allowing them to come together for questions of national and international policy, for things like nation defense, transportation infrastructure, and large-source emitters’ pollution control.

Juneteenth 2022 Weekend

Political districts currently are based on haphazards of history or attempts at gaming the political system and not geographic reality. Large regional governments in urbanized areas and their spheres of influence would be far more effective at addressing the large problems of day from transportation to materials recovery or disposal. Moreover, the linkages between two urban regions of similar size (such as Syracuse Urbanized-area and Albany Urbanized-area), are far closer in many ways then a single county (Albany County’s Urban Sphere of Influence versus those areas in extreme western-portion of Albany County outside of Urban Sphere of Influence).

Urban areas really like their new found power since the awful 1964 ruling in Reynolds vs Simms, that mandated both houses of a legislature be equally proportioned, and banned the upper house (ie. Senate) from being based on geography, giving rural areas limited voice in the process. Urban and more liberal constituencies are unlikely to give up their dominance in the process, or allow more rural areas to have sovereignty, because it’s fun to boss around people you disagree with.

While maybe politically impractical, giving urban and rural areas complete sovereignty in their own matters would solve a lot of problems, and create policies more appropriate for their constituencies.

Do State Political Districts Group Together Rural, Suburban, Urban Communities?

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I have always disliked political districts that leave constituencies with elected officials that do not represent their views. In many cases, political views can not be categorized as being partisan, but more representative of where a person lives, and the lifestyle choices of living in a certain area. A rural Democrat or suburban Democrat will have distinctively different views then a urban Democrat, especially if he or she wants to be reelected.

I remember writing to my State Senator years ago, and he expressed a viewpoint totally contrary to my own, and most of my neighbors,primarily because he represented an urban area, plus a fringe of other lands cut up in rural hinder lands. Ironically, the way his district was cut up, he had almost no suburban areas, so the only people with a voice or a vote, where the urban folk, with rural folks in his district having no vote.

The needs and wants of a rural resident are distinctively different then that of a suburban or rural resident. So I wondered how many other people in NY State are stuck either living in a city,but with a politician primarily representing rural areas, in a suburb with politician representing mostly city folk, or a city folk with a rural politician.

I the current 2010 Census town-wide population density data, and combined it with 2002 State Legislative districts…

Campsite 2

Riding the exercise bike, watching Western Champlain and his new Peterbuilt or half of one

Campsite the Next Morning

Some districts are pretty consistent, and others are pretty wild,and gerrymandered to pick up Democratic or Republican seats, with no attempt to try to group similar constituencies, or keep rural,suburban, and urban areas together. Even worst are districts that merge slices Then again, when the game is maximize as many seats for your particular political party, it’s not surprising to see such games played, at the cost of representative government.