All of this talk about Sonny’s new found love of high-speed rail has me reflecting on something Andisheh wrote during our latest row our MARTA funding.  This line in particular…

Over the past year I’ve come to realize that Sonny, Casey, Glenn and their ilk don’t think being like Mississippi and Alabama is a bad thing.

They know better than anyone that progress is going to kill them and their type off. The friendlier metro Atlanta is entrepreneurs and educated professionals, the less likely they are to get anywhere near the levers of power. Their hatred of Atlanta isn’t sadism. It’s cynical self-preservation.

In this modern age of globalization, this contentious city vs. country mentality has become a given.  Sure there have always been innate differences between the two areas, as exemplified by the classic children’s tale “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse”, interpreted here by Sesame Street...but only recently has the relationship really crumbled to the extent that one sees so little benefit in the other.

Sure, Atlanta’s massive economy still supports the greater state in countless ways, but rarely is this noticed.  And no one should be surprised by this.  It’s just not tangible enough that Atlanta taxes support road repaving in southern Georgia.  What we seem to have forgotten is that this disconnect is an entirely new phenomenon.  As detailed by urban history books like “Nature’s Metropolis“, the city and the country were until very recently, inextricably tied in a relationship so tight that they lived and died together.

How?  Through food and industry.

As “Nature’s Metropolis” demonstrates, at it’s birth, transport hubs like Chicago were solely dependent on the crops and natural resources being harvested from local farms and forests.  New rail lines brought these commodities into the major cities for pricing and distribution.  The success of Chicago hinged on the success of it’s outlying areas and the success of outlying areas depended on Chicago’s success of becoming a major hub for distribution.  The local economy tied one to the other.

Today, in our glorious global economy, our food and natural resources come from thousands of miles away.  Not only does that produce the often documented issues caused by distance (i.e. we’re much more OK with cutting down trees in Brazil than say, Northern Georgia), but it also inadvertently creates this new animosity.

As a result, city and rural political leaders just don’t see the benefit in supporting each other anymore.

I’m not asking you to cry about this dysfunctional relationship, just to recognize that it hasn’t always been and therefore doesn’t always have to be this way.

Add it to the pile of arguments in favor of long neglected local economies: more functional urban/rural relationships.