Rural revival
Can we design villages that preserve farmland and offer some of the social and business support systems found in cities?
The past governments’ approach to rural revival has been very piecemeal and ineffective: small industrial malls or parks, the occasional seniors home, help to a community center or, lately, a roundabout.
Meanwhile the rural areas are being depopulated due to farms getting bigger, people choosing to shop in malls, government closing local schools or killing a small village with a highway widening.
Clearly a different and more comprehensive solution is required, a solution that centers on providing a living environment that compares favorably to living in a city. Rural living actually appeals to a lot of people judging from the many bungalows now bordering our rural highways and using valuable farmland.
What if we could design a community that preserved farmland and offered the best of rural living along with some of the social and business support systems found in cities?
One possible solution is found among the many co-housing communities in Denmark and now getting popular in North America. They come in many varieties such as rural and urban, but common to all of them are shared facilities: in addition to self contained living units that usually include bedrooms and kitchens, there are extensive common facilities that include a common kitchen and dining room, workshops of all kinds and recreational facilities for children and adults. Ownership models vary but usually residents own their home and the facility is governed like a co-op.
For rural P.E.I., a major concern is to leave most of the land available for agriculture, so we want the buildings to be close together, like in Victoria-by-theSea or even closer like downtown Charlottetown. The agriculture on the open fields surrounding the community will of course have to be pesticide free so that residents can live a healthy life. Common facilities should allow for residents to have a local business, such as a furniture shop or ceramic studio and the kitchen would be licensed so residents could process locally produced crops such as berries, into jams or pies for sale. There would be a fiber-optic connection for fast internet, allowing other residents to work from home and energy could be supplied by a jointly owned windmill and/or solar collectors, maybe with a wood fired joint heating system back-up. The common rooms could serve as a local daycare, home school or special care facility offering additional local employment opportunities and a jointly owned van could ferry people to town when needed.
One or more of the residents could be farmers tilling the land surrounding the “village.” The farming aspect could also be delegated to Amish or other farmers who are already committed to non-chemical farming. The land would be protected against further development and high taxes. Local production of staples like vegetables, eggs, milk and meat would find a ready market right in the community.
Depending on the size of the community, which could range from 50 to 500 people, there could even be a resident nurse practitioner or other health service available to the surrounding community. The mix of people could include seniors and singles as well as people benefiting from support of a close community. Location could be an old expanded farmstead or one of the numerous communities that have been dying a quiet death during the recent decades. The point is that we need more than just economic opportunities and more housing. We need it all to work together for a sustainable.
This is what we need in rural area communities. Not more bureaucracy and forced amalgamation.