rural America
Small-town heartland regions
Rural America refers to the countryside and small towns outside metropolitan areas—places where agriculture, natural resources, and open land dominate the landscape.
The term carries cultural and political weight, often evoking traditional values, economic struggle, and distance from coastal urban centers: Politicians love to talk about rural America during campaign season.
It encompasses roughly 20 percent of the U.S. population spread across 97 percent of its land.
- Great PlainsCentral North American grassland
- depopulationLoss of inhabitants
- prairieOpen grassy flatland
- poverty ratesPercentage lacking adequate income
- farmlandAgricultural terrain
hardscrabble · ranching · folk music · agriculture · hollows · broadband access · community festivals · family farms · dirt roads · countryside · healthcare access · forestry · homesteading · flyover country · pastures · pickup trucks · small town values · church suppers
- AmericanaFourth of July, bald eagle, Thanksgiving, apple pie, baseball
- HeartlandMidwest, Great Plains, cornfields, farms, farmhouses
- realismrealism, representational, figurative, naturalism, realist art
- regional fictionwestern fiction, regional dialect, sense of place, Irish fiction, Russian fiction
- Red StatesTexas, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana
rural Americametropolitan areas
Cities plus surrounding communities
downtown · inner cities · megalopolis · urban sprawl · city centers
rural Americacoastal elites
Prosperous city-dwellers by sea
Manhattan · city life · Silicon Valley · Hollywood · East Coast
rural AmericaWall Street
American finance hub
financial centers · Silicon Valley · tech hubs · knowledge economy · service economy