The Path Forward: Gentrification Management Strategies in Rural Trail-Based Outdoor Recreation Economies

Abstract

Rural communities in the United States face economic challenges due to a combination of factors including the decline of the extractive sector, the departure of manufacturing, the agglomeration of farmland, and the regionalization of key public services. To some policymakers, this economic decline, in combination with the nation’s rural-urban political stratification, serves as reason to further abandon rurality and promote migration to urban areas. These policies overlook the interdependence between rural and urban ecosystems and ignore rural America’s unique assets. In capitalizing on rurality’s existing natural beauty and land access, the trail-based outdoor recreation economy functions as a form of asset-based economic development in rural communities. In connecting recreators to the land, serving as the setting of social connection, and creating place-based connections across time, trails further benefit rural communities through the construction of place attachment. Investment in trails as a form of economic development, however, commodifies nature so as to attract external interest in rural places. Externally-driven population increases and wealth influxes in rural communities can cause physical gentrification in the form of rising property values and resident displacement. This gentrification process also contains a cultural component as the commodification of nature and the demographic shift in rural places erodes place attachment between longtime residents and the land through the displacement of local place-based knowledge, changes in traditional land access, and disruption to recreational use patterns. Research suggests that those with deeper place attachments exhibit greater civic engagement, a deeper sense of community and belonging, and more care for their community and environment. Therefore, cultural gentrification can also lead to a decline in community care and a risk to rural vitality. This thesis examines five rural Northeastern towns with trail-based outdoor recreation economies to discern how each community approaches the risks of physical and cultural gentrification.