Research Symposium

BIO

As a lifelong Tallahassee local, Josh takes special interest in the perspectives of his peers and neighbors. He has developed this interest through his Honors research as part of his Geography B.S. degree, which he will complete this Spring. His work with Dr. Rachael Cofield has employed discourse analysis and semi-structured interviews to help provide an empirical understanding of how exurban residents and the local/county governments in our region dialogue with one another through policy and perception, and where their interests may unexpectedly fail to align.

The Peculiar Relationship of the Exurban Commuter to the Southern City and its Hinterlands

Abstract

Throughout the late 20th century, the urban fringe of many cities across the eastern United States saw a marked shift in the typology of new development. Street patterns became less connected, lots larger, and the (false) sense of coherency and demarcation brought about by urban-suburban contiguity frayed (Boeing, 2020). The primary objective of my research is to uncover patterns in how commuters living along this vague rim of suburbs beyond suburbs, or exurbs, explain their relation to the city they purport not to be part of, as well as to the rural expanse with which they associate their lifestyle.

This research contributes to the body of knowledge on relational place-framing, and specifically expands an underrepresented regional perspective in that literature through its focus on Leon County, Florida. I employ the concept of place-frames from both institutional (Martin, 2003) and normative (Elwood et al., 2014) perspectives to highlight the perceived differences of lifestyle and class between urban/suburban and exurban/rural portions of the region that contribute to the production and reinforcement of anti-urban sentiment and policy preferences among the latter. I also gesture at the broader discussion about the remaking of rural spaces into consumer-focused simulacra (Massey, 2005), in which the meaning of rurality is reduced to an aesthetic performance. Supported by this theoretical underpinning, my research details a relationship of selective permeability, wherein exurban commuters render discursively benign their real and tangible power to shape outcomes in the city.

Keywords: geography, urban, economic, labor, place