Rural Settlements: The Rehabilitation of the Rural Landscape

Abstract

There exists many small communities across rural America that were once centers of agricultural commerce. These communities were then introduced to industry, and they virtually abandoned their agricultural roots. In the place of fields they built a factory as well as other commercial development. However, with the current trend of outsourcing, many factories in these communities have been transferred overseas. This leaves the community with no stable economic base. The communities quickly become ghost towns with abandoned buildings. This thesis will explore the possibility of allowing a community that has experience such hardship to reclaim its agricultural roots without abandoning its recent technological advancements. On the other side however, is that agricultural production is creating environmental problems because farming is undertaken with little regard for how it affects the environment. The current process of farming has become so efficient that it harms or even destroys the surrounding ecosystem, depletes the soil, ect. The same results can be accomplished with less impact to the environment. With more emerging fields that are using agricultural products to create energy the demands placed on land will only become greater. This thesis proposes to turn an abandoned facility in a rural settlement into an agricultural research campus. The goal of such a facility would be to provide the community with a stable economic base, research more environmentally friendly ways of growing crops, and research ways of using agricultural products to create the energy that we require. The facility will have three sections that are government research, academic research, and community involvement. The campus should be designed to facilitate collaboration among the different teams of researchers and different fields of research. In the spirit the campus sustainable design is a requirement plus there should be innovative systems and materials used.