Beyond city limits: infrastructural regionalism in rural Montana, USA

Abstract

ABSTRACT Regional infrastructures are a main object of governance questions in urban contexts, yet similar phenomena in rural areas are underexplored. Rural public institutions serve small populations dispersed across large geographical areas, making regional collaborations a common antidote to inherent challenges in rural governance. This paper engages with the nascent dialogue surrounding infrastructural regionalism to interpret the governance and political dimensions of the regional approach to rural infrastructure development. We use qualitative methods to analyse a rural regional water system in Montana, USA, that will deliver drinking water across a 31,000 km2 agricultural region via 480 km of networked pipelines. We find two key characteristics of the institution’s rural context and regional scope are in tension, leaving the geographical extent of the pipeline, and ultimately the spatiality of the region, uncertain. Namely, a set of centrifugal forces that result from unruly hyperlocal politics contrast a centripetal energy that results from the process of building the political capital needed to make the project possible. By revealing the unique governance pressures facing rural regional infrastructure governance, we counterbalance the urban bias in infrastructure and regional studies and contribute to ongoing debates in rural policy and public service provision.