The paper examines issues in the delivery of public services in rural areas. The importance of access to urban areas in identifying differences in rural delivery problems is emphasized. It is no longer accurate to equate "rural" with agriculture and farming, drawing a distinction between those who have easy access to an urban area and those who live far from city and town. Maps are given which show the regional (east and west of the Mississippi) differences in population distributions and their proximity to urban areas. If the rural area has access to an urban area, delivery problems are more related to developing an efficient scale of operation, but if the area is in a remote region, delivery problems are of a different magnitude. The paper examines how the three cost factors of distance, density, and technology have influenced the delivery in rural areas of such services as education, health, water and sewer, public safety, highways, and recreation, calling for more imaginative and efficient use of rural capital investments, such as school buses, in the delivery of these. The report concludes that, in substantial portions of the United States, it should prove possible to provide adequate levels of public services for reasonable costs, but some people who live outside of these domains face the choice of accepting lower standards of services or moving. (KM)