The maintenance of its rural character is purely by fiat - every square inch of Anne Arundel county is zoned for the benefit of the politically connected in Annapolis. Absent the imposed zoning law, the whole area would have been converted to high density suburbia decades ago. Further, farmland would be immediately sold if it weren't sheltered from property taxes through state subsidy law. So anyone trying to scratch a living from that farmland lives in an economic reality that is largely dictated by others.