Rush City is sandwiched between East St. Louis to the north and the industrial municipality of Sauget to the south. Despite its size and dwindling population, Rush City maintains a character unique from any other location within the American Bottom or even the broader St. Louis metro area. Both spatially and culturally, this neighborhood bears the influence of the rural Southerners who flooded into the community in the 1920s and subsequent decades; its vernacular architecture and dispersed pattern of houses suggest an isolated and unexpected pocket of country life in the midst of a struggling urban environment. After Rush City bowed to pressure from Sauget to change its zoning from residential to industrial, this private and social landscape of churches and small homes has been under persistent threat of annexation and relocation.