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boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

axeil posted:

Some people like living in apartments. Some people like living in townhouses. Some people like living in single family homes. Some people like living on their own. Some people like living with roommates. Some people like living with a spouse. Some people like having lots of open space and land.

Why are all of these valid living arrangements except for the last one?

please stop dramatically falling over, grasping your chest like red foxx and playing the victim

gay rites posted:

uhhhh rural exurbs will continue to exist so long as people are priced out of the city -- that is, so long as cheap gas, poor public transportation and housing shortages persist.

people for the most part do not self-select _out_ of the city for cultural reasons, the place where all the jobs and money are.

no thats just suburbs and people self select out of urban living all the time, because of noise or personal comfort or like fear of crime, or just desire to be away from crowds, there a re a lot of reasons some good and some bad

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Dead Cosmonaut
Nov 14, 2015

by FactsAreUseless

doverhog posted:

Did you hear the good news? Trump will impose import tariffs and those communities will be great again with great local factories.

Your typical multi-national corporation has access to a global labor market of about ~4 billion people in the reserve labor army and is going to do fuckall to bring jobs back to the US. Although I'm more inclined towards something like ComradeCosmobot described with a workers program, I think it's just better at this point to start talking seriously about a GMI. Unless WW3 happens there isn't going to be a huge demand for labor in the US.

Also, thank you for this thread OP. I grew up in rural Texas and Missouri, and it's an issue close to my heart.

Shbobdb
Dec 16, 2010

by Reene
"In-sourcing" poverty seems like a really good way to kick off a race to the bottom.

Living in the Bay Area, the obscene pay that techies get is a problem. The solution isn't for capitalists to find a way to pay techies less and outsource their capabilities for pennies on the dollar.

Bates
Jun 15, 2006

axeil posted:

Some people like living in apartments. Some people like living in townhouses. Some people like living in single family homes. Some people like living on their own. Some people like living with roommates. Some people like living with a spouse. Some people like having lots of open space and land.

Why are all of these valid living arrangements except for the last one?

It's expensive to service rural areas and they're bad for the environment. It's great you like open space and land but because of you, there's less of it.

We should help communities transition to new economic realities whenever necessary and sometimes that's a lengthy and generational issue but we obviously shouldn't plow a road through the landscape anywhere people feel like living if there's no way for them to support themselves there. If there is a basis for your community, be it resource extraction or tourism, then that's great but if the only income in the community is public transfers it shouldn't be a public priority that people must continue to live in that particular place in all perpetuity.

Toph Bei Fong
Feb 29, 2008



Wow, that's a lot of replies in one evening. I'll try to add more substance over the weekend.

People posted:

Thoughts and Ideas About Education

I absolutely think that education is a major component of this. Improved education is a necessary good, and I'd be all for any and all government programs designed to improve outreach and attitudes toward intelligence and "book learning". For example, one of the best programs running in my area is our childhood literacy program, which has partnered with literally every organization is can find, and gives out a poo poo load of books everywhere. At school, they hand out books. At the community center, they hand out books, At Christmastime, they hand out books. At Church, they hand out books. Anything to get books into households, and to make them seem like a normal part of everyday life. Their reading tutors are constantly at the schools, making sure the kids understand words, and reading at the right level, get tutoring if necessary, and, weirdly enough, have become the sort of folks that kids will talk to about problems rather than the teachers or school officials.

Because, thankfully, my state gives a poo poo. New England doesn't quite have it as bad as the rest of the country.

People posted:

Regional politics

There are actually a fair number of liberals scattered throughout these towns and villages, and even more people who are receptive to liberal ideas and programs when they are couched in the right terms. There's a gay friendly used bookstore one town over where they have a very nice writer's group. There's a nice liquor store where the owner, despite looking and sounding like the goodest ole boy you've ever met, is one of the nicest wine connoisseurs I've had the pleasure to take recommendations from. Most everyone I've spoken with thinks Trump is insane, though I do see a few signs here and there, about equal to the Bernie stickers and signs. My folks got out of a speeding ticket here because of the Bernie sticker on their SUV when they were coming to visit.

For example, I was chatting with some folks, rich Republican voters who are, respectively, a realtor with a nice pension from his days in the Army and an accountant, who were wondering what the numbers were on my library's free lunch program. Over the summer, we partner with a local charity to give out lunches to kids, because, as I mentioned in the OP, there is a lot of food insecurity here, and there are plenty who might not otherwise eat if they aren't getting free or subsidized food from school, or if they are, it's cheap stuff from the gas station. A fair question, but when they followed it up with a few leading questions about why we needed to give out so much, and where were their parents, I replied "Well, it just doesn't seem Christian to let kids go hungry, you know?"

If I'd gone down a line about "You're very privileged to be able to ask such questions while we're sitting here eating" or "You must hate minorities, because a lot of those kids are suffering because of the legacy of racism in this country that kept their parents out of higher education, while your parents were..." it would have gone nowhere, and they wouldn't have listened. They would have gotten entrenched, been more combative, gotten angry. Instead, a little jolt of shame, and boom, discussion over. Note also that I am an atheist, but I don't need to broadcast this when I'm getting work done and the message across.

To a certain extent, it does require people who live in the communities to be the ones who introduce the ideas, to be the ones who talk to the folks who live there, and who then run the programs. Here in the north, I've found that most folks have a sort of "soft libertarian" view of things, where they don't like the idea of the government running things, but they tolerate stuff like government grants being handed out because they recognize we're in trouble. To quote a guy I work with on a lot of charity projects at a meeting about the local Catholic Charities getting a 9 million dollar grant from the Feds "Bleed um [the Feds] for every cent. We need it."

The people convinced that "One day the work is coming back" are all dead. A lot are already on welfare and/or disability. Many hope that the few remaining factories have more openings. There's an Indian casino opening on a nearby reservation that will hopefully employ some folks. No one is under any illusion that one day the two major concerns are one day going to relocate back to village and things will be like they were in the 50s. I'm working with a number of people, including my partner, to try and get a few tourism initiatives started so people have a reason to stop and stay the way the used to.

But again, I'm in New England. We have State and Federal support. We're not nearly as isolated as other places are. I have it easy up here compared to the rest of the country.

People posted:

Hating on the poor rural whites

Come on, really y'all?

People posted:

Suburb vs. exurb, is it rural?

Sure, why not? My entire county is designated as rural as far as the USDA is concerned, and I'm only 25 miles from the suburbs of a somewhat major city. It's an hour drive because of all the tiny speedtrap towns I have to drive through (no direct access to a highway), and because of the deer. Does that count as the exurbs? I could be more isolated, like when I lived with my grandparents when I was a kid. Hell if I know. If it feels rural and it's poor, it's rural poverty.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Mincome, full public health coverage including vision, dental, and family planning.

A revamp of public education to include a holistic, household-focused emphasis on poverty reduction modeled on the recent success in a St. Louis-area school district that did things like provide bags of groceries to parents coming in for parent-teacher conferences.

A rural-electrification-style push for high speed internet.

Community organizing focused around local schools, churches, nursing homes, and community centers to combat social isolation and provide much-needed entertainment and happiness.

Moving expense grants for people who voluntarily want to move away, buyouts for the elderly who will have no one to sell their home to when the time comes. Edit: Not moving the elderly out of their homes, just a deal where the homeowners get some retirement cash and the government has the right to sell/bulldoze/repurpose their home after they vacate or die.

Job creation through public works projects to repair neglected infrastructure and maintain natural resources.

Harness the unparalleled propagandizing power of television to depict rural families with dignity and accurately reflect their diversity, both ethnically and politically.

Expanded public transportation, which may be more like an on-call ride van service than traditional bus/train options, so the poor and elderly aren't stranded in their homes.

Funding for small and mid-sized businesses with an intentional aim to create local/regional economic activity.

Judgment-free drug-addiction treatment, including decriminalization and sites for safe, monitored use for people who aren't likely to be cured.

More baseball fields. I like baseball.

Yes to all of this!

You've posted my wish list, though my village already has a kick-rear end baseball field thanks to a local boy done good who came back and built one for us. Every town needs one, I agree. Kids should play more baseball.

UV_Catastrophe
Dec 29, 2008

Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are,

"It might have been."
Pillbug

Anos posted:

It's expensive to service rural areas and they're bad for the environment. It's great you like open space and land but because of you, there's less of it.

We should help communities transition to new economic realities whenever necessary and sometimes that's a lengthy and generational issue but we obviously shouldn't plow a road through the landscape anywhere people feel like living if there's no way for them to support themselves there. If there is a basis for your community, be it resource extraction or tourism, then that's great but if the only income in the community is public transfers it shouldn't be a public priority that people must continue to live in that particular place in all perpetuity.

I think maybe the environmental concerns associated with rural living could potentially be flipped around into being a net positive with some clever policy decisions.

If the government would create heavy incentives to grow food closer to the population centers where the food is produced, that might give these rural areas an economic leg to stand on and would also cut down on carbon emissions. You could probably do something similar with energy generation by creating more incentives for wind and solar, which would be another benefit for these rural areas with tons of open land area to harness those energy sources.

Pouring public money into our rural areas for the purpose of fighting climate change seems like it would be better than just propping them up with mincome alone, since we could actually do some good for the environment in the process. Killing two birds with one stone and all.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

UV_Catastrophe posted:

I think maybe the environmental concerns associated with rural living could potentially be flipped around into being a net positive with some clever policy decisions.

If the government would create heavy incentives to grow food closer to the population centers where the food is produced, that might give these rural areas an economic leg to stand on and would also cut down on carbon emissions. You could probably do something similar with energy generation by creating more incentives for wind and solar, which would be another benefit for these rural areas with tons of open land area to harness those energy sources.

Pouring public money into our rural areas for the purpose of fighting climate change seems like it would be better than just propping them up with mincome alone, since we could actually do some good for the environment in the process. Killing two birds with one stone and all.

Carbon emissions from food transport are actually not that large. Less land use from having less farming overall is much more environmentally sensible, urban living and high-intensity low-area everything is cool and good.

tsa
Feb 3, 2014

UV_Catastrophe posted:

I think maybe the environmental concerns associated with rural living could potentially be flipped around into being a net positive with some clever policy decisions.

If the government would create heavy incentives to grow food closer to the population centers where the food is produced, that might give these rural areas an economic leg to stand on and would also cut down on carbon emissions. You could probably do something similar with energy generation by creating more incentives for wind and solar, which would be another benefit for these rural areas with tons of open land area to harness those energy sources.


Food transportation isn't even close to the problem, it's an utter drop in the ocean compared to other concerns. The idea that food being driven far being bad is some marketing crap.

At any rate, it should be pretty evident that it takes a lot more resources to service people spread far apart than people clustered in a large city even if you just consider really basic things like economies of scale. If it's not self-evident than just look at any good study on the subject because they all show rural living being significantly worse by capita. There isn't a clever policy decision that's going to eliminate physical and economical realities. As for energy, here are lots of incentives for wind/solar but in many places it simply doesn't make any sense-- you still need lots of wind or sun and there's lots of places in the US where that isn't the case. And I'm not sure it's very relevant to this thread anyway.

The first page of this thread is sort of bewildering to me. I don't think the argument is about 'destroying' rural society, it's that these towns didn't spring up out of thin air; they were built around an economy that simply doesn't exist anymore. Good jobs are highly clustered in big cities and large university towns and this is only going to become more true as automation further takes over. We can romanticize country living but the fact is no-one is buying it anymore. Young people are overwhelmingly choosing to at least live in suburbs if not the city itself.

We can wring our hands about it but the fact is good paying low-tech factory jobs aren't coming back and there's no reason to believe any industry can replace them. The towns are dying because there's no reason for them to exist anymore.

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe
Great OP. All I have right now is to ask, why can't rural communities be vibrant? I think a lot of people confuse the faux-bohemianism and gentrification of cities with intellectual culture or vibrancy. But in reality, there's just more money there, and that doesn't make living in a city a smarter or more enriching experience. Fix the poverty and infrastructure issues with massive government intervention and everything else will take care of itself, including the tendency of rural voters to make self-destructive political choices.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

SedanChair posted:

Great OP. All I have right now is to ask, why can't rural communities be vibrant? I think a lot of people confuse the faux-bohemianism and gentrification of cities with intellectual culture or vibrancy. But in reality, there's just more money there, and that doesn't make living in a city a smarter or more enriching experience. Fix the poverty and infrastructure issues with massive government intervention and everything else will take care of itself, including the tendency of rural voters to make self-destructive political choices.

Because they are small. You kinda need a critical mass of people with different ideas coming together to get intellectual anything going. I suppose having broadband and good public transportation in rural areas would make that less bad, but unless you invent teleporters they're still at least somewhat cut off.

Panzeh
Nov 27, 2006

"..The high ground"

SedanChair posted:

Great OP. All I have right now is to ask, why can't rural communities be vibrant? I think a lot of people confuse the faux-bohemianism and gentrification of cities with intellectual culture or vibrancy. But in reality, there's just more money there, and that doesn't make living in a city a smarter or more enriching experience. Fix the poverty and infrastructure issues with massive government intervention and everything else will take care of itself, including the tendency of rural voters to make self-destructive political choices.

As someone who spent most of their life in West Virginia, I can say that you pretty much have to prop up a lot of it if you want these small towns to be vibrant. Some of the places just don't have a whole lot of future, and this is with things like a Toyota plant coming in. What ended up happening is that people settle down in the towns to live cheap and drive to Charleston/Huntington to work. The wages are too depressed for urbanism to really work.

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

blowfish posted:

Because they are small. You kinda need a critical mass of people with different ideas coming together to get intellectual anything going. I suppose having broadband and good public transportation in rural areas would make that less bad, but unless you invent teleporters they're still at least somewhat cut off.

You just touched on it, though. People have broadband, or they should with government support. I think it's an oddly anachronistic idea that you need people physically in one place to have intellectual culture. The many intellectual cultures on the internet are far more developed than anything that you get from just living in a city. This is what I mean, people are confusing cupcake shops for something that can make you smarter.

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP
Rural is kind of a relative notion anyway. Oregon outside of Portland is pretty rural, even in the larger cities. Even those areas are absolutely packed compared to the eastern 2/3 of the state though.

Similarly, the "rural" areas of the East Coast are a lot more dense than a lot of areas in the West, even ignoring the National Park factor.

Badger of Basra
Jul 26, 2007

SedanChair posted:

You just touched on it, though. People have broadband, or they should with government support. I think it's an oddly anachronistic idea that you need people physically in one place to have intellectual culture. The many intellectual cultures on the internet are far more developed than anything that you get from just living in a city. This is what I mean, people are confusing cupcake shops for something that can make you smarter.

If this is true why do cities continue to exist at all (much less continue to grow)?

Zachack
Jun 1, 2000




SedanChair posted:

You just touched on it, though. People have broadband, or they should with government support. I think it's an oddly anachronistic idea that you need people physically in one place to have intellectual culture. The many intellectual cultures on the internet are far more developed than anything that you get from just living in a city. This is what I mean, people are confusing cupcake shops for something that can make you smarter.

But that isn't making a rural community vibrant, that's just helping them become total shut-ins isolated from people. The cupcake shop in my city of around 200k is next door to a Lego store, which is next to a cobbler, which is next to a Puerto Rican restaurant, which is across the street from an indian restaurant, which is next to the local newspaper, which is around the corner and across the street from a boxing gym, which is next to a Himalayan restaurant, which used to be next door to a large music store, which was around the corner from a tap room, which is next to some weird goth clothing/piercing store, which is next to what used to be a junior college culinary center, which used to be around the corner from a Japanese restaurant, which is next door to a Peruvian restaurant, which is next door to a personal training place, which is across the street from a large comic book shop, which is across the street from a bike shop. That's less than 10 minutes of walking around, if realigned, what would be a single city block. And there are lots of those blocks, and I even think my city does a pretty bad job of being vibrant! But we still have a variety of subcultures, both ethnic and interest based. All of those stores run or engage with special interest clubs. Museums. Parks, both for kids and for major activities. Theaters of all types. Venues. Parades and other cultural events. etc. And we still have a problem keeping youth around because there are even bigger cities with more attractions (plus the housing/rent has become stupid).

I have friends who grew up in True Rural. They left for good at 18, either to work in cities or for college, and even with fond memories they've all said they'd never go back, if only because the single ones don't want to risk having to die alone for lack of options. Other nearby rural counties (who do have perfectly usable broadband) consider coming to my area to be a cultural treat.

Zachack fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Aug 27, 2016

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

Badger of Basra posted:

If this is true why do cities continue to exist at all (much less continue to grow)?

Because there are jobs there.

Brutal Garcon
Nov 2, 2014



As a Not American (TM), I can't really comment on the actual problems here, but it's interesting to see how the notion of "rural" differs from mine. For instance, I'd never call a small-ish town "rural", but then some of these towns are further from a city than I can be while staying inside the country. On the other hand, I'm posting this while visiting my parents in what counts as the middle of nowhere by local standards, and that means that the broadband is kind of slow and you can't always get mobile data.

American rural poverty really is a different issue.

Toph Bei Fong posted:

For example, I was chatting with some folks, rich Republican voters who are, respectively, a realtor with a nice pension from his days in the Army and an accountant, who were wondering what the numbers were on my library's free lunch program. Over the summer, we partner with a local charity to give out lunches to kids, because, as I mentioned in the OP, there is a lot of food insecurity here, and there are plenty who might not otherwise eat if they aren't getting free or subsidized food from school, or if they are, it's cheap stuff from the gas station. A fair question, but when they followed it up with a few leading questions about why we needed to give out so much, and where were their parents, I replied "Well, it just doesn't seem Christian to let kids go hungry, you know?"

If I'd gone down a line about "You're very privileged to be able to ask such questions while we're sitting here eating" or "You must hate minorities, because a lot of those kids are suffering because of the legacy of racism in this country that kept their parents out of higher education, while your parents were..." it would have gone nowhere, and they wouldn't have listened. They would have gotten entrenched, been more combative, gotten angry. Instead, a little jolt of shame, and boom, discussion over. Note also that I am an atheist, but I don't need to broadcast this when I'm getting work done and the message across.

D&D as a whole could do with a great deal more of the particular sort of sanity being exhibited here.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Dzhay posted:

D&D as a whole could do with a great deal more of the particular sort of sanity being exhibited here.

Yeah. The proportion of conservatives who wake up to thoughts of "how many brown poors can I oppress today?" is likely small, so it is more productive to assume conservatives are merely wrong or not giving enough of a poo poo rather than treating them as cartoon villains until proven otherwise.

OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!

UV_Catastrophe posted:

If the government would create heavy incentives to grow food closer to the population centers where the food is produced, that might give these rural areas an economic leg to stand on and would also cut down on carbon emissions. You could probably do something similar with energy generation by creating more incentives for wind and solar, which would be another benefit for these rural areas with tons of open land area to harness those energy sources.
Growing food closer to population centers can't do much because there is too much farmland to even make close to population centers. 40% of the US is farmland. "Population centers" and "growing food" are just about mutually exclusive by definition because growing food takes up a fuckton of space that people can't live on.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

OneEightHundred posted:

Growing food closer to population centers can't do much because there is too much farmland to even make close to population centers. 40% of the US is farmland. "Population centers" and "growing food" are just about mutually exclusive by definition because growing food takes up a fuckton of space that people can't live on.

Also, rooftop farming cannot feed the city because there literally aren't enough rooftops.

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

SedanChair posted:

You just touched on it, though. People have broadband, or they should with government support. I think it's an oddly anachronistic idea that you need people physically in one place to have intellectual culture. The many intellectual cultures on the internet are far more developed than anything that you get from just living in a city. This is what I mean, people are confusing cupcake shops for something that can make you smarter.

it's a self-selection thing. people don't move to, or stay in, rural areas if they want to meet a lot of interesting people

and having access to intellectual groups over the internet is no guarantee - you have just as much if not more access to anti-intellectual groups over the internet

Anchor Wanker
May 14, 2015

blowfish posted:

Also, rooftop farming cannot feed the city because there literally aren't enough rooftops.

Though I do have hopes for vertical agriculture being a large scale thing someday.

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

Popular Thug Drink posted:

it's a self-selection thing. people don't move to, or stay in, rural areas if they want to meet a lot of interesting people

and having access to intellectual groups over the internet is no guarantee - you have just as much if not more access to anti-intellectual groups over the internet

This assumes that people in cities are "interesting." In reality they are just talking about game of thrones and a new club instead of what happened at the little league game.

OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Popular Thug Drink posted:

and having access to intellectual groups over the internet is no guarantee - you have just as much if not more access to anti-intellectual groups over the internet
There's no shortage of anti-intellectualism (and racism) in the cities either. Lack of information is a bigger danger than bad information though.

Anchor Wanker
May 14, 2015

Toph Bei Fong posted:



Sure, why not? My entire county is designated as rural as far as the USDA is concerned, and I'm only 25 miles from the suburbs of a somewhat major city. It's an hour drive because of all the tiny speedtrap towns I have to drive through (no direct access to a highway), and because of the deer. Does that count as the exurbs? I could be more isolated, like when I lived with my grandparents when I was a kid. Hell if I know. If it feels rural and it's poor, it's rural poverty.



Also, in general, gently caress speed traps/red light cameras. Has anyone else noticed that they only really show up in poor areas? I remember getting a red light cam ticket when I was still poor as gently caress. If you're only making a couple hundred dollars a week, the idea of losing like a day and a half worth of work over just barely missing a light is an awful awful feeling.

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

SedanChair posted:

This assumes that people in cities are "interesting." In reality they are just talking about game of thrones and a new club instead of what happened at the little league game.

by sheer probability you're more likely to find people who are into your same interests in a large city. a town of 500 people probably doesn't have a robust literature scene, etc.

doverhog
May 31, 2013

Defender of democracy and human rights 🇺🇦

woke wedding drone posted:

This assumes that people in cities are "interesting." In reality they are just talking about game of thrones and a new club instead of what happened at the little league game.

Both of those things are more interesting than a little league game.

RagnarokAngel
Oct 5, 2006

Black Magic Extraordinaire

doverhog posted:

Both of those things are more interesting than a little league game.

Not neccesarily, if you're a parent?

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

doverhog posted:

Both of those things are more interesting than a little league game.

Objectively!

doverhog
May 31, 2013

Defender of democracy and human rights 🇺🇦

RagnarokAngel posted:

Not neccesarily, if you're a parent?

Good point, you are more likely to find non-parents with common interests in a city.

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich
"hm, i'd like to live at least a mile from my closest neighbors, and have to drive for ten minutes before I get to a sufficient concentration of people to hold a group conversation" said the person who was keenly interested in human social contact. "at least i have the internet"

my grandparents live so far out in the sticks on 400+ acres of farmland they have a pair of binoculars on their kitchen counter so they can check to see if the neighbors are home before they call for a chat. without passing judgement, i couldn't possibly live like that

TheFuglyStik
Mar 7, 2003

Attention-starved & smugly condescending, the hipster has been deemed by
top scientists as:
"The self-important, unemployable clowns of the modern age."
Having read this thread and as a current resident of a town of <1,500 that has more square footage in abandoned tobacco warehouses as we do in actual houses, rural America is just holding on. At least in my area. Personally, I'm looking to move out since our Main Street is the top floors of what used to be successful businesses turning into lovely apartments any Fire Marshall would should down in a heartbeat. The bottom floors have turned into pawn shops and cash advance joints.

After running a few people out of my yard who couldn't even string words together, which is impressive as a former TCC regular... No, I'm fine with abandoning this place. It was a nice place to live and raise a family when I moved here, but I'm only willing to be a trip-sitter when I volunteer for it. This town has gone to poo poo, and it's only going to get worse when the three local factories decide it's cheaper to hire elsewhere. Sucks for longtime residents, but it's not my battle since it's not the place I consider home. I hate to be lovely, but it's not my problem the minute I move out.

You'll never convince me that chasing a man out of my own garage, naked aside from a ratty 4H T-shirt and the bloodshot complexion of his eyes is something I should have to deal with.

my kinda ape
Sep 15, 2008

Everything's gonna be A-OK
Oven Wrangler

UV_Catastrophe posted:

If the government would create heavy incentives to grow food closer to the population centers where the food is produced, that might give these rural areas an economic leg to stand on and would also cut down on carbon emissions. You could probably do something similar with energy generation by creating more incentives for wind and solar, which would be another benefit for these rural areas with tons of open land area to harness those energy sources.

Different crops grow in different areas. You can't exactly grow oranges in Nebraska and I wouldn't recommend growing grain (or anything) in Arizona. By all means buy local foods if you can but you absolutely cannot just grow all the types of food a city wants/needs in nearly any state.

Also not to startthe insane deport all rurals thing up again but where exactly does that guy think food comes from? Or if he was going to leave farmers then they just have to live in extreme isolation?

my kinda ape fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Aug 28, 2016

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich

TheFuglyStik posted:

Having read this thread and as a current resident of a town of <1,500 that has more square footage in abandoned tobacco warehouses as we do in actual houses, rural America is just holding on. At least in my area. Personally, I'm looking to move out since our Main Street is the top floors of what used to be successful businesses turning into lovely apartments any Fire Marshall would should down in a heartbeat. The bottom floors have turned into pawn shops and cash advance joints.

After running a few people out of my yard who couldn't even string words together, which is impressive as a former TCC regular... No, I'm fine with abandoning this place. It was a nice place to live and raise a family when I moved here, but I'm only willing to be a trip-sitter when I volunteer for it. This town has gone to poo poo, and it's only going to get worse when the three local factories decide it's cheaper to hire elsewhere. Sucks for longtime residents, but it's not my battle since it's not the place I consider home. I hate to be lovely, but it's not my problem the minute I move out.

You'll never convince me that chasing a man out of my own garage, naked aside from a ratty 4H T-shirt and the bloodshot complexion of his eyes is something I should have to deal with.

basically rural america has the same problem as poor urban ghettos, except instead of having to drive 2-5 miles to get to the nearest economically vital place you have to drive 20-50 miles

exmarx
Feb 18, 2012


The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse.

Popular Thug Drink posted:

basically rural america has the same problem as poor urban ghettos, except instead of having to drive 2-5 miles to get to the nearest economically vital place you have to drive 20-50 miles

Both are canaries in the coal mine for the broader effects of automation on jobs (especially without a strong welfare state for support) i.m.o

ghetto wormhole posted:

Different crops grow in different areas. You can't exactly grow oranges in most of Nebraska and I wouldn't recommend growing grain (or anything) in Arizona. By all means buy local foods if you can but you absolutely cannot just grow all the types of food a city wants/needs in nearly any state.


Yeah. It's just a fact that not all land is equally productive, and there's no guarantee that the immediate surrounding area of a city is going to be suitable for crop or pasture. There are a ton of factors — climate, how flat the land is, quality of soil, etc.

At least in New Zealand there's also concern over the fragmentation of productive land, particularly as people are going further and further away from cities due to ridiculous house prices. As prime agricultural land is subdivided to build residential properties, it becomes less productive.

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

axeil posted:

Another point this made me realize, is this conversation is why you have things like WV politics where even though coal companies treat the miners like garbage, everyone has to kowtow to them. Because if the mining goes away, those communities have nothing. It pisses off the liberal east/west coasters like myself, but the political calculations of someone from WV voting for a pro-coal, anti-carbon capture, anti-global warming candidate makes perfect sense for them. If the alternative is losing your job, why wouldn't you vote for the guy who at least says "I will do what I can to keep the industry in this state"?

Well, the problem with this is that the mining can't just go away. It's not like the mining companies can just take the coal and leave. The reason people in WV vote pro-coal is that the coal companies, being the main industry out there and by far the richest, basically own the community and can flood the airwaves with political ads while bought-and-paid-for local politicians and even regulators openly stump for the coal company. Local industry dominance can do some funny things to the politics - like when VW workers voted against unionization despite the fact that VW wanted them to unionize, because they were in non-union auto industry areas and the airwaves got flooded with anti-union ads, politicians, and outright lies, all at the behest of other automakers.

woke wedding drone posted:

You just touched on it, though. People have broadband, or they should with government support. I think it's an oddly anachronistic idea that you need people physically in one place to have intellectual culture. The many intellectual cultures on the internet are far more developed than anything that you get from just living in a city. This is what I mean, people are confusing cupcake shops for something that can make you smarter.

The thing is that cities already have internet. They also have universities, large diverse populations, strong transportation infrastructure, plenty of niche businesses with uncommon offerings, and a variety of public gathering places. Even if rural America gets internet, it still won't have those other things. Internet access and telework won't save rural areas.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004


Out here, everything hurts.




Tiny Deer posted:

Jesus, I thought the OP was belabouring the 'hey don't poo poo on the rural poor' point a little too hard in this, the most left wing of left wing forums. Evidently I was wrong.

I'm trying to imagine what farming or other geospecific jobs (i.e. not everything can be telecommuted if you think for a second) would look like without small towns, setting aside the horrible nightmare of forcibly relocating populations to new communities. Like, would farms completely reorganize to company towns set on vast tracts of corporate owned land? I realize that's where agriculture is headed anyway but I didn't think that's what people wanted.

You can't get around the fact that people will end up in the middle of 'nowhere', which I guess is anywhere outside of major metropolises, but maybe those places don't have to be lovely nightmare holes to live in? I imagine if they weren't lovely nightmare holes maybe they would produce fewer desperate angry people.

Remember, most of the elitist fucks proposing this kind of poo poo have no idea in hell what the logistics chain required to move the vast agricultural production of the 'empty' parts of the US looks like.

blowfish posted:

Also, rooftop farming cannot feed the city because there literally aren't enough rooftops.

Hell, if the urban planning's being done right, that's a -feature-. Dense housing when done well can be a joy to live in for people who want the convenience of city life. It's not really my bag, but there are plenty of people who want that, and more power to them.

Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Aug 28, 2016

UV_Catastrophe
Dec 29, 2008

Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are,

"It might have been."
Pillbug
Is there a working definition in the thread for what "rural" means? Like, is an economically depressed rustbelt town of ~50k people considered rural, or are we talking about the "places that only have one streetlight" definition of rural?

The economic and cultural differences between the little rustbelt towns and the only-one-stoplight towns are pretty huge.

Brutal Garcon
Nov 2, 2014



How small can something be in the US and still get called a "town"? Because I don't hear the term "village" used much over there.

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computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

Dzhay posted:

How small can something be in the US and still get called a "town"? Because I don't hear the term "village" used much over there.

Stanley is a city in Custer County, Idaho, United States. The population was 63 at the 2010 census; down from 100 in 2000.

In other words, there's no official designation for city/town/whatever

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