Rail used for freight. Do you think people were taking the train to the grocery store or the doctor’s office? Not to mention, that’s still in the city. There are people that live many miles away from the nearest public infrastructure, outside of roads and electricity.
Then there’s the dilemma of being at the mercy of the train schedule. 1 to 2 stops a day. It’s not like public transport in metropolitan areas where there are many stops a day.
Back then, they were walking to the general store or the doctor’s office if they lived in town, and they were riding their horse if they were a farmer living out in the fields. Today, we have such inventions as bicycles and paved roads to replace horses. The future is now!
Yes, I have. And being an australian, our rural areas are a lot more rural than the rural areas most of these americans are from. Now I’ll tell you a secret: There’s a good reason australia was mostly empty before colonisation, and there’s a very common sense reason why australia’s environment has been dying ever since then.
Dude… Australia is still fucking empty. The majority of you live in cities, and not rural. The majority of you live on the coast. The majority of Americans do not live near a city, most of us a miles and miles from one.
Four out of five Americans (80%) live in an urbanized area according to the Census Bureau. Only 20% of us live in rural areas. That shifted slightly toward rural in the 2020 census (it was 80.7% urban in 2010), because the Bureau revised the cutoff for urban area upward from 2,500 to 5,000 people. A large proportion of that “rural” 20% live in towns of up to 5,000 residents. The number of people who truly live miles from anybody else is quite small.
You guys are acting like urban is the same thing as metro. Things in urban areas are still far apart a lot of the time. Urban sprawl needs to be fixed (which involves relocating millions of people) before the banning of cars would even be even somewhat reasonable.
I believe that I said in an earlier comment that I’m not a fan of bans. This is just a funny meme, which serves as a good jumping off point for discussion. Rather, the policies that I am suggesting here (user pays, essentially) are one mechanism by which urban sprawl could be fixed, without government bans or mandates, respecting individual choice. There’s one heck of a lot of land devoted to driving and storing cars that people could easily and quickly convert to housing, food production, and other necessities of life.
In 1790, only about one out of every twenty Americans (on average) lived in urban areas (cities), but this ratio had dramatically changed to one out of four by 1870, one out of two by 1920, two out of three in the 1960s, and four out of five in the 2000s.
Urban areas are based off of 2.5k people in an area…I own a 200+ acre farm and have to drive 30mins (17miles) to the nearest grocery store…I am included in this urban classification…thats how the census is based.
Do you live in a census block with an average of 200 houses per square mile? Then you’re outside the urban area. 200 houses evenly spaced is 3.2 acre lots on average.
There are people that live many miles away from the nearest public infrastructure, outside of roads and electricity.
Yes! And they should move away and be helped with that.
Rural places will never have city services. Never. There’s only a tiny minority of professionals and artists who want to heroically settle into such places. What would be needed in this case, if you really wanted it, would be a military/authoritarian like regime to force people to work there. It happened in the past, I have lived in such times in my part of Europe. I don’t see that happening in liberal capitalism.
![[meme] Simple problems require simple solutions](https://imgur.com/8cT1yFG.png){kind=link}
Nearly every single small town was built on a backbone of rail. They could at the very least put back what was stolen.
Rail used for freight. Do you think people were taking the train to the grocery store or the doctor’s office? Not to mention, that’s still in the city. There are people that live many miles away from the nearest public infrastructure, outside of roads and electricity.
Then there’s the dilemma of being at the mercy of the train schedule. 1 to 2 stops a day. It’s not like public transport in metropolitan areas where there are many stops a day.
Back then, they were walking to the general store or the doctor’s office if they lived in town, and they were riding their horse if they were a farmer living out in the fields. Today, we have such inventions as bicycles and paved roads to replace horses. The future is now!
Have you ever even been to a rural area? Based on your comments it seriously does not seem like it.
Yes, I have. And being an australian, our rural areas are a lot more rural than the rural areas most of these americans are from. Now I’ll tell you a secret: There’s a good reason australia was mostly empty before colonisation, and there’s a very common sense reason why australia’s environment has been dying ever since then.
Dude… Australia is still fucking empty. The majority of you live in cities, and not rural. The majority of you live on the coast. The majority of Americans do not live near a city, most of us a miles and miles from one.
Four out of five Americans (80%) live in an urbanized area according to the Census Bureau. Only 20% of us live in rural areas. That shifted slightly toward rural in the 2020 census (it was 80.7% urban in 2010), because the Bureau revised the cutoff for urban area upward from 2,500 to 5,000 people. A large proportion of that “rural” 20% live in towns of up to 5,000 residents. The number of people who truly live miles from anybody else is quite small.
You guys are acting like urban is the same thing as metro. Things in urban areas are still far apart a lot of the time. Urban sprawl needs to be fixed (which involves relocating millions of people) before the banning of cars would even be even somewhat reasonable.
I believe that I said in an earlier comment that I’m not a fan of bans. This is just a funny meme, which serves as a good jumping off point for discussion. Rather, the policies that I am suggesting here (user pays, essentially) are one mechanism by which urban sprawl could be fixed, without government bans or mandates, respecting individual choice. There’s one heck of a lot of land devoted to driving and storing cars that people could easily and quickly convert to housing, food production, and other necessities of life.
https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/built-environment/us-cities-factsheet#:~:text=It is estimated that 83,to live in urban areas.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/18/americans-say-theres-not-much-appeal-big-city-living-why-do-so-many-us-live-there/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States
Y’ALL ARE CITY FOLK.
Urban areas are based off of 2.5k people in an area…I own a 200+ acre farm and have to drive 30mins (17miles) to the nearest grocery store…I am included in this urban classification…thats how the census is based.
Do you live in a census block with an average of 200 houses per square mile? Then you’re outside the urban area. 200 houses evenly spaced is 3.2 acre lots on average.
https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/ua/Census_UA_2020FAQs_Feb2023.pdf
Yes.
Yes! And they should move away and be helped with that.
Rural places will never have city services. Never. There’s only a tiny minority of professionals and artists who want to heroically settle into such places. What would be needed in this case, if you really wanted it, would be a military/authoritarian like regime to force people to work there. It happened in the past, I have lived in such times in my part of Europe. I don’t see that happening in liberal capitalism.