Totally agree. After living in rural Vermont for almost 30 years, I moved to a walkable city neighborhood in Portland, OR and have found it so much easier to walk everywhere and interact with people. In my lovely rural setting in VT, walking on roads (not hiking trails - which requires 20-30 minutes in theccar- or bushwhacking in the woods) almost always involves cars and trucks rushing by and spraying gravel, and much more danger of being run into than in the city, where a a sidewalk means I am clearly separated from traffic. Also so many things to see as I walk - very different from the spectacular natural views of my walks in the country, but changeable and human scale. And finally, aside from a wave at a passing car, the country offers far fewer chance encounters and conversations with people I don't know. In the city there is so much low level pleasant interaction, chatting about dogs, praising gardens, etc...
I grew up, on a farm, in the middle of nowhere Kentucky. I now live in the suburbs of Upstate New York. It nice to not have to drive 45 minutes to the closest grocery store.
"But it’s worth noting, Frodo and Sam live in the village, not out on isolated farms. The differences between a village, town, and city are differences of degree, not of kind. A city like San Francisco is a mosaic of neighborhoods, where each neighborhood is an urban village in itself."
I agree there’s something charming about “walking in the city” and it’s fairly tolerable to run errands and commute when you don’t need a car. Anyone who has been to Europe can see this. The issue of course is that what you describe there exists in like, 0.1% of American communities. It’s basically New York and DC, nowhere else - it’s a fantasy almost as much as “the simple life” is. Everywhere else, city life is a hellscape of traffic and strip malls. If there is train, it rarely runs, costs a lot, and/or is overrun with fentanyl addicts. And while I know urbanism types love to fight wars over that stuff, the average person can do absolutely nothing about any of it. So the individual incentive is to move the heck away, especially when the cost of living is also so high.
Totally agree. After living in rural Vermont for almost 30 years, I moved to a walkable city neighborhood in Portland, OR and have found it so much easier to walk everywhere and interact with people. In my lovely rural setting in VT, walking on roads (not hiking trails - which requires 20-30 minutes in theccar- or bushwhacking in the woods) almost always involves cars and trucks rushing by and spraying gravel, and much more danger of being run into than in the city, where a a sidewalk means I am clearly separated from traffic. Also so many things to see as I walk - very different from the spectacular natural views of my walks in the country, but changeable and human scale. And finally, aside from a wave at a passing car, the country offers far fewer chance encounters and conversations with people I don't know. In the city there is so much low level pleasant interaction, chatting about dogs, praising gardens, etc...
…have you, personally, ever lived in an extremely rural area for an extended period of time?
I grew up, on a farm, in the middle of nowhere Kentucky. I now live in the suburbs of Upstate New York. It nice to not have to drive 45 minutes to the closest grocery store.
Brilliant:
"But it’s worth noting, Frodo and Sam live in the village, not out on isolated farms. The differences between a village, town, and city are differences of degree, not of kind. A city like San Francisco is a mosaic of neighborhoods, where each neighborhood is an urban village in itself."
I agree there’s something charming about “walking in the city” and it’s fairly tolerable to run errands and commute when you don’t need a car. Anyone who has been to Europe can see this. The issue of course is that what you describe there exists in like, 0.1% of American communities. It’s basically New York and DC, nowhere else - it’s a fantasy almost as much as “the simple life” is. Everywhere else, city life is a hellscape of traffic and strip malls. If there is train, it rarely runs, costs a lot, and/or is overrun with fentanyl addicts. And while I know urbanism types love to fight wars over that stuff, the average person can do absolutely nothing about any of it. So the individual incentive is to move the heck away, especially when the cost of living is also so high.
Nitpicking this, about 2.5% of US population lives in NYC.