6 ms·

I would like to contest the idea of living in rural areas as having a higher quality of life. As an analogy, we live in houses with refrigerators because this

I would like to contest the idea of living in rural areas as having a higher quality of life. As an analogy, we live in houses with refrigerators because this is a higher quality of life than farming or foraging for food and huddling under trees to get out of the rain. We live in concentrated environments because walking down the street is a higher quality of life than needing to travel tens of kilometers to buy necessities. A smaller house is easier to maintain and clean.

xtreme 8y ago
> We live in concentrated environments because walking down the street is a higher quality of life than needing to travel tens of kilometers to buy necessities. A smaller house is easier to maintain and clean. I see this sentiment often on HN, but so far I have not seen strong evidence to support it other than anecdotes. Have there been studies that show that most people would prefer to live in dense cities if employment wasn't a major deciding factor?
- nojvek 8y ago
  I don’t think it has to be dense cities like Tokyo. Plenty of suburbia in US. God I love suburbia.
  - scarecrowbob 8y ago
    "God I love suburbia." It gives me a lot of hope to hear that there are people who do like that kind of thing, given how many folks I know who live in such situations. Personally, I don't like it-- at least in Texas it's the worst of all worlds: everything is far enough apart that you still need to drive most places in a car (and public transportation / biking are afterthoughts) but you're still living almost on top of each other. But if folks like it, good on them. I'm trying to figure out how to get out of it. I like being in places like manhattan where I can get on a subway and access some much amazing things, and I like to be out in the hills where have some space and quite. But that in-between space isn't good for me, and that's not taking into account the various cultural and economic issues that I find in living in "suburbia".
- wonderwonder 8y ago
  I do see your statement regarding employment, but most people on earth can't afford a car so living closer to necessities saves them a multi hour walk in an increasingly warmer climate.
  - skybrian 8y ago
    This doesn't make sense to me economically in the US, so I wonder how it's different elsewhere? A decent used car is much cheaper than urban real estate in many US cities. Poor retirees often live in mobile home parks. And people who need to save money shop at Walmart, not a pricy convenience store. Seems like a poor person living in a big city who isn't lucky enough to have a rent-controlled apartment is going to end up homeless?
    - wonderwonder 8y ago
      Here is a read that may help, from 2001 but likely still very relevant. https://www.prb.org/howindianslive/ https://www.prb.org/howindianslive/
- BlackFly 8y ago
  What can be asserted without evidence can be denied without evidence. In other words, I'm sorry but I don't have any study to provide you. Probably such a study cannot exist, since it would be unethical to perform the sort of double blind study (needed to separate correlation from causation ) involving humans, transportation and employment. Observationally, people are moving to bigger cities, I think this is common enough knowledge to not require a citation.
StavrosK 8y ago
I think you're assuming that American rural areas are the only kind of rural area possible. Rural areas in other parts of the world (including mine) look much different than US ones.
- dpark 8y ago
  How so?
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    They're denser towns with various shops for the essentials, so you don't have to drive for kilometers to get necessities, houses are on average significantly smaller, etc. They basically look like semi-suburban neighborhoods in big US cities (ie neighborhoods not in the city center with skyscrapers/etc).
    - cakemuncher 8y ago
      Kind of like North Seattle.
    - dpark 8y ago
      That's not really rural. Rural is specifically defined as the areas outside towns and cities. The fact that you don't live in a metropolis doesn't mean you live in a rural area. In the US, a population density greater than 999/sq mile is urban.
  - d-- 8y ago
    In other countries suburban villages have been growing for centuries before cars became available (at least in parts of Europe). So, one can live in these villages without a car and can expect some level of public transportation.
- BlackFly 8y ago
  I said necessities instead of specifying food or clothes because for some people, items which are hard to impossible to find in small towns can be considered necessities for a contented existence. Similarly, necessities might be friends with a shared (rare) interest that you might have to drive for hours to meet with outside of concentrated urban environments. I struggled over how to word it and I guess I failed. I was trying to get at the point that living in a city can easily broaden what you consider to be essential. If I was only considering American style urban vs. rural environments, the notion of being able to walk to a grocery store in an urban environment wouldn't be true either (for suburbs).
Kephael 8y ago
I order necessities from Amazon and they show up the next day. If I walk to the grocery store, I can only bring back what I can carry. If I drive to the store or have groceries delivered by Instacart, I can bring comfortably get lots of groceries.
IanCal 8y ago
There's a huge range, and "smaller towns" does not necessarily mean places where you are tens of kilometers away from essentials.
zdragnar 8y ago
Your analogy doesn't hold for me. Small house, 5 acres, pond, river, rural countryside. If I walk down the street, the most dangerous things I can expect are deer, or if I'm very unlucky, a bobcat. When I lived in the nearby urban cities, I could walk down the street and the most dangerous things I have faced in the past were people on crack, with weapons, wanting money. If I had been less fortunate, it would have been a gang that split open a neighbor's skull over a stolen CD. Nothings perfect, but I'll take the country life any day.

xtreme 8y ago

> We live in concentrated environments because walking down the street is a higher quality of life than needing to travel tens of kilometers to buy necessities. A smaller house is easier to maintain and clean. I see this sentiment often on HN, but so far I have not seen strong evidence to support it other than anecdotes. Have there been studies that show that most people would prefer to live in dense cities if employment wasn't a major deciding factor?

nojvek 8y ago
I don’t think it has to be dense cities like Tokyo. Plenty of suburbia in US. God I love suburbia.
- scarecrowbob 8y ago
  "God I love suburbia." It gives me a lot of hope to hear that there are people who do like that kind of thing, given how many folks I know who live in such situations. Personally, I don't like it-- at least in Texas it's the worst of all worlds: everything is far enough apart that you still need to drive most places in a car (and public transportation / biking are afterthoughts) but you're still living almost on top of each other. But if folks like it, good on them. I'm trying to figure out how to get out of it. I like being in places like manhattan where I can get on a subway and access some much amazing things, and I like to be out in the hills where have some space and quite. But that in-between space isn't good for me, and that's not taking into account the various cultural and economic issues that I find in living in "suburbia".
wonderwonder 8y ago
I do see your statement regarding employment, but most people on earth can't afford a car so living closer to necessities saves them a multi hour walk in an increasingly warmer climate.
- skybrian 8y ago
  This doesn't make sense to me economically in the US, so I wonder how it's different elsewhere? A decent used car is much cheaper than urban real estate in many US cities. Poor retirees often live in mobile home parks. And people who need to save money shop at Walmart, not a pricy convenience store. Seems like a poor person living in a big city who isn't lucky enough to have a rent-controlled apartment is going to end up homeless?
  - wonderwonder 8y ago
    Here is a read that may help, from 2001 but likely still very relevant. https://www.prb.org/howindianslive/ https://www.prb.org/howindianslive/
BlackFly 8y ago
What can be asserted without evidence can be denied without evidence. In other words, I'm sorry but I don't have any study to provide you. Probably such a study cannot exist, since it would be unethical to perform the sort of double blind study (needed to separate correlation from causation ) involving humans, transportation and employment. Observationally, people are moving to bigger cities, I think this is common enough knowledge to not require a citation.

StavrosK 8y ago

I think you're assuming that American rural areas are the only kind of rural area possible. Rural areas in other parts of the world (including mine) look much different than US ones.

dpark 8y ago
How so?
- StavrosK 8y ago
  They're denser towns with various shops for the essentials, so you don't have to drive for kilometers to get necessities, houses are on average significantly smaller, etc. They basically look like semi-suburban neighborhoods in big US cities (ie neighborhoods not in the city center with skyscrapers/etc).
  - cakemuncher 8y ago
    Kind of like North Seattle.
  - dpark 8y ago
    That's not really rural. Rural is specifically defined as the areas outside towns and cities. The fact that you don't live in a metropolis doesn't mean you live in a rural area. In the US, a population density greater than 999/sq mile is urban.
- d-- 8y ago
  In other countries suburban villages have been growing for centuries before cars became available (at least in parts of Europe). So, one can live in these villages without a car and can expect some level of public transportation.
BlackFly 8y ago
I said necessities instead of specifying food or clothes because for some people, items which are hard to impossible to find in small towns can be considered necessities for a contented existence. Similarly, necessities might be friends with a shared (rare) interest that you might have to drive for hours to meet with outside of concentrated urban environments. I struggled over how to word it and I guess I failed. I was trying to get at the point that living in a city can easily broaden what you consider to be essential. If I was only considering American style urban vs. rural environments, the notion of being able to walk to a grocery store in an urban environment wouldn't be true either (for suburbs).

Kephael 8y ago

I order necessities from Amazon and they show up the next day. If I walk to the grocery store, I can only bring back what I can carry. If I drive to the store or have groceries delivered by Instacart, I can bring comfortably get lots of groceries.

IanCal 8y ago

There's a huge range, and "smaller towns" does not necessarily mean places where you are tens of kilometers away from essentials.

zdragnar 8y ago

Your analogy doesn't hold for me. Small house, 5 acres, pond, river, rural countryside. If I walk down the street, the most dangerous things I can expect are deer, or if I'm very unlucky, a bobcat. When I lived in the nearby urban cities, I could walk down the street and the most dangerous things I have faced in the past were people on crack, with weapons, wanting money. If I had been less fortunate, it would have been a gang that split open a neighbor's skull over a stolen CD. Nothings perfect, but I'll take the country life any day.