3 ms·

No offense, but this conversation is not for you or your family. The car is the second best thing that ever happened to rural life, after the tractor, and nothi

No offense, but this conversation is not for you or your family. The car is the second best thing that ever happened to rural life, after the tractor, and nothing is going to change that. This conversation is about the 62% of Americans that live and work in 3.5% of the land area. (Source: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-33.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-33....) There’s no reason for rural America to act like these ideas are crazy, nor for urban America to act like these problems are universal. So often these two sides act in opposition to each other when they really have no conflict with each other - except perhaps that both side has a hard time relating to the other lifestyle.

dwighttk 8y ago
Oh, that's not offensive. FWIW those 62% live in "incorporated paces" or cites, which would include my town (as long as I'm understanding that correctly.) Down under "new incorporated places" it mentions Sandy Point, TX, population 200. It's crazy that even including little towns like that you're still only talking about 3.5% of the land.
- burlesona 8y ago
  Yeah it truly is crazy. I think it also speaks to how relatively solvable some of the urban problems are in the sense that we could be intentionally building new cities (not just attached suburbs) if we wanted to, and that would - if it worked - take some of the pressure off the places that are struggling right now. For whatever reason America just stopped doing that after WW2. Maybe it’s time to start again?
  - saalweachter 8y ago
    The really meaty space of "cool impactful stuff we can do now" are all organizational problems, not engineering. How do you organize 10k people to build a new city, get them to agree upon a basic design and location, and then get them to actually go do it? There's nothing really stopping you.

dwighttk 8y ago

Oh, that's not offensive. FWIW those 62% live in "incorporated paces" or cites, which would include my town (as long as I'm understanding that correctly.) Down under "new incorporated places" it mentions Sandy Point, TX, population 200. It's crazy that even including little towns like that you're still only talking about 3.5% of the land.

burlesona 8y ago
Yeah it truly is crazy. I think it also speaks to how relatively solvable some of the urban problems are in the sense that we could be intentionally building new cities (not just attached suburbs) if we wanted to, and that would - if it worked - take some of the pressure off the places that are struggling right now. For whatever reason America just stopped doing that after WW2. Maybe it’s time to start again?
- saalweachter 8y ago
  The really meaty space of "cool impactful stuff we can do now" are all organizational problems, not engineering. How do you organize 10k people to build a new city, get them to agree upon a basic design and location, and then get them to actually go do it? There's nothing really stopping you.