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> I don't believe there is a nefarious scheme in play. I don't either but I do see it a sad lack of imagination and resignation to out-of-date mythologies abou

> I don't believe there is a nefarious scheme in play. I don't either but I do see it a sad lack of imagination and resignation to out-of-date mythologies about individualism. There's no defensible reason why work-home-school-retail structures rural places can't nucleate closer together into walkable "main street" towns. Much of the design of fly-over states is dictated by developers. It starts when a farmer who wants to retires sells a huge tract of land to a development company. The land eventually gets populated with a mind-numbing matrix of boring mcmansions, without regard to utilities, tax base, schooling, or distance. People then buy into to the facade of rural living but then end up driving 10's of miles for each and every errand and activity. They even take vacations in Europe and marvel at how delightful it is to sit in a town square and be able to walk to everything. When they get back to their ex-burban strip mall hellscapes in the USA, the vast majority just fail to make the connection that it doesn't have to be that way.

bluGill 8y ago
It is about trade offs though. I moved from a 10 acre lot to a small city recently. I love that my son and I went for an hour walk to a park (we passed a different park on the way because we played in that one yesterday) and back. I love that my work is only a few minutes drive away (now that the weather is warmer I need to get my bike working). I miss other things about my rural lot though. There is no space to drive my tractor collection around. I can't see anywhere near as many stars at night. It is about trade offs, I was happy in the rural area. I'm happy in town. Some think I like to do are better/easier, some things are worse/harder.
- matthewwiese 8y ago
  > There is no space to drive my tractor collection around. I am glad to see a comment like this on HN, despite the impression that everyone here is an SV-focused tech bro. Sometimes it feels good to read about somebody's tractors whilst I gaze out at the soybean field in my backyard. :)
  - josinalvo 8y ago
    > tech bro this does not seem to have been said with anomosity, so I take a risk I would not take with more angry interlocutors. tech bro is casually sexist, right? Could we avoid that, at least when talking between nice people?
  - jcims 8y ago
    I understand the sentiment but in my experience there are a lot more of us out there than you might think. It's probably the very tendency that makes a humble spread in the sticks appealing that also has us mostly laying low in the comments. This was my front porch in Ohio this morning: https://i.imgur.com/B7KSFP6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/B7KSFP6.jpg
njepa 8y ago
> People then buy into to the facade of rural living but then end up driving 10's of miles for each and every errand and activity. They even take vacations in Europe and marvel at how delightful it is to sit in a town square and be able to walk to everything. Most of Europe hasn't been built like this for many decades, and have been going the other way as well. You won't find many new developments in this spirit, and what already exists often isn't accessible. Being able to sit in a town square is vacation for a lot of people in Europe as well, especially if you haven't been grandfathered in.
kortilla 8y ago
>Much of the design of fly-over states is dictated by developers. Unnecessary bullshit. The entire part of the South Bay and nearly all of Los Angeles suffers from the same driving dependency. It has nothing to do with ignorant armchair analysis of how “the flyover states” work.
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  Sorry, I didn't intend to be flippant about "fly-over" states. But, yeah, the farmland-developer-mcmansion-exburban-dystopia transition is something I've seen too many times in too many places.
ataturk 8y ago
There's nothing at all out of date about individualism, it is simply sad that collectivism is all most of you seem to have ever known.

bluGill 8y ago

It is about trade offs though. I moved from a 10 acre lot to a small city recently. I love that my son and I went for an hour walk to a park (we passed a different park on the way because we played in that one yesterday) and back. I love that my work is only a few minutes drive away (now that the weather is warmer I need to get my bike working). I miss other things about my rural lot though. There is no space to drive my tractor collection around. I can't see anywhere near as many stars at night. It is about trade offs, I was happy in the rural area. I'm happy in town. Some think I like to do are better/easier, some things are worse/harder.

matthewwiese 8y ago
> There is no space to drive my tractor collection around. I am glad to see a comment like this on HN, despite the impression that everyone here is an SV-focused tech bro. Sometimes it feels good to read about somebody's tractors whilst I gaze out at the soybean field in my backyard. :)
- josinalvo 8y ago
  > tech bro this does not seem to have been said with anomosity, so I take a risk I would not take with more angry interlocutors. tech bro is casually sexist, right? Could we avoid that, at least when talking between nice people?
- jcims 8y ago
  I understand the sentiment but in my experience there are a lot more of us out there than you might think. It's probably the very tendency that makes a humble spread in the sticks appealing that also has us mostly laying low in the comments. This was my front porch in Ohio this morning: https://i.imgur.com/B7KSFP6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/B7KSFP6.jpg

njepa 8y ago

> People then buy into to the facade of rural living but then end up driving 10's of miles for each and every errand and activity. They even take vacations in Europe and marvel at how delightful it is to sit in a town square and be able to walk to everything. Most of Europe hasn't been built like this for many decades, and have been going the other way as well. You won't find many new developments in this spirit, and what already exists often isn't accessible. Being able to sit in a town square is vacation for a lot of people in Europe as well, especially if you haven't been grandfathered in.

kortilla 8y ago

>Much of the design of fly-over states is dictated by developers. Unnecessary bullshit. The entire part of the South Bay and nearly all of Los Angeles suffers from the same driving dependency. It has nothing to do with ignorant armchair analysis of how “the flyover states” work.

crispyambulance 8y ago
Sorry, I didn't intend to be flippant about "fly-over" states. But, yeah, the farmland-developer-mcmansion-exburban-dystopia transition is something I've seen too many times in too many places.

ataturk 8y ago

There's nothing at all out of date about individualism, it is simply sad that collectivism is all most of you seem to have ever known.