7 ms·

There's rural and super rural. I live in the UK, 15km from the nearest big town, 90km from london, surrounded by fields and woods, but 2km from a rail station a

by sgt101 7y ago

There's rural and super rural. I live in the UK, 15km from the nearest big town, 90km from london, surrounded by fields and woods, but 2km from a rail station and with 300mbps fttp. I can work just as effectively as colleagues in London with folks in India, China and the USA... My point is that extreme changes to infrastructure aren't needed for cities to become much more distributed and for urban movement to become much reduced and changed in pattern.

that_jojo 7y ago
Yeah, as someone who grew up on 12 acres off a dirt road -- in the comparitively populated SE corner of Michigan and still within the suburban area of a small city as well -- I think a lot of the more Eurasian crowd have a hard time understanding the true scope of situations like North American rural communities. Cable didn't even come up to our street, and this is ~4mi from the local town -- pretty far from 'super rural' in local terms.
- ghaff 7y ago
  My dad has a property in Maine, likewise just a few miles from the nearest small (~10,000 population) city. He's the last house on a dirt road that can still get ~1Mbit DSL and cell reception is really marginal too. And that's barely rural by Maine standards.
  - sgt101 7y ago
    The economics of DSL are driven by the physics and physics is harsh. Basically the signal to noise for high frequencies drops through the floor after 2km and for low frequencies after 10km... with good copper and lots of clever DSP (that's long range adsl btw) The good news is that I think MIMO will make a lot of properties more economic to serve with radio in the next few years.
ghaff 7y ago
I'm about the same distance from Boston in a fairly rural town in the middle of about 3 houses on 100 acres. And that's not especially unusual for this area. So I'm just a little over an hour from the city and am even near a commuter rail line. I think a lot of people imagine larger cities and their immediate suburbs on one hand and rural Wyoming on the other. There are plenty of places--many with pretty affordable housing--that are comfortably within the radius of major cities (in terms of jobs, culture, amenities, etc.) but which are not urban living.

by sgt101 7y ago

that_jojo 7y ago

Yeah, as someone who grew up on 12 acres off a dirt road -- in the comparitively populated SE corner of Michigan and still within the suburban area of a small city as well -- I think a lot of the more Eurasian crowd have a hard time understanding the true scope of situations like North American rural communities. Cable didn't even come up to our street, and this is ~4mi from the local town -- pretty far from 'super rural' in local terms.

ghaff 7y ago
My dad has a property in Maine, likewise just a few miles from the nearest small (~10,000 population) city. He's the last house on a dirt road that can still get ~1Mbit DSL and cell reception is really marginal too. And that's barely rural by Maine standards.
- sgt101 7y ago
  The economics of DSL are driven by the physics and physics is harsh. Basically the signal to noise for high frequencies drops through the floor after 2km and for low frequencies after 10km... with good copper and lots of clever DSP (that's long range adsl btw) The good news is that I think MIMO will make a lot of properties more economic to serve with radio in the next few years.

ghaff 7y ago

I'm about the same distance from Boston in a fairly rural town in the middle of about 3 houses on 100 acres. And that's not especially unusual for this area. So I'm just a little over an hour from the city and am even near a commuter rail line. I think a lot of people imagine larger cities and their immediate suburbs on one hand and rural Wyoming on the other. There are plenty of places--many with pretty affordable housing--that are comfortably within the radius of major cities (in terms of jobs, culture, amenities, etc.) but which are not urban living.