Former country kid here, but inching my way toward having spent half my life living in urban areas. My sense is that a population-level trend toward country li

Former country kid here, but inching my way toward having spent half my life living in urban areas. My sense is that a population-level trend toward country living simply can't happen. There are too many people, and they can't all move out to the country without causing it to not be the country anymore. The difference over the past couple decades in the are where my mom lives is stark. Night isn't noisy anymore, because, thanks to land developers, all the wildlife has been crowded out by McMansions. Growing up, we roamed an area of quite a few square miles on foot and on bike. Nowadays I'm not sure I'd let my kids do that, because there are just so many more people blasting down the road in their Audis while fiddling with CarPlay.