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Access to services is probably the main thing: schools, hospitals, grocery stores. Plumbing and electricity is a pretty low bar since wells and septic fields a
by elihu 5y ago
Access to services is probably the main thing: schools, hospitals, grocery stores. Plumbing and electricity is a pretty low bar since wells and septic fields are a thing, and even electricity can be generated on site these days if it's not available. But most people wouldn't want to live three hours from the nearest grocery store. That rules out some areas that would otherwise be pretty reasonable.
I drove through central British Columbia once on a road trip. There's probably enough reasonably flat land to fit the population of California with room to spare, but it'd be a pretty hard sell to get many people to move there now. Prince George has about 74,000 people but it's the only moderately large city/town for hundreds of miles in any direction.
- iancmceachern 5y agoLots of California is this way also. People focus on the SF and LA areas but there is so much empty land in thr rest of the state. Much of the hurdle to living there, as previously noted, is access to services. Mainly medical and grocery for me. Having to drove 2-3+ hours to get to a decent medical facility isn't in the cards for us.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoThe biggest hurdle to living in those places is actually access to jobs. I guess it works if you can WFH, but if you don't have that option, you want a vibrant job market. With jobs comes wealth and then services like retail and medical care. Prisons work well for these cases: Susanville is fairly rural (1.5 hours away from Reno?), it is the kind of place where if you drive north you get the dreaded "No services for 130 miles" sign. But they have a prison so they have jobs and services that come with the money those jobs bring (although you are still stuck heading to Reno if you need a real hospital or speciality care).