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> I usually assume that this USA-specific "missing middle" of dense housing is a result of car culture and the suburban nightmare we've created across the count
by ericmay 4y ago
> I usually assume that this USA-specific "missing middle" of dense housing is a result of car culture and the suburban nightmare we've created across the country.
The rural areas are just that, rural. But cities are where the problem of the suburban nightmare take hold and they weren’t an issue for most of American history because a city was a city and the countryside was the countryside.
This changed with the highway infrastructure, gutting of city transit like existing streetcars, etc. and trying to sell the idyllic countryside at mass scale that was for a brief period “achievable” via personal automobile.
Socialization doesn’t have to be because of density. It can be between homesteaders who pass each other by once in awhile or meet up at the market place that exists in the town. The problem with suburbs is that they don’t reproduce any of the benefits of city life or productive rural life.
- monknomo 4y agoThis article contrasts two different modes of rural areas. There is the US-style rural, where the homesteads are widely separated. The house is on the farm, and far from the neighbors. Then there is the European (and really most of the rest of the world) style of rural, where there is a dense little village and the farmers travel to their fields, rather than live in the middle of the fields. Why is that, even without cars?
- stevesearer 4y agoIt likely would have to do with how land was distributed to owners in the US compared to how it was distributed in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survey_township https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survey_township