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>We've come a long way since Jefferson, Adams, and Madison opined that cities were "the natural enemies of virtue and happiness." While I don't want to go back

>We've come a long way since Jefferson, Adams, and Madison opined that cities were "the natural enemies of virtue and happiness." While I don't want to go back to a world where more than 50% of the population is solely bound to food production, I do feel like we're losing something. The real tension in the US, rural vs urban (not red vs blue), just continues to grow worse. I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that robust systems usually avoid centralization, favoring variety and redundancy instead. One of the big issues (at least AFAICT) is the lack of good paying jobs in reasonable proximity to rural areas. Why is that? Among other things, one issue seems to be a lack of specific kinds of infrastructure in rural areas: High-speed rail and high-speed internet connectivity. High-speed rail with hubs in urban (or urban-adjacent) areas can provide reasonable access for folks to commute to where the jobs are. High-speed internet connectivity would allow for (some) businesses to start and thrive in rural areas. Improving such infrastructure in rural areas would encourage (at least for a while), urban/suburban dwellers to move to more rural areas without compromising their earnings ability. And if such a migration is made possible/desirable, other businesses supporting those new residents (apartment buildings, bars/restaurants, cultural activities and a raft of other opportunities will present themselves for other, local, businesses. Would moving stuff like this be easy? No. There are a whole bunch of issues that block creating such infrastructure and the business environment that would depend upon such infrastructure. That said, urban/suburban folks moving to a functional (in terms of access and services) rural areas will increase the incentives for other businesses (hospitals, anyone?) to come to, remain and/or expand in rural areas. This would reduce some of the pressure on housing prices in urban/suburban areas and revitalize the economies of rural areas. I don't expect to see such movement in the near to medium term, and more's the pity. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't advocate for such things. Edit: Fixed typo.

prottog 3y ago
> High-speed rail with hubs in urban (or urban-adjacent) areas can provide reasonable access for folks to commute to where the jobs are. You don't need HSR for this. Actually, high-speed rail and commuting are mutually exclusive, because commuter rail lines stop way too often to reach even rural two-lane highway speeds. The TGV is very nice and will get you from Reims to La Defense, about a hundred miles of commute, in an hour and a half (via Paris l'Est), but only because Reims happens to be on the TGV trunk line and has a stop. If you're coming in from Vaires-sur-Marne, which that same TGV line goes through but doesn't stop at? About an hour to La Defense on the commuter RER despite covering less than a third of the distance.
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >You don't need HSR for this. Actually, high-speed rail and commuting are mutually exclusive, because commuter rail lines stop way too often to reach even rural two-lane highway speeds. A fair point, high speed rail is really only good for point-to-point travel. That said, using the hub and spoke model could alleviate that issue significantly. Have high-speed rail spokes in a ring, with spoke ends at 75-100 mile intervals around the ring, with the urban area at the center of the ring, along with good roads and feeder rail to the spoke ends could work. Trains from the spoke ends wouldn't make any stops (or perhaps one or two, if you wanted to create concentric rings), and so wouldn't need to continually stop. That assumes (unlike Amtrak's Acela) railroad track on the spokes which allow for 200-300mph (~340-510kph) speeds. And without stops, you can get from say, Fort Sumner, NM (in the 48th most rural county in the US[0]) to Albequerque, NM in less than an hour. While folks would still need to travel to such spoke hubs, such hubs, along with more hybrid/WFH jobs, that could absolutely work. It would be a huge undertaking, but construction of such rail lines while laying fiber along the track rights-of-way could kill two birds with one stone. Is it a perfect (or even a good one) solution? Maybe not. But anything that can both revitalize rural areas and mitigate the housing shortages in urban/suburban areas is a good idea. Perhaps you have a better, more workable solution? [0] https://www.newsweek.com/these-are-50-most-rural-counties-america-1589644 https://www.newsweek.com/these-are-50-most-rural-counties-am...
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    >But anything that can both revitalize rural areas and mitigate the housing shortages in urban/suburban areas is a good idea. Perhaps you have a better, more workable solution? Yeah, it's simple: fix the glaring problems in urban areas, and have people move there. If there's a housing shortage, build more housing. Fix the stupid zoning laws that prevents that. That's a lot easier than this ridiculous HSR ring idea.
    - nobody9999 3y ago
      >Yeah, it's simple: fix the glaring problems in urban areas, and have people move there. If there's a housing shortage, build more housing. Fix the stupid zoning laws that prevents that. That's a lot easier than this ridiculous HSR ring idea. And leave folks who live in rural areas to rot, without even a hope of revitalizing their communities? That seems both reductive and likely harmful. Because the issue isn't just housing shortages in urban areas, it's also the decline of much of the US by flight from rural areas. Which has been the source of a great deal of the economic dissatisfaction in the US for many folks for a long time. I'd point out that people who live in rural areas are humans too and, at least in the US, for the most part Americans, with just as much right to exist and thrive as anyone else.[0] I'm not saying that you feel this way, but the sense I get from your response is: "I don't like rural areas or the people who live in them. In fact, I hope they all leave or die." If that's not what you're trying to say, my apologies -- although you might want to try to be more clear about what you're saying if you don't want to be perceived that way. [0] I'd note that I was born, raised and have lived almost all of my life (and still do) in the most urban city in the US.
midoridensha 3y ago
You can't have HSR in rural areas. Rural areas, by definition, have very low population density. HSR is horrifically expensive to build and operate, and only works economically (like here in Japan, where there's lots of it) because there's huge ridership between the large cities it operates between. There's no HSR to rural communities because there aren't enough people riding it frequently enough to make it work, and the people who'd like to use it are too spread out over too large an area for the logistics to work. You can't have a bullet train that stops every 10 miles at some small town to pick people up; you'll end up with an average speed that's too low to even be called "HSR". Your whole post really makes no sense in the real world. It's very simple: if you want the benefits of living in civilization, like medical care, bullet trains, and other infrastructure, you need to move to cities because those are the only places where economies of scale exist to make that stuff work. >And if such a migration is made possible/desirable, other businesses supporting those new residents (apartment buildings, bars/restaurants, cultural activities and a raft of other opportunities will present themselves for other, local, businesses. If you have a place with a bunch of apartment buildings, bars/restaurants, and all this other stuff, what you have is not a "rural area".
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >You can't have HSR in rural areas. Rural areas, by definition, have very low population density. HSR is horrifically expensive to build and operate, and only works economically (like here in Japan, where there's lots of it) because there's huge ridership between the large cities it operates between. >There's no HSR to rural communities because there aren't enough people riding it frequently enough to make it work, and the people who'd like to use it are too spread out over too large an area for the logistics to work. You can't have a bullet train that stops every 10 miles at some small town to pick people up; you'll end up with an average speed that's too low to even be called "HSR". Your whole post really makes no sense in the real world. Which is why I suggested a hub and spoke system, where the ends of a spoke services several thousand square miles. Nor am I talking about "making stops every ten miles," either. It seems you didn't read my comment very closely and applied my thoughts to systems that exist today. I don't disagree about economies of scale, but there's certainly room for better communication and transportation infrastructure outside urban/suburban metro areas. In fact, over the long term (after both of us are dead, I'm sure) such initiatives could increase economic activity in the US enormously. >If you have a place with a bunch of apartment buildings, bars/restaurants, and all this other stuff, what you have is not a "rural area". Yep. That's true. I never said "rural areas need to stay rural forever." In fact, reviving the economically struggling rural areas necessitates increasing population density and economic activity. And that's a good thing.

prottog 3y ago

> High-speed rail with hubs in urban (or urban-adjacent) areas can provide reasonable access for folks to commute to where the jobs are. You don't need HSR for this. Actually, high-speed rail and commuting are mutually exclusive, because commuter rail lines stop way too often to reach even rural two-lane highway speeds. The TGV is very nice and will get you from Reims to La Defense, about a hundred miles of commute, in an hour and a half (via Paris l'Est), but only because Reims happens to be on the TGV trunk line and has a stop. If you're coming in from Vaires-sur-Marne, which that same TGV line goes through but doesn't stop at? About an hour to La Defense on the commuter RER despite covering less than a third of the distance.

nobody9999 3y ago
>You don't need HSR for this. Actually, high-speed rail and commuting are mutually exclusive, because commuter rail lines stop way too often to reach even rural two-lane highway speeds. A fair point, high speed rail is really only good for point-to-point travel. That said, using the hub and spoke model could alleviate that issue significantly. Have high-speed rail spokes in a ring, with spoke ends at 75-100 mile intervals around the ring, with the urban area at the center of the ring, along with good roads and feeder rail to the spoke ends could work. Trains from the spoke ends wouldn't make any stops (or perhaps one or two, if you wanted to create concentric rings), and so wouldn't need to continually stop. That assumes (unlike Amtrak's Acela) railroad track on the spokes which allow for 200-300mph (~340-510kph) speeds. And without stops, you can get from say, Fort Sumner, NM (in the 48th most rural county in the US[0]) to Albequerque, NM in less than an hour. While folks would still need to travel to such spoke hubs, such hubs, along with more hybrid/WFH jobs, that could absolutely work. It would be a huge undertaking, but construction of such rail lines while laying fiber along the track rights-of-way could kill two birds with one stone. Is it a perfect (or even a good one) solution? Maybe not. But anything that can both revitalize rural areas and mitigate the housing shortages in urban/suburban areas is a good idea. Perhaps you have a better, more workable solution? [0] https://www.newsweek.com/these-are-50-most-rural-counties-america-1589644 https://www.newsweek.com/these-are-50-most-rural-counties-am...
- midoridensha 3y ago
  >But anything that can both revitalize rural areas and mitigate the housing shortages in urban/suburban areas is a good idea. Perhaps you have a better, more workable solution? Yeah, it's simple: fix the glaring problems in urban areas, and have people move there. If there's a housing shortage, build more housing. Fix the stupid zoning laws that prevents that. That's a lot easier than this ridiculous HSR ring idea.
  - nobody9999 3y ago
    >Yeah, it's simple: fix the glaring problems in urban areas, and have people move there. If there's a housing shortage, build more housing. Fix the stupid zoning laws that prevents that. That's a lot easier than this ridiculous HSR ring idea. And leave folks who live in rural areas to rot, without even a hope of revitalizing their communities? That seems both reductive and likely harmful. Because the issue isn't just housing shortages in urban areas, it's also the decline of much of the US by flight from rural areas. Which has been the source of a great deal of the economic dissatisfaction in the US for many folks for a long time. I'd point out that people who live in rural areas are humans too and, at least in the US, for the most part Americans, with just as much right to exist and thrive as anyone else.[0] I'm not saying that you feel this way, but the sense I get from your response is: "I don't like rural areas or the people who live in them. In fact, I hope they all leave or die." If that's not what you're trying to say, my apologies -- although you might want to try to be more clear about what you're saying if you don't want to be perceived that way. [0] I'd note that I was born, raised and have lived almost all of my life (and still do) in the most urban city in the US.

midoridensha 3y ago

You can't have HSR in rural areas. Rural areas, by definition, have very low population density. HSR is horrifically expensive to build and operate, and only works economically (like here in Japan, where there's lots of it) because there's huge ridership between the large cities it operates between. There's no HSR to rural communities because there aren't enough people riding it frequently enough to make it work, and the people who'd like to use it are too spread out over too large an area for the logistics to work. You can't have a bullet train that stops every 10 miles at some small town to pick people up; you'll end up with an average speed that's too low to even be called "HSR". Your whole post really makes no sense in the real world. It's very simple: if you want the benefits of living in civilization, like medical care, bullet trains, and other infrastructure, you need to move to cities because those are the only places where economies of scale exist to make that stuff work. >And if such a migration is made possible/desirable, other businesses supporting those new residents (apartment buildings, bars/restaurants, cultural activities and a raft of other opportunities will present themselves for other, local, businesses. If you have a place with a bunch of apartment buildings, bars/restaurants, and all this other stuff, what you have is not a "rural area".

nobody9999 3y ago
>You can't have HSR in rural areas. Rural areas, by definition, have very low population density. HSR is horrifically expensive to build and operate, and only works economically (like here in Japan, where there's lots of it) because there's huge ridership between the large cities it operates between. >There's no HSR to rural communities because there aren't enough people riding it frequently enough to make it work, and the people who'd like to use it are too spread out over too large an area for the logistics to work. You can't have a bullet train that stops every 10 miles at some small town to pick people up; you'll end up with an average speed that's too low to even be called "HSR". Your whole post really makes no sense in the real world. Which is why I suggested a hub and spoke system, where the ends of a spoke services several thousand square miles. Nor am I talking about "making stops every ten miles," either. It seems you didn't read my comment very closely and applied my thoughts to systems that exist today. I don't disagree about economies of scale, but there's certainly room for better communication and transportation infrastructure outside urban/suburban metro areas. In fact, over the long term (after both of us are dead, I'm sure) such initiatives could increase economic activity in the US enormously. >If you have a place with a bunch of apartment buildings, bars/restaurants, and all this other stuff, what you have is not a "rural area". Yep. That's true. I never said "rural areas need to stay rural forever." In fact, reviving the economically struggling rural areas necessitates increasing population density and economic activity. And that's a good thing.