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> Not everyone wants to be crowded into cities with noise and crime and no access to nature. Good Christ, I lived for years in small towns in the most rural a

> Not everyone wants to be crowded into cities with noise and crime and no access to nature. Good Christ, I lived for years in small towns in the most rural area of the UK without a car! Your towns aren't built for walkers and public transport and that sucks, but there's no need to project that to everywhere else!

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
eropple 3y ago
It's not even true in the United States. In the Boston area, there are still plenty of those "strong towns" the bloggists go on about. I live in one. My car gets used to go to Home Depot, to drive to visit my parents four hours away, and if I need to go to my doctor who's just a little too far off the beaten path to drive to. The rest of the time, I walk, and I'm within a mile of a commuter rail station to get to Boston proper. Of course, we have not here decided that Government Is The Problem, so we tend to wield it a little better. A number of my neighbors want to change that, being as afraid as they are of "Transit-Oriented Development" (you can guess what that means), but hey--democracy isn't free, we need to push that nonsense back.
tw04 3y ago
>Your towns aren't built for walkers and public transport and that sucks, but there's no need to project that to everywhere else! And I'd say you're grossly mischaracterizing the US. Every small town I've lived in has ample sidewalks, crosswalks, and is easily walkable. Where my children go to school I can walk from one end of town to the other without ever having to risk life and limb. Heck a few of the sidewalks extend a mile out into the country just in anticipation of the city eventually growing. The town I grew up in was the same. The entire US isn't small-town Texas.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  I wasn't characterising the US at all, I have no idea where the parent commentor lives.
Turing_Machine 3y ago
> Good Christ, I lived for years in small towns in the most rural area of the UK without a car! The UK is smaller than the US state of Oregon, which is the 9th largest state in terms of area. There is literally nowhere in the UK that counts as "rural" by US standards. The UK has a population density of 277/km^2, while the United States as a whole has only 35/km^2. The comparison is much worse if you look at western/northern states like North Dakota (4/km^2) or Alaska (0.5/km^2). Even California (widely considered a very crowded state) has only 250/km^2, still considerably less than the UK. In fact, there are only 4 states of 50 which have a greater population density than the UK. The old saying that Americans consider a hundred years a long time, while the British consider a hundred miles a long distance seems to be accurate even in the long term.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  Why do you think I was talking about the US? I don't know where the parent poster lives.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    Because this is a US-based website? In any case, the UK is 52nd worldwide in terms of population density, meaning that it is more dense than 197 other regions and dependencies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
    - dukeyukey 3y ago
      An American website by ownership - the actual users are pretty international. And anyway, the county I lived in was about 100 people per square mile, it about 184th in that list. Around the same as Alabama.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

eropple 3y ago

It's not even true in the United States. In the Boston area, there are still plenty of those "strong towns" the bloggists go on about. I live in one. My car gets used to go to Home Depot, to drive to visit my parents four hours away, and if I need to go to my doctor who's just a little too far off the beaten path to drive to. The rest of the time, I walk, and I'm within a mile of a commuter rail station to get to Boston proper. Of course, we have not here decided that Government Is The Problem, so we tend to wield it a little better. A number of my neighbors want to change that, being as afraid as they are of "Transit-Oriented Development" (you can guess what that means), but hey--democracy isn't free, we need to push that nonsense back.

tw04 3y ago

>Your towns aren't built for walkers and public transport and that sucks, but there's no need to project that to everywhere else! And I'd say you're grossly mischaracterizing the US. Every small town I've lived in has ample sidewalks, crosswalks, and is easily walkable. Where my children go to school I can walk from one end of town to the other without ever having to risk life and limb. Heck a few of the sidewalks extend a mile out into the country just in anticipation of the city eventually growing. The town I grew up in was the same. The entire US isn't small-town Texas.

dukeyukey 3y ago
I wasn't characterising the US at all, I have no idea where the parent commentor lives.

Turing_Machine 3y ago

> Good Christ, I lived for years in small towns in the most rural area of the UK without a car! The UK is smaller than the US state of Oregon, which is the 9th largest state in terms of area. There is literally nowhere in the UK that counts as "rural" by US standards. The UK has a population density of 277/km^2, while the United States as a whole has only 35/km^2. The comparison is much worse if you look at western/northern states like North Dakota (4/km^2) or Alaska (0.5/km^2). Even California (widely considered a very crowded state) has only 250/km^2, still considerably less than the UK. In fact, there are only 4 states of 50 which have a greater population density than the UK. The old saying that Americans consider a hundred years a long time, while the British consider a hundred miles a long distance seems to be accurate even in the long term.

dukeyukey 3y ago
Why do you think I was talking about the US? I don't know where the parent poster lives.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  Because this is a US-based website? In any case, the UK is 52nd worldwide in terms of population density, meaning that it is more dense than 197 other regions and dependencies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    An American website by ownership - the actual users are pretty international. And anyway, the county I lived in was about 100 people per square mile, it about 184th in that list. Around the same as Alabama.