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> social isolation is becoming a huge problem It is interesting that you say it is becoming a problem. Why was it not a problem in a past? > It's a smaller to

> social isolation is becoming a huge problem It is interesting that you say it is becoming a problem. Why was it not a problem in a past? > It's a smaller town Towns are usually considered urban. I was imagining actual, by definition, rural. Living in a small town (~2,000 people) right now, I'd say it has less of a social community that the rural areas I've lived in previously. Still nothing that should leave you feeling isolated, but there is certainly less of a "automatically friends with everyone" vibe. Granted, my rural experience is strictly in agricultural areas where everyone are farmers, which gives common ground on which to "automatically" become friends. If nothing else, you can talk about farming. Is that the problem with the suburbs? That the people there can't find common ground on which to build friendships?

mdgrech23 2y ago
[flagged]
cinntaile 2y ago
> It is interesting that you say it is becoming a problem. Why was it not a problem in a past? You couldn't live that far apart since there were no roads or cars that allowed for this.
- randomdata 2y ago
  Roads have been around for several hundred years or more, along with public transportation (trains were commonplace in rural areas in the past), and the car has been the primary mode of transportation for about a century. After all that time, why is this still becoming a big problem?
- flir 2y ago
  A terraced street in London can have a metric boat-load of social isolation and no cars. I don't think it's (necessarily) the car or the literal distance between houses. At the very least, it's a multi-faceted problem.
  - cinntaile 2y ago
    Just because I reply to one aspect obviously doesn't mean that I don't consider this a multi-faceted problem.
- hermitdev 2y ago
  Nah, bullshit. I grew up in a rural area [0], my parents are still in a rural area (their postal address literally contains 'rural route'). You just don't go to town every day. You didn't go to town every day in the past; you planned your trips ahead of time. It was a rare occurrence - maybe a monthly, quarterly or even less frequent occurrence. And if you do go to town, it might be a multi-day trip. Why? Because you were either walking or going on horseback. People got around before roads. Roads make travel easier. People have been trying to make traveling easier since the dawn of history. See: roads, ships, animal husbandry, the wheel, etc. People can live far apart without problem if they're self-sufficient or plan ahead: grow your own food, have stockpiles that can last months if you can't make it to town (rural winters can be a bitch). What's new is this dependency on others and belief of "oh my god, I'll die if I don't make it to town (grocery store) this week". [0] Our closest neighbor was a quarter mile away. Nearest paved road (and our bus stop as kids) was 2.5 miles away over private dirt roads with about 1000 feet change in elevation. It was 8 miles to town, 20 to city (which would barely be a suburb most places).
  - SamWhited 2y ago
    Yah, it's not the distance of the houses that matter (well, it does, but it's not the whole story), it's the distance between amenities. Like I said, the actual town I grew up in was terrible. It's 30-45 minutes to get anywhere and most things are stand alone. There's a shopping mall kind of development (Walmart, chain restaurants, etc.) on one side of town, but to get to most of the housing you have to drive 30 minutes. The nearest coffee shop is in another development at least 45 minutes away from both of those places, etc. Meanwhile, the other nearby town I mentioned has plenty of outlying farms that are pretty far away, but when they do go into town to go to the grocery or whatever they can also walk into the coffee shop, or the little stores or whatever and have chance encounters with their in-town neighbors. Even among the farm areas there's a coffee shop / pub that everyone goes to at the end of the day. There's even a dance hall that used to be a one room school house and now gets re-purposed for monthly dances. You don't get that in the suburb I live in now where having anything like that in a residential or agricultural area is forbidden by the zoning code. Similarly, back before cars sure you didn't pop into town as regularly, but everyone knew when events were happening and when you did go into town for something everyone was there and things were relatively close together and easy to get to (once you were there already, I mean).
SamWhited 2y ago
no that's fair, it's been a problem for a long time.

mdgrech23 2y ago

[flagged]

cinntaile 2y ago

> It is interesting that you say it is becoming a problem. Why was it not a problem in a past? You couldn't live that far apart since there were no roads or cars that allowed for this.

randomdata 2y ago
Roads have been around for several hundred years or more, along with public transportation (trains were commonplace in rural areas in the past), and the car has been the primary mode of transportation for about a century. After all that time, why is this still becoming a big problem?
flir 2y ago
A terraced street in London can have a metric boat-load of social isolation and no cars. I don't think it's (necessarily) the car or the literal distance between houses. At the very least, it's a multi-faceted problem.
- cinntaile 2y ago
  Just because I reply to one aspect obviously doesn't mean that I don't consider this a multi-faceted problem.
hermitdev 2y ago
Nah, bullshit. I grew up in a rural area [0], my parents are still in a rural area (their postal address literally contains 'rural route'). You just don't go to town every day. You didn't go to town every day in the past; you planned your trips ahead of time. It was a rare occurrence - maybe a monthly, quarterly or even less frequent occurrence. And if you do go to town, it might be a multi-day trip. Why? Because you were either walking or going on horseback. People got around before roads. Roads make travel easier. People have been trying to make traveling easier since the dawn of history. See: roads, ships, animal husbandry, the wheel, etc. People can live far apart without problem if they're self-sufficient or plan ahead: grow your own food, have stockpiles that can last months if you can't make it to town (rural winters can be a bitch). What's new is this dependency on others and belief of "oh my god, I'll die if I don't make it to town (grocery store) this week". [0] Our closest neighbor was a quarter mile away. Nearest paved road (and our bus stop as kids) was 2.5 miles away over private dirt roads with about 1000 feet change in elevation. It was 8 miles to town, 20 to city (which would barely be a suburb most places).
- SamWhited 2y ago
  Yah, it's not the distance of the houses that matter (well, it does, but it's not the whole story), it's the distance between amenities. Like I said, the actual town I grew up in was terrible. It's 30-45 minutes to get anywhere and most things are stand alone. There's a shopping mall kind of development (Walmart, chain restaurants, etc.) on one side of town, but to get to most of the housing you have to drive 30 minutes. The nearest coffee shop is in another development at least 45 minutes away from both of those places, etc. Meanwhile, the other nearby town I mentioned has plenty of outlying farms that are pretty far away, but when they do go into town to go to the grocery or whatever they can also walk into the coffee shop, or the little stores or whatever and have chance encounters with their in-town neighbors. Even among the farm areas there's a coffee shop / pub that everyone goes to at the end of the day. There's even a dance hall that used to be a one room school house and now gets re-purposed for monthly dances. You don't get that in the suburb I live in now where having anything like that in a residential or agricultural area is forbidden by the zoning code. Similarly, back before cars sure you didn't pop into town as regularly, but everyone knew when events were happening and when you did go into town for something everyone was there and things were relatively close together and easy to get to (once you were there already, I mean).

SamWhited 2y ago

no that's fair, it's been a problem for a long time.