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> 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 ca

> 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).
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > You don't get that in the suburb Maybe there's a language barrier here, but isn't a suburb defined by being at the edge of a city? So wouldn't a bar in the city be the communal place for the suburb, just like the bar in town is for those out on the farms? Granted, I've known of a small number of bars operating on farms (usually farm-based craft breweries/cideries/wineries), but is not the typical use of rural properties. Having one next door that you could walk to would be unusual.
    - SamWhited 2y ago
      It's much easier to get into town from a farm a few miles out than to the city from the suburbs. Plus in the city there are lots of places and in most of our cities they have similar walkability problems (I'm from Atlanta which is particularly egregious in terms of transit and walk/bikeability). There's not naturally that one place where your neighbors are going to go and happen to bump into each other. You have to first meet them, then plan "let's go to this bar at 13:00, and here's how parking is going to work, etc." as opposed to just "everyone is in town, or at the bar in their neighborhood, the obvious place where you're just going to happen to bump into someone else who showed up for happy hour" or whatever. I'm sure I'm conveying the difference badly, but it's the difference between random encounters with your neighbors whom you'll see the next time you both go to the grocery and then walk over to the fun coffee place vs. random encounters with strangers you'll never see again.

> 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).
- randomdata 2y ago
  > You don't get that in the suburb Maybe there's a language barrier here, but isn't a suburb defined by being at the edge of a city? So wouldn't a bar in the city be the communal place for the suburb, just like the bar in town is for those out on the farms? Granted, I've known of a small number of bars operating on farms (usually farm-based craft breweries/cideries/wineries), but is not the typical use of rural properties. Having one next door that you could walk to would be unusual.
  - SamWhited 2y ago
    It's much easier to get into town from a farm a few miles out than to the city from the suburbs. Plus in the city there are lots of places and in most of our cities they have similar walkability problems (I'm from Atlanta which is particularly egregious in terms of transit and walk/bikeability). There's not naturally that one place where your neighbors are going to go and happen to bump into each other. You have to first meet them, then plan "let's go to this bar at 13:00, and here's how parking is going to work, etc." as opposed to just "everyone is in town, or at the bar in their neighborhood, the obvious place where you're just going to happen to bump into someone else who showed up for happy hour" or whatever. I'm sure I'm conveying the difference badly, but it's the difference between random encounters with your neighbors whom you'll see the next time you both go to the grocery and then walk over to the fun coffee place vs. random encounters with strangers you'll never see again.