Exurbs & the Destruction of Rural America

I’m also torn on this issue. We live in the city, and also have a house in the country. It is not a country house, exactly, it’s more like a country shack. I never know how to say that without sounding like an idiot/like Thurston Howell III “Why yes, we have a country house …” It’s a shack-like house that happens to be in a rural area.

Anyway, I love my rural area. I would like it to stay rural for my own personal enjoyment, but I also realize I’m not going to start farming or anything like that. There is a little town that didn’t have any chain stores or restaurants until last year … it was quite the news, with much lamentation, that we were going to have (the horror!) a CHAIN FAST FOOD RESTAURANT. It all worked out okay though, because it turned out that the chain was Tim Horton’s, and the town had a collective Emily Litella moment and said “Oh, nevermind, we’re 100% supportive of Timbits and coffee.”

The big thing is that we now might get a Walmart. If we were voting on this, I would vote No to Walmart, but it’s not my land that’s for sale. I guess I can disagree with the changes that are happening in our area without thinking that they are morally wrong or that there should be laws against them.

HIJACK!!
your wife owns Knit/Purl?? I love looking at their store online! I’ve never made an order, but I will soon. How cool!

I see just as much Nimbyism living in the City as I did growing up in the suburbs. My neighborhood had a huge stink about the City granting a Certificate of Occupancy to two restaurants because they were arguably fast food. One was a Cluck-U and the other was a small restaurant which was family owned and while you did have to go to the counter, it was most definitely not a chain. The reason that this was controversial is that a lot of those storefronts are empty. It wasn’t displacing a real restaurant but rather filling up an empty storefront which didn’t have anything and was most likely empty for a while.

For the most part, I see a larger variety of minorities in the suburbs than I do in the City. In DC, if I want to have some good Vietnamese, I head out to the suburbs. If I want good ethnic food stores, I have to head out to the suburbs. When I get a craving for some Brazilian food products, I pretty much have to go to the suburbs as well. If I want Afghan food, I have to drive to the suburbs.

Why oh why won’t everyone just live like sardines! Everything would be so much better. All anyone really needs is space to sleep. Anything more is just ridiculous extravagance.

I live in a forest, and drive to work in a small city.

I have lived in cities, but much prefer to be where I am now.

Cities can be wonderful places to visit, but the smog, crime and congestion of traffic and pedestrians wears me down.

Burbs at least give people a chance to have their own yard in low crime neighbourhoods that are affordable. For moderately priced housing, I’d take a home in the burbs over a duplex in a city any day.

Fortunately, however, I don’t have to settle for either, so here I sit, very happily, in a forest.

But the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth :frowning:

Check your email.

I’ve got to call bullshit on a large percentage of this thread. What is the definition of “suburbs”? At what level of density do they become bad?

I ask because I don’t think the ill-defined categories bandied about here apply to a lot of cities.

Take Indy. Unigov of Indy/Marion county in the center surrounded by eight “doughnut” counties. Downtown is smack dab in the middle of Indy. Fine, we can concede that that’s an “urban” environment.

And, surrounding that urban environment are residential areas that typically do not contain McMansions. But big box stores and vulgar chains of all stripes? They’re scattered everywhere, urbs and suburbs. Nice little indie shops and restaurants? Scattered everywhere, urbs and suburbs. And so on.

The neighborhood where I live in Marion county, just a 20-min drive from Downtown yet also just a 5 minute drive max to the county above, was probably considered the “suburbs” when it was built in the 1960s.

Out in the doughnut counties you can find the admittedly scornworthy McMansions. The reason they’re built there seems pretty simple: Other land was taken.

Let’s dispell some other bullshit in this thread. The thing about farms disappearing is stupid. Agricultural land is plentiful and won’t ever be used up unless someday we have a three billion population in this country. Most of New York State, California, and Illiinois (the homes of our three biggest cities) are the boondocks. Rural. Bucolic. Fairly unchanging. Guess what, people are going to build on empty fields near big cities.

The constant bitching about WalMart is beyond retarded. It’s a big store that sells the basics of life for a reasonable price. It’s fine to point out what the corporate entity does wrong, but the basic concept is sound and will never go away. The idea that WalMart hurts small stores is crap; in fact, the opposite is true–and quite easy to understand if you get the concept of “anchor.” People go to Wal*Mart for the basics and visit all the smaller chains AND indie shops and restaurants in the shopping center.

The idea that the suburbs are killing American life or whatever is also a pile. Where are these evil, soul-crushing neighborhoods? I sure haven’t seen them. I see kids involved with all kinds of sports and activities and adults partying with their friends. And yes, neighbors associate with each other.

And a personal peeve of mine: The notion that a large-scale, long-term trend is occuring because of the collective lack of virtue among the people. “If only people saw how much better urban living is and lived accordingly!”

Duh. People do what they do because they are incented to do so. If given the opportunity to live in a massive house on a big plot of land at a monthly payment they can afford, many will go for that.

Finally, they’re called the “vulgar masses” for a reason. The average person doesn’t have refined tastes. They buy McMansions, hang Thomas Kinkade paintings, and call it macaroni. A hundred years from now it will be no different, and I’m sure they’re will be people pissing and moaning about too, just as many of you are in this thread. (Not that it’s not fair game for a roasting, but to expect anything else is folly.)

Good rant Aeschines. I think what people are bitching about is the generic issue of sprawl which is hardly undisguised. You are right that the title of the OP is misleading however. There certainly is no lack of truly rural land in this country. The upper eastern seaboard is more populated than just about anywhere else in the country and there are still plenty of rural areas. Northern New England has plenty of areas that are not just rural but downright isolated and that is only a couple of hours drive from Boston. If you get out a big map of the U.S. and start coloring rural areas that are under no threat whatsoever, you are going to have quite the colorful map.

As to sprawl, we bought our 250 year old house to restore 6 years ago. It is only 35 miles from Boston but the street has house farms and mainly abuts conservation land. However, the town that it borders is much bigger and diverse. It had some moderate retail activity when we moved in. For some unknown reason, the picked the corner of the abutting town and just started building the shit out of stuff. In two years, we got everything from a Target to 5 hotels to a Lowes Supercenter plus another 20 other large stores or so. Sunday night, my wife and I were driving back from a trip and she told me to pay attention when we were driving down a road she drives every day and I do at least twice a week. My eyes about popped out of my head when I saw a TJI Fridays that I swear didn’t exist just days before. We were both baffled.

My attitude is that it is all good. I don’t have to drive very far to shop in some nice big stores. Old-Timey smaller ones aren’t that far away either. If you want to stay secluded, you have to buy the land around you because you can’t bitch when someone uses theirs for something you don’t approve of. You can buy vast tracts of land in North Dakota or Utah for not much money if it is that important to you.

Thanks, and I agree with what you wrote.

I’m curious: What is sprawl? A Target going up where there wasn’t one before? Here in the Indy area we have something called “zoning.” Typicially, you’ll have neighborhoods full of houses, and then you’ll have areas with offices. Others with stores. Others with factories. It seems to work.

Sprawl? That’s when growth is not contained by efficient use of high density housing – people spread out over a far greater area if they live in singe family homes rather than apartment buildings.

To each his own, but my personal opinion of the gulapartment archipelligo is that cliff dwelling is best suited for birds, not humans, and high density housing is best suited to ants.

But then I live in a forest.

My doesn’t have classic sprawl. The town (city) I mentioned is Milford, MA and it was a depressed old industrial town for a long time and seems to be having a huge rejuvenation. The only reason I mention it is that this area was considered largely pristine and picturesque not that long ago. It still is for the most part but the shopping is more convenient.

If you truly want to see sprawl, drive all the way across Dallas/Fort Worth/Plano/Arlington/Irving, Texas some time where my parents live. You can drive 50 miles straight without a change in the composition of the city/suburbs. I am not saying that is a bad thing. It is just that some of those used to be independent cities and towns and now it is just this big hulking thing. The reason it could get that way was (A) There was plenty of land to spill over into in all directions (B) Everything is bigger in Texas including their sprawl.

It’s not a scientific answer, but I always think of sprawl as places where you can’t walk. In the city, I can walk everywhere to do all kinds of errands and fun things. In the country, I can walk – to nowhere in particular, but I can walk around looking at nature to my heart’s content because there isn’t much traffic. In the 'burbs where my mom lives, you really can’t walk very far because walking to any destination involves navigating multi-lane highways with lots of traffic and very few intersections for crossing. Even the Target and the Home Depot, which are in the same plaza, are difficult to walk from one to the other because crossing the parking lot is a feat in and of itself.

DanBlather:

Care to explain this part of your comment? I thought most conservatives were Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians or Presbytarians. Catholics tend to be liberal on many social issues, but (amongst the devout, who are the ones likely talking about family values) their anti-abortion position usually pushes them into the conservative camp as well. Amongst Jews, it’s the Orthodox who are conservative.

What religions were “invented last week?” Scientology? I’m not aware that any prominent Scientologists have expressed conservative leanings.

I snowshoe up an abandoned ski hill, then cross-country across the top of the mesa, and then spend the day lift area skiing at a nearby resort. At the end of the day, I catch the last lift, and then ski home back across the mesa and down the abandoned hill. Wheeee!

In the very large city in which I used to live (Toronto), I spent a lot of time in traffic or on public transit. A great deal of wasted time.

There is a lot to be said for relocating to smaller urban areas or out into the counntry.

Having a Wal-Mart or a Target and having local character are not mutually exclusive. Funny thing, Wal-Mart really got their start by placing their stores in areas where the rural population had a convienent place to shop.

In all honesty, why the hell should I worry about the destruction of rural life or the loss of farms? Something like 2% of the population is directly involved in farming these days. This ain’t the 19th century.
Marc

Episcopalians tend to be liberals, though there is a schism in the church over ordaining women and gays. My mother’s church has a gay priest.

I’m thinking of LDS, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the dominion churches, the big mega-churches that don’t belong to any particular denomination, and all the little churches that just see themselves as “Christian” as though the other Christian churches are full of philistines.

The most liberal religion is probably Unitarian. I used to hang out at the First Unitarian church in Quincy, Mass where John Adams and John Quincy Adams worshiped and are buried.

I’m a died in the wool liberal who was raised Episcopalian, walked past the Adam’s homestead on my way to school every day, and spent summers in Plymouth, MA. The house behind ours was built in the 1700s and our 100 year old house isn’t even considered old.

It’s pretty funny to be lectured on “traditional values” by some blow dryed, polyester wearing minister working out of a strip mall church in an area of the country that was settled 200 years later than where I grew up.

Two thiings:

One: I live in Mississippi. We have a lot of rural land. Most big towns/cities are centralized. Once upon a time I happened to take a bus trip to Virginia. On the return trip I made the aquaintance of a gentleman who was a truck driver from Detroit. As we crossed the Alabama/Mississippi border, he was gazing out the window at the forested land.

He turned to me and asked “where are the buildings? where are the people?”

I gently explained to him that in the area we were traveling through, the people were scattered, and all the big buildings were in Jackson, Southaven or Biloxi. Then I asked him, per the woodlands, “isnt’ it beautiful?”

He said, No, “it looks like a wilderness” and was obviously uncomfortable with it.

I say that to say this: some people are happier in a city environment and some are not. To each his own. I don’t think badly of this gentleman because he’d rather live in the city; he did not think badly of me because I don’t.

Two: the red herring in this stew is overpopulation. I’m surprised no one has brought this up. Too many bodies trying to occupy the land … and the US is shamefully greedy about this. I could go on a tirade about our land, and the fact that this used to be a 60 acre dairy farm which is now surrounded by upscale neigborhoods, but I’m not going to. I will get out of the way of the juggernaught after my last kid graduates high school. Then I will be like Muffin, sitting in a forest.

But you know what? The generations behind me won’t have that luxury.

All the land will be gone by then.

And we could cry, and scream, and sling snot about it but … that’s the reality of it. Our kids are going to have to figure it out. It’s not nice (to some) but it’s … one of those IS is things. It just is.

Oooo Dan, that’s “dyed in the wool”. As in fabric dye. :slight_smile: BTW I’m a cradle Episcopalian. And a Libertarian. :slight_smile:

I may not take that sentiment to quite the same level, but the goddess and I are definitely pissing on the same homeless guy. I lived the first 20 years of my life on a farm and where Mom’n’Pop stores were the only ones within 20 miles and it’s not exactly Northern Exposure quirky-charming. The stores were expensive (I know it’s because they couldn’t compete with chains, but that doesn’t matter much when you’re next to broke and having to pay $5 for the meat you could get at Wal-Mart for $3) and Mom’n’Pop weren’t necessarily the nicest or most ethical people on the planet just because they were local and not rich.

As for not knowing your neighbors and them not knowing you, I’ll admit that this is a problem. However, if you’ve ever lived in an area where everybody knows everybody, there are most definitely many many many times you long for a place where NOBODY knows your business and your family.

For couples with kids living in the cities is often just not feasible. No yards, high traffic, higher crime, etc.- it’s just a whole lot better out in the burbs.

Having lived most of my life in Georgia and Alabama and having recently driven several thousand miles on a road trip, trust me- there’s no shortage of undeveloped land in the country. When I used to go home to Milledgeville GA from Montgomery AL there were three routes I could use: the most developed one involved going through only a 50 mile stretch with no major towns. (One stretch required 50 miles in which, so help me, you never passed as much as a gas station that was open after 9 pm, and this was within radio signal distance of Atlanta!) The 100 miles between Tuscaloosa (metro area of just over 100,000) and Montgomery (metro area 250,000) has many many many miles of total nothingness. I fear undeveloped country is sometimes romanticized, and having a flat tire (which I did once) on a 20 mile stretch of desolate road is one of those times when it ain’t so romantic.

That said, the main thing I hate about urban sprawl is the monotony. The cookie cutter “straight out of the 1001 Best Home Plan” split levels with “lawyer foyers” and interchangeable lawn decorations and priced to move in the low to mid 6 figures is irritating, but then houses that remind you monthly if not weekly that “if I were human I’d be incontinent and talking to myself about how we ate wild dogs and rice in the Depression” or lofts where you have cool exposed beams and can’t walk a block outside of your house without being asked for change by two different guys, both of whom have a car that broke down with their pregnant wife in it outside town and just need $13.42 to put it in tip-top order.

Summary: I don’t like urban sprawl but I understand it. And don’t worry about the houses and strip malls as most of them will be long torn down and gone by the time you’re old anyway- they’re not built to last. :wink:

An irony that I mention but don’t really have a strong opinion on: speaking of Milledgeville GA (very charming place with a very vital downtown filled with restaurants and IMPOSSIBLY OVERPRICED 19th century houses), it’s most famous citizen was Flannery O’Connor (unless you count Oliver Hardy as a native son, or Julia Roberts’ character from Pretty Woman). Flannery wrote a good bit in her fiction and even more in her letters about the homogenization of the country by post WW2 sprawl and how much it sickened her (not as much as the lupus did).
Her country house, Andalusia, was located perhaps 3/4 of a mile from the apartment I lived in. While I was there, a HUGE Wal-Mart shopping center opened between my apartment complex and Andalusia, literally bordering her place. While sitting on Andalusia’s porch in winter one day I could see the WalMart sign through the trees. She’d have been sooooo pissed off.

Of course on the other hand the slaves who built the house would probably have laughed their asses off. And if she wanted quiet and pastorality, she could sell and buy land 10 miles down the road that won’t be developed anytime soon.