Not having many chain restaurants can be a good thing. When I lived in a small town, the local alternatives were often much better taste and value. Still, it had a few chain restaurants - and I admit I often went to those too.
We live in the boonies, and in pre-pandemic times we ate out often. On general principles we never ate at chains, and it worked out well for us.
I ate fast food when working long hours, pressed for time and after bureaucrats made the deeply dubious decision to replace a fantastic work cafeteria with a corporate entity. There is no doubt fast food offers convenience. Being bland and predictable is overrated, though, unless your kids are picky eaters.
Given time, chain restaurants are usually not my first choice. However, fast food is engineered to appeal with its salt, fat and sweetness. I eat it once in a while.
The NYT article is paywalled. What’s the upshot? The rural population is only 17% or so.
- It is estimated that 83% of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, up from 64% in 1950. By 2050, 89% of the U.S. population and 68% of the world population is projected to live in urban areas.1
When Trump won in 2016, many people noted that a lot of Americans voted “against Hillary” rather than “for Trump.” Likewise here…when there are only two candidates on the ballot, it’s a question of which one is “better.” It could be a choice between Hitler and Mussolini and yes, you could write in Bernie Sanders, but if you want your vote to count, you pick Hitler or Mussolini.
I have two nephews who post on Facebook a lot.
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The one who is blood related (and urban) posted some false information about Bernie Sanders. It was easily debunked, and when I brought it to his attention…he left it up anyway. He said he “knew” Bernie was a bad guy so whether that was accurate or not, whatever, there is plenty against him. This nephew is the “fool” in that “a fool and his money” thing, by the way.
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The one who married into the family is rural. He posted that Trump has kept all of his promises. A friend of his pointed out that there is no wall and no replacement for Obamacare. I was waiting for, “Well he WOULD have finished the wall if (insert excuse that blames the Dems here).” But he said nothing and I bet his opinion hasn’t changed one iota.
I assume most dopers are skeptics like me. We ask what the catch is or what the fine print is, look for logical fallacies like ad baculum, ad populum, see if the scientific method has been respected with control groups, dive into what statistics actually represent, etc. When my nephews take the president’s word over Fauci’s, I think that perfectly illustrates the void between us. The POTUS who looks at eclipses knows more science than Fauci, really? That thing about murdering someone and getting away with it? Yeah, times a few hundred thousand and counting.
madmonk28 is just one poster, expressing what looks like a rather bigoted opinion. I have difficulty identifying with some of the attitudes of some of the hick-like country folk, but tarring everyone who lives away from the heart or periphery of urbania with the same brush is simply as unproductive as using terms like “commie” or “sjw”.
Thanks, I appreciate that sentiment.
This is true; but Railer13 wasn’t doing that. Railer13 was objecting to being insulted. I, also, object to that insult.
Bolding added:
Please don’t refer to broad swathes of the US, including several of our members, as Savages (outside the pit.) This is just a mod note, but don’t do it again.
The are actually related. The Northwest Ordinance incorporated the territory between PA and the Mississippi river. The PLSS is the specific system for how the land was parceled out.
I grew up near Ten Mile Road, which – not entirely surprisingly – was two miles north of Eight Mile Road.
Which – aside from that whole Eminem thing – plays a part here:
https://www.eightmile.org/eight_mile
Eight Mile was historically, and in some areas still is, known as “Baseline Road”, a name which comes from its distinction as the line upon which the Northwest Territories were mapped. Under the Land Ordinance Act of 1785, Eight Mile was drawn as the baseline on the first map of Michigan running east to west from lakeshore to lakeshore. The line continues west past Michigan, forming the state line between Wisconsin and Illinois. Eight Mile became the measuring point for Michigan’s township range numbers and other mile roads, essentially serving as the east-west axis for our entire state and as the common border for multiple communities, counties and state agencies.
The answer surely depends on personal preferences. I lived in a city for many years and while I miss the fresh bagels, lots of good-paying jobs, & interesting public events, I do not miss the crowds, noise and smell. Most of the drawbacks to rural living for me are solved by internet access – good newspapers, good shopping, etc are a click away. Meanwhile I step out my backdoor for good (empty) hiking, drive 20 minutes to good trout fishing, can raise a garden and livestock, with little government interference. The noise here is mostly bugs, the smell trees, or earth, sometimes woodsmoke. I disagree with about 95% of my neighbors in political views, but I’m anti-social so not a problem. It’s a lifestyle little impacted by Covid. I sometimes think about the lockdowns were I still in my 300 sqft aprt in the city and those are not good thoughts. The opioid crisis has increased crime by about 1000% here, but its mostly burglary and still much lower than urban crime rates. But I think for those who enjoy socializing, especially liberals, and eating out, and need good jobs or have no interest in the outdoors, a rural lifestyle would have few positives.
I moved to Plano in 1987 and at the time there were all sorts of streets, large streets, that went nowhere on the west side of town and had nothing around them. Fast forward a few years later and suddenly there were tons of businesses on those streets and they went somewhere. I don’t know who the city planners of Plano were at the time but they sure as hell did a great job attracting businesses and people to the city.
Not just towns: pretty much the entirety of Illinois’ country roads are laid out like that. Some deviations here and there but the whole thing pretty much follows a grid.
Country roads in Kansas are much the same.
But you get out past Denver and the grid system breaks down. There are urban areas (Phoenix, et al) and rural areas (San Joaquin valley) where there is enough flat that you can use graph paper, but there are also broad flat areas where the roads do whatever the fuck they feel like.
Much land in the center of the country was divided up based on the PLSS (Public Land Survey System). Basically, it is divided into square miles (sections). Many roads thus got built between different property owners and not through the property.
Texas and California have different systems I believe. And of course the east coast roads are pretty much determined by where a horse could pull a wagon through hills and forests.
I would imagine that even if a particular area (i.e. Dallas TX), wasn’t covered by the PLSS, some similar system still applies. And regardless, the “hierarchy of roads” is more or less universal (cul-de-sacs and side streets feed into main streets feed into avenues feed into highways and so on). And of course, terrain is always a factor. So if you have a lot of flat land, “1 square mile” is a nice round number for placing your highway grid.
In my experience, no type of community (urban, suburban, rural, exurban, new urbanist whatever) has completely “nailed it”. All have their tradeoffs that are very much dependent on your lifestyle, interests, and where you are in life.
My wife likes going to her parents in Bumfuck, NJ out by the Delaware Water Gap because it “has more space” and a yard. I hate it because I think that space is an illusion. Yes, it’s a bigger home, but now it’s filled with 6 people and a dog instead of just 4 of us. And while there is a yard to play in, there’s nothing outside of it. Just a wasteland of suburban homes and their yards. No parks. No other kids or even adults to interact with.
In contrast, living in Hoboken, NJ, we can safely walk around the 1 square mile of town, wander into neighboring cities like Jersey City, Weehawken or Union City, hop on the ferry, bus, or PATH train to Manhattan, or get in my car and just go anywhere else. Kind of the best of both worlds, although we still suffer from a lack of apartment space. As it happens, our building has a lot of public green space around it and we’re on the water so that goes a long way towards not feeling like you’re living in a concrete urban people hive.
But then further out, then you just get into a trade-off of space, cost, commute time, quality of schools, and all sorts of other factors.
If I were to pick an ideal place, I would prefer either a bigger apartment in our current building or a small town/city where we could have a house with a yard and space from our neighbors but with a downtown center with shops, restaurants, and non-divey bars without having to be tied to going into Manhattan for work. I mean I guess if I’m wishing for shit anyway, I might as well plop a mansion on top of a luxury high-rise Inception style.
Sort of, but I used to live in a very urban area and there is a definite difference. I rode a bicycle quite a lot. In the city, 18th street will get you all the way across town. So will 33rd and 9th. Those, however, are arterials, which makes them an unpleasant experience for a cyclist, but if you take 14th, that is a residential street parallel to 18th, and except for where the overpass over the freeway is, it will get you from one end to the other with much less stress.
When you get out of the city, the hierarchy of streets constricts. If you want to ride your bicycle a few miles, there are occasional alternatives, but mostly not. In the countryside, it is not a huge issue. Traffic is usually light enough that bikes and pickups can get along.
But in the suburbs, they construct developments for maximum profit, which means that the only through routes are arterials, even when it could be possible to pass streets through for alternate routes. But, you know, what kind of idiot rides around on a bicycle, fuck those guys, just get a car already.
I would put a proviso on that, at least in my experience in the suburbs of Chicago.
Some suburbs do exactly what you’re describing, funneling all traffic into and out of a subdivision or shopping center onto an arterial, out of a car-centric fear of through traffic.
But some suburbs I’ve lived in and traveled through by bicycle connect the side streets in adjoining subdivisions, or have built pass-throughs for pedestrians and bicycles between subdivisions, or require pass-throughs in adjacent shopping center parking lots. If the municipality requires it, even profit-maximizing developers will do it. (Where I live now, in a new-ish subdivision in the heart of a pre-war suburb, my walking path to downtown and the train station goes through a pass-through that allows pedestrians and cyclists to make the trip directly on low-traffic side streets but funnels motorists onto the arterials.)
Conversely, I’ve seen some residential areas of cities and pre-war suburbs with grid streets block off side streets at neighborhood behest in a suburban-style fear of through traffic. To be fair, many of these block through motor traffic but not pedestrians or bicyclists, but I’ve seen ones where a cyclist would have to dismount or get over a curb to pass through.
I grew up in a suburb of Atlanta. Then, after college, I moved to rural Georgia, about 150 miles southeast of Atlanta. I now live about 90 miles from Atlanta in another rural part of the state. I like living in Rural Georgia. I’m married with kids and am a member of a Methodist Church. There are some drawbacks to rural life:
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The people tend to be more uniform in religion, background, politics, etc. If they’re white, they’re conservatives. If they’re black, they’re democrats. Rural Georgia falls along those lines in almost every rural setting. I’m white and moved from the Pubs to the Dems in 2016 and I’m now a fish out of water politically in my local area.
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The health of rural people isn’t as good. They tend to be more obese, and their diet isn’t so good.
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The rural people that I know are usually better able to do things with their hands (carpentry, auto repair, home repair, grow food). But if I need contractor help, it’s not easy to get someone around here who is up to the professional standard of what is easily found in urban areas.
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It is safer than in the city, with less violent crimes. But it’s not totally devoid of crime, as there are property thefts.
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If you’re not into outdoor activities, it can really suck in rural America. Lots of hunting. Lots of guns. A fair amount of fishing & camping. I like to camp and hike and fish.
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To get my kids decent education, I had to send them both to private schools, because the local public schools aren’t as good as what I had in Metro Atlanta.
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The underbelly of Rural America is pretty bad with lots of family dysfunction and lots of drugs and joblessness. It’s not Mayberry, by a long shot.
The good stuff:
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Trees everywhere. I have 3.3 acres and have plenty of privacy.
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Animals everywhere. In my yard, I’ve seen deer, squirrels, rabbits, possums, armadillos, foxes, raccoons, coyotes…it’s cool to see wildlife passing through.
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College football: everyone here is into it.
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People aren’t as snooty in rural America in my experience. They might be close-minded politically. But they don’t look down on people because of where they come from…I did get some condescension from my Atlanta friends when I moved to South Georgia after college. The reverse isn’t as true, IME.
It’s a tradeoff of good and bad. Rural America does have issues.