The use of fossil fuels to keep the lights on, seems an extraordinary drain on places like central Appalachia where thousands of miles of mountain streams are being buried to produce cheap electricity.

Finally, the drain of talent and resources from rural regions in the spirit of opportunity keeps human resources expensive in urban regions, and absent in many rural regions.

We all go through changes in temperament and lifestyle choices over the span of our lives. While the urban:rural question becomes obscured in this context, the drain on rural resources remains an issue, as does the sustainability of urban resources–most profoundly simple things like infrastructure and even clean water.

Also want to mention that I like my car. This is not about luxury or hot rods or tricked out trucks. What I enjoy is the freedom to go when I want to, using whatever route I prefer, and carrying any baggage I fancy. If I see an interesting sideroad I can explore it right now. If gas becomes too expensive I’ll downsize, but I want to keep cruising.

And if you are different, your children will suffer for it in the South/rural areas. Being the child of atheists was a pretty rough way to grow up when the entire social structure relies on church membership. At your church, you have your social groups, sports teams, maybe a school or gym, and everything goes back to that. Many schools are effectively segregated by race. It’s the idea that you have your own social group, and the races still rarely mix so the children grow up without spending time with people of other races, and the cycle continues. There are “white” areas and “black” areas, and everyone else shouldn’t even be there to begin with! Therefore, we end up with schools that are 97% white or 97% black.

The suburbs are particularly vulnerable to this “church-centered” life with the growth of Mega-Churches. I have also lived in SC and a Mega Church there had an unofficial policy of only using the services provided by people who attended the church, and if you were discovered going to a non-member mechanic, for instance, you were shunned as not being “one of us” and for not being as committed as other members. The peer pressure is enormous, and you don’t have anywhere else to go socially, so you HAVE to conform or lose the only social network you have.

One very strong argument for the city that I haven’t seen here is the possibility of getting a new job if, for some reason, you lost your job. There are likely to be other opportunities in your field of work or even in a new field if you decide to change sectors. In a rural area, you will have less (if any) choice between employees in many fields, and therefore, also a reduced ability to negotiate raises, benefits, and other aspects of your job. After all, from your boss’ perspective, you can’t quit because you’d have to move somewhere else.

Wow, that ended up a lot longer than I expected. It’s unfortunate that so many people feel excluded from rural/suburban areas and by not moving there, they perpetuate the cycle. But at the same time, who really wants to be a martyr when you can live comfortably somewhere else?

After having grown up in the suburbs, and having spent several years in a very rural environment, I’ve now lived in NYC for the past decade. Anyone who argues that one area is “more” friendly or has “more” community than another has not had the experience that I have. Granted NYC is different from many urban areas, but anyone who’s lived here will tell you that it’s really no more than a collection of small towns. Ask a New Yorker where they’re from, and they won’t say, “Manhattan.” They’ll say “The Upper West Side,” “Chelsea,” “Inwood,” or another neighborhood. (Or, for all my borough buddies, “Williamsburg,” “Long Island City,” and “Woodlawn.”) Our neighborhood identities are strong because we are such strong communities.

Some of the comments have suggested that people are friendlier in small towns because you see people more often. Again, this is something that New Yorkers (and perhaps other urbanites) can respond to. Everyone in my neighborhood knows me, often by name. At least once each block, someone says hi to me and asks how I am. Everyone in my apartment building knows each other by sight, if not by name. And every morning on the way to the subway, I see the man who works behind the counter at the corner bodega. He says good morning to me, asks how I’m feeling when I’ve been sick, and asks how my marathon training is going.

On the flip side of this, there are diverse and open-minded rural areas. One of the towns I lived outside of, in northern Maine, had an incredibly open and supportive environment for diversity. As a result, diverse people flocked to it, which gave us a vibrant GLBT scene, amazing ethnic food, and incredibly interesting music (I’ve never heard better raggae than I did in Maine, believe it or not). The town limits had fewer than 5000 people in it; I lived outside the town with no other houses within eyeshot and gorgeous ocean views.

All that’s just my two cents…

David Owen, author of the First National Bank of Dad, reviewed on this site just a few days ago, wrote an article for the New Yorker called NYC Is The Greenest City In America.

http://www.walkablestreets.com/manhattan.htm

“By the most significant measures, New York is the greenest community in the United States, and one of the greenest cities in the world. The most devastating damage humans have done to the environment has arisen from the heedless burning of fossil fuels, a category in which New Yorkers are practically prehistoric. The average Manhattanite consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn’t matched since the mid-nineteen-twenties, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T.”

But I also have a detached house and nice garden (not that there’s anything wrong with condo living) with neighbours who share tools, mow each others lawns, pick up each others mail, barbecue for each other, and have annual street parties – and I bought it last year for a shade over $300,000. Yep, more expensive than Trent’s house – but I have a big city salary/bonus package to pay for it. I volunteer to clean up the beach and for city festivals. We shop locally, rather than drive to big boxes, and know all the local business owners. I can bike to the beach/boardwalk in 5 minutes, and the city is criscrossed with ravines which are regarded as a local treasure. I do work the professional grind with long hours, but am very well rewarded for it, and have multiple non-profit and governmental options on my doorstep should I ever get sick of the corporate treadmill.

So I don’t recognize the urban stereotype some commenters are describing. And lots of people live like me! Just a thought.

That’s why it is better to buy in an established suburb rather than a sprawlburb.

I find a happy medium in a good-sized rural city – the town I live in has a TAFE and university, theatres, art galleries, a good sized shopping strip and several supermarkets, and a multicultural feel thanks to many immigrants and refugees bringing their diversity. The semi-rural outskirts are 15 to 20 minutes away at most, while central and suburban housing is still affordable.

Public transport is still a problem.

Most of the suburbs I see being built these days are not attractive at all – oversized houses squeezed onto small, treeless blocks. No footpaths, and with everyone working to pay their huge mortgages, you hardly see the neighbors.

I’ve found this an interesting conversation, as we are weighing up our options for the future. I think you have to figure out what your personal priorities are, and how you would fit the particular limitations of each environment.

Ok, so that experience sent me to Washington DC. Here, I got a college education and had job opportunities galore because people are used to diversity in big cities. They are open minded. They see the PERSON, not the disability. I HATE DC with a passion, because I hate the rude people, the hurry hurry attitude, the me-first, me-only mindset, and the traffic and crime. However, I am stuck here instead of living happily in some backwater, a place where I would be forced to sit on my bum and collect Social Security because no one will hire a disabled person.

My personal dignity is worth more than being able to afford a house, having no traffic, experiencing a laid back pace of life where everyone knows everyone else, and where you can trust the food you eat because you know the guy that produces it all wrapped up in one.

Such a shame how small communities exclude people…out of fear or ignorance. Those of us who are in any way different than the norm are stuck, unwanted where we wish to be and not wanting to be where we ARE wanted (or at least tolerated, smiles).

I spent four years working as an EMT in a rural town in northwest Missouri with a population of 1200. The county, 250 square miles, had a population of 8000. I thought it was going to drive me crazy, and I spent a lot of my free time driving in to Kansas City to keep at least some city life in my blood.

But I came to really appreciate living in the small town. If I forgot my checkbook, the grocer just told me to bring it by later. When we had bad accidents to work, folks around town would ask me about it and they’d ask how I was doing – even people I barely knew. When we had a huge ice storm, those with power were very accommodating and welcoming to those without.

I live in Seattle again, and while I still love being here and while we live on a street with a fairly strong community, I miss the slower pace of the small town and the way you’d see people you knew everywhere you went that always had time to strike up a conversation. I miss the rodeos and ballgames where the town would turn out and make them celebrations not only of the event but in a way of the community itself.

And small town football games… I don’t like football, but I loved going to those games.

My wife’s work pretty much means she needs to be in a city, but I would love to live in a small town again.