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I’ve no baseline to compare these results to but in combination to the severe lifestyle restrictions and high cost of living–who wants to pay $2500 a month confined to a studio apartment devoid of green space or nightlife?–this appears to presage a seismic shift in the American way of life:
The residual responses are “very safe/somewhat safe”. By a 2-to-1 margin, Americans perceive big cities to be dangerous places. We’ve come a long way from the oughts, when the only concern people had walking in the shadow of a skyscraper was a plane flying into it. The sharp increases in violent crime in big cities across the country are not going unnoticed. Turns out when the state refuses to protect the citizenry while simultaneously forbidding the citizenry from defending itself, people do they only other thing they can. They leave:
For decades the trend has been towards greater conurbation, not just in developed countries but across the globe. How many inflection points does the crisis of the third decade have in store for us?
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One of my neighbors is a realtor. She’s been keeping the neighbors informed of the real estate trends for the past decade. It’s a bit funny, but only a few years ago, the trend was all about “walkability.” People – and not just young singles/couples and empty-nesters – were selling their suburban homes and moving to the gentrified urban core or other “new urbanist” suburban developments with “high walkability” to shops, restaurants, playgrounds, and so forth. Another benefit to smaller, new urbanist homes was supposedly lower (cost) maintenance – e.g. not having to maintain large yards in an attractive shape (home owners associations around here tend to be pretty strict).
Now, because the coronavirus pandemic and, of course, the urban riots, she says homes with land are in. Buyers, especially families with children, suddenly want suburban and exurban homes with large yards, swimming pools, and other outdoor amenities. For that matter, she says that the trend toward smaller homes has reversed and families now want bigger homes, so that the family members are not “crowded” into each other all the time. Also, more families are interested in, and buying, second homes nearby on the mountains, as the present conditions have created a desire for a private “getaway” for the weekends and holidays, and perhaps for normal days too since more adults are tele-commuting and even the children are being schooled from home.
Of course, real estate trends come and go over time, but the speed of the reversal from the last trend has been rather whiplash-like and dramatic. It does seem that lots of home owners appear to think of the present conditions as a long-term possibility and have modified their buying behaviors, as opposed to a brief shock or a passing phase that will be over soon.
By the way, I think the income variable is interesting. It likely demonstrates that all that looting and spiking crime didn’t affect wealthy urban areas so much as the no-so-wealthy areas, despite sensationalist news reporting. That might also explain the relatively low “others” (Asian) number.
On the other hand, a lot of urban blacks probably think – quite incorrectly, of course – that white or white-ish suburbs and exurbs (let alone rural areas) are more dangerous to them than their urban homes.
I always found it a bit amusing that, back when I used to read posts and comments in the local real estate/moving advice forum, mostly only blacks and Indians (dot, not feathers) would post questions about where they could find local areas with black and Indian, respectively, neighborhoods. Whites and East Asians (few, if any, commenters identified as Hispanic) would often ask about commuting time to work, quality of the school pyramid, crime level/safety, walkability, shops/restaurants, and those kinds of the usual questions. But blacks and Indians were always on about “black neighborhoods” and “Indian neighborhoods,” respectively, with the blacks also often asking about availability of black barbershops* (or hair salons).
*I will say this, parenthetically. To this day, the best haircut that my oldest son ever got was from a black barber when I was stationed in the Hampton Roads area (parts of which are heavily black). I guess hair-obsession does produce good haircare providers!
They leave but it is safe to assume that the vast majority will remain pro black, anti white and push for all the usual things that destroyed the cities. They are truly like a cancer that will spread their disease to wherever they go.
The thing that has alarmed me most is the sense that the left isn’t intelligently dominating but is instead dragging us along with their madness.
Look at the ways they hurt themselves:
– The rapid decline of cities in 2020
– The shuttering of public schools and universities
– transgender stuff specifically makes a mess of transgender people
– mass immigration breaks the budgets of leftist districts and wreaks their social programs
– sports is the biggest showcase of blacks and integration — this is wreaked with racial and political messages
Until such time as Covid is not a problem, high density and especially hi rise living is going to be a problem. I am reminded of the situation in Miami wherein a 70+ plus year old man and his wife shoved an 80 year old man trying to board the elevator with them to his floor. Elevators are just not safe be it in a high rise building or a cruise ship until this virus is not a problem.
I would also advise people to look out. Urban governments are going to be on the prowl for more revenue. With their commercial districts either boarded up, burned out or just avoided for health and safety reasons alternative revenue must be found. Parking and other fines will be increased as will property and income taxes especially in Blue states as cutting public payrolls ( save perhaps police budgets) is anathema to those governors and mayors.
Done. Covid is no longer a problem. Overall population deaths are running about normal.
The panicked response to Covid, however....Replies: @unit472
Now, because the coronavirus pandemic and, of course, the urban riots, she says homes with land are in. Buyers, especially families with children, suddenly want suburban and exurban homes with large yards, swimming pools, and other outdoor amenities. For that matter, she says that the trend toward smaller homes has reversed and families now want bigger homes, so that the family members are not "crowded" into each other all the time. Also, more families are interested in, and buying, second homes nearby on the mountains, as the present conditions have created a desire for a private "getaway" for the weekends and holidays, and perhaps for normal days too since more adults are tele-commuting and even the children are being schooled from home.
Of course, real estate trends come and go over time, but the speed of the reversal from the last trend has been rather whiplash-like and dramatic. It does seem that lots of home owners appear to think of the present conditions as a long-term possibility and have modified their buying behaviors, as opposed to a brief shock or a passing phase that will be over soon.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Charlotte
Same in the UK. Trouble is, the city types bring their ‘values’ with them, values that created the living conditions they now want to abandon .
Covid isn’t a problem – the perception that it is a problem is THE problem. Until this changes, if it ever does, our society, and others like it, will continue to degrade – masks everywhere at all times, social distancing, everyone (including families and friends) suspicious/fearful of each other. This is a disaster of epic proportions – gently whimpering our way into that goodnight…
I think the future of America is continued white flight to rural areas, until they are no longer white. And from what I can see on the ground, so-called “white states” will not continue for very long. Perhaps, 30-40 years tops, for a simple majority. They are being targeted.
Maine has thousands of Somalis in it, like something out of a Flashman novel. In New Hamshire, they recently changed the name of the Hannah Duston Memorial Site to “Unity Park N’dakinna.”
Eventually whites will only live in rural areas, dominated by brown cities. Like a nationwide Illinois.
The current fertility trends point to this too - the only whites reproducing at any meaningful level are overwhelmingly conservative, Christian, rural, lower IQ, and more tribalistic.
Anyways, white flight never actually works, especially not when the government can just open the floodgates and literally let in any quantity of 3rd world savages necessary to dilute your vote. "Diversity" has failed in the USA so the plan now seems to be "just burn this shit to the ground".Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
I think the future of America is continued white flight to rural areas, until they are no longer white. And from what I can see on the ground, so-called “white states” will not continue for very long. Perhaps, 30-40 years tops, for a simple majority. They are being targeted.
Tweet from 2014:
https://twitter.com/CharlesPewitt/status/478538176084967424?s=20
I wrote this in November of 2019:https://www.unz.com/article/hitlers-revenge-the-return-of-the-strong-gods-and-the-resurrection-of-the-west/?showcomments#comment-3536106
White Americans have been fleeing rural areas for over 50 years now: look up the demographics of any small town in America and the odds are there will have been a 15-50% decrease since 1940, despite having above replacement fertility up until recently.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ruso.12266Your prediction about the "white states' in New England is totally contradicted by multiple projections from the government; Maine will stay above 80% white well in to the early 2100s, although it will have lost clost to half a million people by then. There are maybe 10-20,000 Somalians in Maine, against 1.3 million mostly white non-Somalians, and they're mostly located in the large metro areas. Somalians are actually largely Caucasoid, and they're generally well liked by the liberal whites who live in those areas, rather than being fodder for a "target".
The notion that white urbanites or even suburbanites would move to rural America, with its drug addicts, derelict homes, absolute wasteland economies, filthy lead contaminated water, rampant property crime and shit food, is hilarious. No one would move from NYC just because its murder rate increased from 2 per 100,000 to 4. Make no mistake about it, NYC is still safer than most small towns in America, and the recent increase in homicides has taken it's murder rate to about the same level as such "dangerous" cities as Seattle, Washington and Austin, Texas.
Would like to add that green areas are absolute shit and living near them guarantees your house will be infested with cockroaches every summer. Your air ducts are also sure to be contaminated with mold and pollen, which will lead the development of respiratory problems and allergies. Nature areas are also conduits of property crime, and a major fire hazard.Replies: @John smith 2, @Elmer's Washable School Glue
Maine has thousands of Somalis in it, like something out of a Flashman novel. In New Hamshire, they recently changed the name of the Hannah Duston Memorial Site to "Unity Park N'dakinna."Replies: @Anonymous, @Charles Pewitt, @JohnPlywood
The refugee resettlement basically stopped under Trump, but no doubt will ramp up as soon as Dems get back into office.
Eventually whites will only live in rural areas, dominated by brown cities. Like a nationwide Illinois.
The current fertility trends point to this too – the only whites reproducing at any meaningful level are overwhelmingly conservative, Christian, rural, lower IQ, and more tribalistic.
Anyways, white flight never actually works, especially not when the government can just open the floodgates and literally let in any quantity of 3rd world savages necessary to dilute your vote. “Diversity” has failed in the USA so the plan now seems to be “just burn this shit to the ground”.
Until such time as Covid is not a problem
Done. Covid is no longer a problem. Overall population deaths are running about normal.
The panicked response to Covid, however….
We’ll see. The various crises of 2020 have caused a massive dip in Manhattan real estate, for example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/realestate/coronavirus-real-estate-price-drop.html
That is, New York City has become such a desolate, unlivable hellscape that apartments there are typically now going for the low, low clearance sale price of…1 million dollars.
As Steve Sailer has often wryly noted, well-off New Yorkers have had more of a “Hey, you plebeian red-state hicks, do as we say, not as we do!” attitude to liberal verities since Giuliani’s tenure as mayor.
The economist Enrico Moretti had an interesting book, The New Geography of Jobs, a few years ago, where he argued that, contra all those predictions in the 90s about how the Internet would let you work from anywhere, economic activity in the US has become even more highly concentrated in various metropolitan areas. I wouldn’t bet on that trend reversing any time soon. (Try to induce some prosperity in heartland states? You mean the ones where those white losers without college degrees who are dying Deaths of Despair live? Don’t you know that would
slightly raise the prices of consumer goods and cut the profit margins of the financial sectorruin The Economy?)Mr Epigone says:
For decades the trend has been towards greater conurbation, not just in developed countries but across the globe. How many inflection points does the crisis of the third decade have in store for us?
I say:
For decades since the moment Fed Chairman Volcker kicked the federal funds rate up to about 20 percent in 1981 there has been a debt binge of a massive magnitude, and this debt binge went bananas in the places that had already been set up for a long time to absorb massive re-development and massive increases in population, suburbs and urban centers, and these suburbs and urban centers started to sprawl and blend in together and mingle and overlap, and that is what that fancy word conurbation means, I guess.
In the song The Big Country, Scottish baby boomer scamp David Byrne croaks out something about the undeveloped areas and suburbs and he said he wouldn’t live there if they paid him.
The debt-based fiat currency called the dollar requires a constant expansion of debt or the financial system would contract or implode, and conurbation fits the bill pretty good and if the banker wankers ain’t getting their conurbation then they would be up Shit’s Creek without any saps to clam rake loot out of.
The dirty slob money-grubbing landlords and the greedy evil business owners don’t want no Pewitt Conjured Loot Portion(PCLP) because logic would dictate that many people would give the double bird to the landlords and the greedy business owners if they were to get the ten thousand dollars a month from the PCLP.
The Pewitt Conjured Loot Portion(PCLP) will pay each American who has all blood ancestry born in colonial America or the USA before 1924 a cool ten thousand dollars a month. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank shall work together to conjure up the cash out of thin air, just like the ruling class is doing now.
Conurbation will be reversed and trees restored when the Pewitt Plan to be environmentally-friendly is put in place and the USA goes back to the 220 million people we had in 1978. Foreigners and their spawn will be legally removed using citizenship revocations and the like and there will be plenty of space for the patriotic WHITE CORE AMERICANS.
The JEW/WASP ruling class of the American Empire has used Black criminality and Black unpleasantness to chase a lot of White Core Americans out of cities and then the Black criminality and Black unpleasantness was curbed and some Whites moved back to the cities and now some Whites are remembering what White Flight was about from four or five or six decades ago.
White Flight Churn is the word for it in the real estate business, just like Non-Supervisory Worker Churn is what the business world calls the shuffling in and shuffling out of non-supervisory workers.
Big Country by Talking Heads:
Tweet from 2014:
Maine has thousands of Somalis in it, like something out of a Flashman novel. In New Hamshire, they recently changed the name of the Hannah Duston Memorial Site to "Unity Park N'dakinna."Replies: @Anonymous, @Charles Pewitt, @JohnPlywood
Mr Songbird says:
I think the future of America is continued white flight to rural areas, until they are no longer white. And from what I can see on the ground, so-called “white states” will not continue for very long. Perhaps, 30-40 years tops, for a simple majority. They are being targeted.
Tweet from 2014:
I wrote this in November of 2019:
https://www.unz.com/article/hitlers-revenge-the-return-of-the-strong-gods-and-the-resurrection-of-the-west/?showcomments#comment-3536106
Maine has thousands of Somalis in it, like something out of a Flashman novel. In New Hamshire, they recently changed the name of the Hannah Duston Memorial Site to "Unity Park N'dakinna."Replies: @Anonymous, @Charles Pewitt, @JohnPlywood
This is a typical UNZ.COM comment: totally divorced from reality and probably rooted in a psychological need to cope with a conflicting reality.
White Americans have been fleeing rural areas for over 50 years now: look up the demographics of any small town in America and the odds are there will have been a 15-50% decrease since 1940, despite having above replacement fertility up until recently.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ruso.12266
Your prediction about the “white states’ in New England is totally contradicted by multiple projections from the government; Maine will stay above 80% white well in to the early 2100s, although it will have lost clost to half a million people by then. There are maybe 10-20,000 Somalians in Maine, against 1.3 million mostly white non-Somalians, and they’re mostly located in the large metro areas. Somalians are actually largely Caucasoid, and they’re generally well liked by the liberal whites who live in those areas, rather than being fodder for a “target”.
The notion that white urbanites or even suburbanites would move to rural America, with its drug addicts, derelict homes, absolute wasteland economies, filthy lead contaminated water, rampant property crime and shit food, is hilarious. No one would move from NYC just because its murder rate increased from 2 per 100,000 to 4. Make no mistake about it, NYC is still safer than most small towns in America, and the recent increase in homicides has taken it’s murder rate to about the same level as such “dangerous” cities as Seattle, Washington and Austin, Texas.
Would like to add that green areas are absolute shit and living near them guarantees your house will be infested with cockroaches every summer. Your air ducts are also sure to be contaminated with mold and pollen, which will lead the development of respiratory problems and allergies. Nature areas are also conduits of property crime, and a major fire hazard.
I grew up in nyc and lived there for much of my adult life as well. Crime is much much worse than reported because the police never document most crimes. I’ve been assaulted , robbed , house broken into etc etc and only one robbery when I was 14 was ever put on the books of the NYPD. They did not find the guy and never contacted me again.
My quality of life here is much better, no traffic, low taxes, no headaches, job market is good enough, and irrelevant anyway if you work remote. Not taking the subways has probably cut my blood pressure in half.
Not to say I don’t get why people live in nyc. All that excitement, diversity! The Food omg! Is a plus to many. Not to me, diversity wasn’t a benefit to me and I grow my own better food now....but I get why some people love it.
Cities can be compelling places to live, and although I currently live in a small town, I don't hold the strict agrarian views of many preppers and conservatives. There are a ton of benefits to cities, so there's no need to make up a bunch of fake problems associated only with rural areas.Replies: @Twinkie, @JohnPlywood
OT: My approval time over at iSteve is running at about 6 hours and counting. This is pretty stock for me. Meantime dozens of comments have been approved. Does this happen to anyone else or does Steve Sailer just particularly hate me?
As I have on here (thank you, A.E.!), many commenters on iSteve have immediate posting privileges. (I don't know if that's from being a legacy or what.) The rest of us have to wait until Steve's working or waking hours*, and during that time they get put on within a half hour MOST of the time. I have seen some get held up for pretty much a whole day. Some of those were likely just missed somehow, but I detect that a very few that are not cool in some way take much longer.
.
* He seems to be a late-to-rise, late-night guy, so being in Los Angeles, that means noon or so to 2 in the morning Pacific Time, or 3P to 5 A Eastern.
Done. Covid is no longer a problem. Overall population deaths are running about normal.
The panicked response to Covid, however....Replies: @unit472
Not everyone is under 40 or has an IQ under 40 like you. Millions of people are very vulnerable to covid and you saying otherwise does not make it so. Let’s take the Navajo. Over 3% of their total population has died from covid and they are still dying. Maybe you don’t care about Navajo’s, the elderly, the obese or anyone but yourself but it would give me great pleasure to see fools like you spend a few week in hospital and every penny you have trying to recover from a bout of covid.
All it would take to reverse this is a disruption to the oil supply. I remember well the $5 a gallon gas prices from 2008. People were in a literal panic; GM even killed the Hummer. If this happened again the suburbs and exurbs would look a lot less idyllic. Or we may not even need a disruption. The Green New Deal with its goal of $13 a gallon gas would kill the suburbs overnight.
Here’s what the case vs. fatality graphs look like. US graphs are similar:
P.S: My general rule is to regard people who make digs like “or has an IQ under 40 like you” as people who can’t make their point without slinging insults and who thus aren’t worth taking seriously. You haven’t made me consider changing that policy.
Eventually whites will only live in rural areas, dominated by brown cities. Like a nationwide Illinois.
The current fertility trends point to this too - the only whites reproducing at any meaningful level are overwhelmingly conservative, Christian, rural, lower IQ, and more tribalistic.
Anyways, white flight never actually works, especially not when the government can just open the floodgates and literally let in any quantity of 3rd world savages necessary to dilute your vote. "Diversity" has failed in the USA so the plan now seems to be "just burn this shit to the ground".Replies: @Achmed E. Newman
#153, your prediction of how things will go seems likely to me, barring some drastic political change (more likely than we can imagine now, though). However, you say:
I think you have this wrong. Diversity has not failed. Diversity was part of burning this shit to the ground.
There was a big back-to-the-country trend in the 1970s too. That was partly a hippy-dippy back to the land thing. Also, there was also the same trend then of the big cities (anywhere full of black people in the inner city) becoming much more dangerous over a pretty short time period. Take numbers from 1962 to 1972, and, just from experience, people are going to notice.
Remember John Denver and John Prine?
Over the last 15 years, from my reading and discussion with live people, it’s the preppers who’ve been down with this trend. “No way you are going to last in the big city” is pretty much the 1st mantra, or at least after ‘beans, bullets, and band-aids”. I believe it. I gotta work more on this myself.
And then a decade later...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8qrwON1-zE
You can't run from your problems. ;)
Rural life does not have a great deal going for it. Your kids will be desperate to get back to the big city as soon as they get a chance. Rural communities face the problem not just that the children can't wait to escape rural life but also that the more intelligent and capable among the rural population are the ones who head for the cities. Hence you end up with rural despair. And very high suicide rates.
It's a nice dream but it's best left as a dream.Replies: @usNthem, @Elmer's Washable School Glue
From my own experience, but also observation of when other comments appear compared to the blog posting time, I think it’s like this, Cloudbuster:
As I have on here (thank you, A.E.!), many commenters on iSteve have immediate posting privileges. (I don’t know if that’s from being a legacy or what.) The rest of us have to wait until Steve’s working or waking hours*, and during that time they get put on within a half hour MOST of the time. I have seen some get held up for pretty much a whole day. Some of those were likely just missed somehow, but I detect that a very few that are not cool in some way take much longer.
.
* He seems to be a late-to-rise, late-night guy, so being in Los Angeles, that means noon or so to 2 in the morning Pacific Time, or 3P to 5 A Eastern.
Remember John Denver and John Prine?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRuCPS_-_IA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BofvfVPFbiM
Over the last 15 years, from my reading and discussion with live people, it's the preppers who've been down with this trend. "No way you are going to last in the big city" is pretty much the 1st mantra, or at least after 'beans, bullets, and band-aids". I believe it. I gotta work more on this myself.Replies: @nebulafox, @dfordoom
>There was a big back-to-the-country trend in the 1970s too. That was partly a hippy-dippy back to the land thing. Also, there was also the same trend then of the big cities (anywhere full of black people in the inner city) becoming much more dangerous over a pretty short time period. Take numbers from 1962 to 1972, and, just from experience, people are going to notice.
And then a decade later…
You can’t run from your problems. 😉
Maybe COVID is a problem (not a huge problem but still a problem), but it’s a problem that requires an intelligent balanced response rather than the blind panic and hysteria combined with incompetence that has characterised the responses of all western governments. Maybe COVID has been useful in exposing the utter uselessness of our western political systems. A political system that is entirely incapable of dealing with a relatively minor crisis is probably a political system that needs to be dropped into the trash can.
That’s certainly a massive over-reaction, a result of the complete inability of our governments to manage a minor crisis intelligently and effectively. Destroying the economy and destroying the fabric of society is not an appropriate response. Unfortunately an appropriate response would require both sides to stop treating the problem as a political issue. Which is what both sides are doing at the moment.
White Americans have been fleeing rural areas for over 50 years now: look up the demographics of any small town in America and the odds are there will have been a 15-50% decrease since 1940, despite having above replacement fertility up until recently.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ruso.12266Your prediction about the "white states' in New England is totally contradicted by multiple projections from the government; Maine will stay above 80% white well in to the early 2100s, although it will have lost clost to half a million people by then. There are maybe 10-20,000 Somalians in Maine, against 1.3 million mostly white non-Somalians, and they're mostly located in the large metro areas. Somalians are actually largely Caucasoid, and they're generally well liked by the liberal whites who live in those areas, rather than being fodder for a "target".
The notion that white urbanites or even suburbanites would move to rural America, with its drug addicts, derelict homes, absolute wasteland economies, filthy lead contaminated water, rampant property crime and shit food, is hilarious. No one would move from NYC just because its murder rate increased from 2 per 100,000 to 4. Make no mistake about it, NYC is still safer than most small towns in America, and the recent increase in homicides has taken it's murder rate to about the same level as such "dangerous" cities as Seattle, Washington and Austin, Texas.
Would like to add that green areas are absolute shit and living near them guarantees your house will be infested with cockroaches every summer. Your air ducts are also sure to be contaminated with mold and pollen, which will lead the development of respiratory problems and allergies. Nature areas are also conduits of property crime, and a major fire hazard.Replies: @John smith 2, @Elmer's Washable School Glue
I moved from nyc to a small farm in the mid south about 6 years ago. Town of 50k people 20 minutes away. Would never go back to nyc in a million years and while I hope you’re right about people not fleeing nyc, because I don’t want them coming here either, many are.
I grew up in nyc and lived there for much of my adult life as well. Crime is much much worse than reported because the police never document most crimes. I’ve been assaulted , robbed , house broken into etc etc and only one robbery when I was 14 was ever put on the books of the NYPD. They did not find the guy and never contacted me again.
My quality of life here is much better, no traffic, low taxes, no headaches, job market is good enough, and irrelevant anyway if you work remote. Not taking the subways has probably cut my blood pressure in half.
Not to say I don’t get why people live in nyc. All that excitement, diversity! The Food omg! Is a plus to many. Not to me, diversity wasn’t a benefit to me and I grow my own better food now….but I get why some people love it.
Remember John Denver and John Prine?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRuCPS_-_IA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BofvfVPFbiM
Over the last 15 years, from my reading and discussion with live people, it's the preppers who've been down with this trend. "No way you are going to last in the big city" is pretty much the 1st mantra, or at least after 'beans, bullets, and band-aids". I believe it. I gotta work more on this myself.Replies: @nebulafox, @dfordoom
I knew a few people who made that choice. Let’s just say that it did not end well for them.
Rural life does not have a great deal going for it. Your kids will be desperate to get back to the big city as soon as they get a chance. Rural communities face the problem not just that the children can’t wait to escape rural life but also that the more intelligent and capable among the rural population are the ones who head for the cities. Hence you end up with rural despair. And very high suicide rates.
It’s a nice dream but it’s best left as a dream.
The truth is, as someone who's lived in both places, that cities and rural areas actually have a lot of similar problems. Most of the time people think of urban and rural areas as opposite extremes, with the suburbs somewhere in the middle. This is accurate by the most conventional measures (like population density) and in political patterns.
On the other hand, cities and small towns share a high proportion of working/lower class people. They share an unfortunate "rust belt" legacy caused by the collapse in industrial capacity since the 70s, while gleaming new suburbs never had any industry to begin with. They even share intangibles like a strong "sense of community" and rootedness as compared to suburbs, which seem (admittedly coming from a relative outsider) far more incidental and deracinated. FWIW, I know suburban people who don't even know the names of their neighbors across the street. In my opinion, neighborhoods in cities function much like towns in the country, in that they delimit a kind of communal "grouping" with established boundaries, allowing the formation of stronger social bonds.
My point is this: the "rural vs urban" dichotomy is not always as useful as it seems. In many cases, a "rural/urban vs suburban" dichotomy is more appropriate.Replies: @dfordoom
Rural life does not have a great deal going for it. Your kids will be desperate to get back to the big city as soon as they get a chance. Rural communities face the problem not just that the children can't wait to escape rural life but also that the more intelligent and capable among the rural population are the ones who head for the cities. Hence you end up with rural despair. And very high suicide rates.
It's a nice dream but it's best left as a dream.Replies: @usNthem, @Elmer's Washable School Glue
My experience is you end up with a lot of old people. It is true that opportunities are limited in small towns, unless you’re the entrepreneurial type. However, as we watch the larger cities come apart, who knows, maybe there’ll be a resurgence – organic foods, or just a bunch that can work with their hands – make a living as well as help people out.
It's just not a solution for societal problems. There is no way rural communities could successfully absorb large numbers of people, and there's no way they're going to provide worthwhile lives for large numbers of people. Most likely you're going to end up with rural communities having much bigger social problems than they have now.
For small communities there's also the danger that they'll attract scum like hippies, greenies, religious nutters, assorted drug-crazed losers and vegans (and no community needs vegans).Replies: @V. K. Ovelund
White Americans have been fleeing rural areas for over 50 years now: look up the demographics of any small town in America and the odds are there will have been a 15-50% decrease since 1940, despite having above replacement fertility up until recently.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ruso.12266Your prediction about the "white states' in New England is totally contradicted by multiple projections from the government; Maine will stay above 80% white well in to the early 2100s, although it will have lost clost to half a million people by then. There are maybe 10-20,000 Somalians in Maine, against 1.3 million mostly white non-Somalians, and they're mostly located in the large metro areas. Somalians are actually largely Caucasoid, and they're generally well liked by the liberal whites who live in those areas, rather than being fodder for a "target".
The notion that white urbanites or even suburbanites would move to rural America, with its drug addicts, derelict homes, absolute wasteland economies, filthy lead contaminated water, rampant property crime and shit food, is hilarious. No one would move from NYC just because its murder rate increased from 2 per 100,000 to 4. Make no mistake about it, NYC is still safer than most small towns in America, and the recent increase in homicides has taken it's murder rate to about the same level as such "dangerous" cities as Seattle, Washington and Austin, Texas.
Would like to add that green areas are absolute shit and living near them guarantees your house will be infested with cockroaches every summer. Your air ducts are also sure to be contaminated with mold and pollen, which will lead the development of respiratory problems and allergies. Nature areas are also conduits of property crime, and a major fire hazard.Replies: @John smith 2, @Elmer's Washable School Glue
Talk about projection. Literally every single thing you mentioned besides “shit food” and economics (which vary widely) is objectively worse in urban areas than in rural areas. I mean, how stupid could you possibly be to think “lead contaminated water” is primarily a rural problem. Do you even know what wells are?
Cities can be compelling places to live, and although I currently live in a small town, I don’t hold the strict agrarian views of many preppers and conservatives. There are a ton of benefits to cities, so there’s no need to make up a bunch of fake problems associated only with rural areas.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-water-lead/If your well was dug in the mid-20th century, it gets worse for you...
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19900108&slug=1049787If you're Texan you may be drinking benzene... And the bad news is that like lead, no amount is safe to be drinking.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.7b00746
https://pubs.acs.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/achs/journals/content/esthag/2017/esthag.2017.51.issue-12/acs.est.7b00746/20170614/images/medium/es-2017-007465_0006.gif
Try not to get CANCER from your DISGUSTING EARTH WATER:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1990/08/31/use-of-well-water-doubles-cancer-risk-study-shows/dd43617b-2ac2-477d-87b9-f68f22f1f1ca/And yeah, rural drinking water does have a reputation for being contaminated:https://www.texastribune.org/2018/01/22/texas-drinking-water-contamination-problem-pronounced-rural-areas/
Time for you to do the honorable thing and admit that you made a terrible life decision by moving to a rural area.Replies: @John smith 2
Now, because the coronavirus pandemic and, of course, the urban riots, she says homes with land are in. Buyers, especially families with children, suddenly want suburban and exurban homes with large yards, swimming pools, and other outdoor amenities. For that matter, she says that the trend toward smaller homes has reversed and families now want bigger homes, so that the family members are not "crowded" into each other all the time. Also, more families are interested in, and buying, second homes nearby on the mountains, as the present conditions have created a desire for a private "getaway" for the weekends and holidays, and perhaps for normal days too since more adults are tele-commuting and even the children are being schooled from home.
Of course, real estate trends come and go over time, but the speed of the reversal from the last trend has been rather whiplash-like and dramatic. It does seem that lots of home owners appear to think of the present conditions as a long-term possibility and have modified their buying behaviors, as opposed to a brief shock or a passing phase that will be over soon.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Charlotte
In the Midwestern city I used to live in, many of the $100,000+ crowd lived in nearly all white/Asian suburban neighborhoods, and many shopped and got their entertainment there, too. I doubt they felt directly threatened (this metro area is known for its sprawl and poor public transportation, perhaps by design.) The really rich tended to live closer to the city center, and thus closer to the action, but there were fewer of them.
Rural life does not have a great deal going for it. Your kids will be desperate to get back to the big city as soon as they get a chance. Rural communities face the problem not just that the children can't wait to escape rural life but also that the more intelligent and capable among the rural population are the ones who head for the cities. Hence you end up with rural despair. And very high suicide rates.
It's a nice dream but it's best left as a dream.Replies: @usNthem, @Elmer's Washable School Glue
You’re not wrong about the problems facing rural communities, but cities have also faced a slew of issues in the past 50-60 years. The vast majority of cities outside the sunbelt have seen an absolute population decline since then, in some cases catastrophic as in Detroit, but even Chicago and Philadelphia saw their populations peak in the 50s. There are sections of Philly where you can ride the train for miles without seeing a single occupied building–just an endless line of abandoned factories and warehouses. This stands in contrast to the suburbs, which have seen demographic growth and relatively stable social indicators while those of the country as a whole plummet miserably.
The truth is, as someone who’s lived in both places, that cities and rural areas actually have a lot of similar problems. Most of the time people think of urban and rural areas as opposite extremes, with the suburbs somewhere in the middle. This is accurate by the most conventional measures (like population density) and in political patterns.
On the other hand, cities and small towns share a high proportion of working/lower class people. They share an unfortunate “rust belt” legacy caused by the collapse in industrial capacity since the 70s, while gleaming new suburbs never had any industry to begin with. They even share intangibles like a strong “sense of community” and rootedness as compared to suburbs, which seem (admittedly coming from a relative outsider) far more incidental and deracinated. FWIW, I know suburban people who don’t even know the names of their neighbors across the street. In my opinion, neighborhoods in cities function much like towns in the country, in that they delimit a kind of communal “grouping” with established boundaries, allowing the formation of stronger social bonds.
My point is this: the “rural vs urban” dichotomy is not always as useful as it seems. In many cases, a “rural/urban vs suburban” dichotomy is more appropriate.
My main point was that moving en masse to rural communities, which are suffering huge problems, is not a viable solution for people seeking to escape other kinds of communities that also have huge problems. The problem is that for very large numbers of people living in communities that are decaying there really isn't anywhere to run to.
White flight is an attractive option for those white people who are currently doing very well. They have the option of being able to afford to move to nice places in which they will continue to have good well-paid jobs and financial security. That's why those white people who are doing very well out of the current system don't give a damn about those white people who are being screwed by the current system.
The white people who are being screwed just don't have the same attractive options - they can move but they're likely to end up moving to places that are just as bad (although possibly bad in different way) as the places they're in now.
Cities can be compelling places to live, and although I currently live in a small town, I don't hold the strict agrarian views of many preppers and conservatives. There are a ton of benefits to cities, so there's no need to make up a bunch of fake problems associated only with rural areas.Replies: @Twinkie, @JohnPlywood
Some small towns have outstanding (or otherwise high-demand) restaurants. Remember the whole kerfuffle with Sarah Sanders and company getting kicked out of a fancy restaurant called the Red Hen, because she worked for Trump? That was in Lexington, VA, population 22,000 about 190 miles from the White House, deep in agricultural Shenandoah. For that matter, one of the most beloved and highly-rated restaurants in Virginia, called The Inn at Little Washington (https://theinnatlittlewashington.com/) is located in a small town of 135 people.
Just as Detroit (or San Francisco) doesn’t represent urban living in America, neither does that troll commenter’s stereotype of rural areas. There are lots of beautiful, affluent rural areas in America.
There are still others that may not be affluent at all, but the sheer scenic beauty more than makes up for any deficiency in urban amenities.
Yep.
Moving to a rural locale is a solution that will only ever work for a very small number of people. For that handful of people it can be great. For most people it’s likely to be a ghastly mistake.
It’s just not a solution for societal problems. There is no way rural communities could successfully absorb large numbers of people, and there’s no way they’re going to provide worthwhile lives for large numbers of people. Most likely you’re going to end up with rural communities having much bigger social problems than they have now.
For small communities there’s also the danger that they’ll attract scum like hippies, greenies, religious nutters, assorted drug-crazed losers and vegans (and no community needs vegans).
Cities can be compelling places to live, and although I currently live in a small town, I don't hold the strict agrarian views of many preppers and conservatives. There are a ton of benefits to cities, so there's no need to make up a bunch of fake problems associated only with rural areas.Replies: @Twinkie, @JohnPlywood
One minute of silence for this country bumpkin who thinks his well water is the least bit safe.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-water-lead/
If your well was dug in the mid-20th century, it gets worse for you…
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19900108&slug=1049787
If you’re Texan you may be drinking benzene… And the bad news is that like lead, no amount is safe to be drinking.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.7b00746
Try not to get CANCER from your DISGUSTING EARTH WATER:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1990/08/31/use-of-well-water-doubles-cancer-risk-study-shows/dd43617b-2ac2-477d-87b9-f68f22f1f1ca/
And yeah, rural drinking water does have a reputation for being contaminated:
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/01/22/texas-drinking-water-contamination-problem-pronounced-rural-areas/
Time for you to do the honorable thing and admit that you made a terrible life decision by moving to a rural area.
It's just not a solution for societal problems. There is no way rural communities could successfully absorb large numbers of people, and there's no way they're going to provide worthwhile lives for large numbers of people. Most likely you're going to end up with rural communities having much bigger social problems than they have now.
For small communities there's also the danger that they'll attract scum like hippies, greenies, religious nutters, assorted drug-crazed losers and vegans (and no community needs vegans).Replies: @V. K. Ovelund
I do not understand. Christian and pseudo-Christian zealots are not my favorite people, either, but to name them “scum”? What has a religious nutter ever done to you?
Or did you mean something other than Christian and pseudo-Christian zealots?
I wasn't thinking of Episcopalians!
The problem I have with this statement is that “shit food” is really referring to shit restaurants. Personally, I’m much more interested in quality ingredients, which can often be better, if somewhat more limited, in rural settings. Though, these days, you can really get almost anything you don’t have immediate access to anyway.
The truth is, as someone who's lived in both places, that cities and rural areas actually have a lot of similar problems. Most of the time people think of urban and rural areas as opposite extremes, with the suburbs somewhere in the middle. This is accurate by the most conventional measures (like population density) and in political patterns.
On the other hand, cities and small towns share a high proportion of working/lower class people. They share an unfortunate "rust belt" legacy caused by the collapse in industrial capacity since the 70s, while gleaming new suburbs never had any industry to begin with. They even share intangibles like a strong "sense of community" and rootedness as compared to suburbs, which seem (admittedly coming from a relative outsider) far more incidental and deracinated. FWIW, I know suburban people who don't even know the names of their neighbors across the street. In my opinion, neighborhoods in cities function much like towns in the country, in that they delimit a kind of communal "grouping" with established boundaries, allowing the formation of stronger social bonds.
My point is this: the "rural vs urban" dichotomy is not always as useful as it seems. In many cases, a "rural/urban vs suburban" dichotomy is more appropriate.Replies: @dfordoom
Yes, I agree.
Yes, I’m inclined to agree on those points.
My main point was that moving en masse to rural communities, which are suffering huge problems, is not a viable solution for people seeking to escape other kinds of communities that also have huge problems. The problem is that for very large numbers of people living in communities that are decaying there really isn’t anywhere to run to.
White flight is an attractive option for those white people who are currently doing very well. They have the option of being able to afford to move to nice places in which they will continue to have good well-paid jobs and financial security. That’s why those white people who are doing very well out of the current system don’t give a damn about those white people who are being screwed by the current system.
The white people who are being screwed just don’t have the same attractive options – they can move but they’re likely to end up moving to places that are just as bad (although possibly bad in different way) as the places they’re in now.
Yes. I was thinking of cultists. The really fringe stuff. Including some of the really wild and wacky Christian and pseudo-Christian sects but also New Age cultists, that sort of thing. The sorts of groups that used to set up communes back in the hippy-dippy 70s.
I wasn’t thinking of Episcopalians!
A graph of an ongoing event is fairly meaningless. For example we could make a graph of combat deaths in the US military for WW2 or any war. Most soldiers are not going to die but the chances of being killed soar if you happen to be going to Iwo Jima.
What we know about Covid is very little. We know we have no cure, no vaccine and that it becomes more deadly with age, weight, blood type and a host of yet to be discovered factors. If it becomes a chronic reoccurring virus with virulent outbreaks every decade or two then , look out, it will be coming for you eventually.
What we know about Covid is very little. We know we have no cure, no vaccine and that it becomes more deadly with age, weight, blood type and a host of yet to be discovered factors. If it becomes a chronic reoccurring virus with virulent outbreaks every decade or two then , look out, it will be coming for you eventually.Replies: @JohnPlywood
I think Covid is going to come back with a vengeance this fall when the air dries up, and I’m so looking forward to seeing each and every Republican and small business owner metamorphose in to marble statues, shed crimson tears, and vertically crack in half to the sound of angels singing, when they learn that America is going to have to be shut down for the entirety of 2021, this time China-style and with a shoot-on-sight executive order for mask violators.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-water-lead/If your well was dug in the mid-20th century, it gets worse for you...
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19900108&slug=1049787If you're Texan you may be drinking benzene... And the bad news is that like lead, no amount is safe to be drinking.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.7b00746
https://pubs.acs.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/achs/journals/content/esthag/2017/esthag.2017.51.issue-12/acs.est.7b00746/20170614/images/medium/es-2017-007465_0006.gif
Try not to get CANCER from your DISGUSTING EARTH WATER:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1990/08/31/use-of-well-water-doubles-cancer-risk-study-shows/dd43617b-2ac2-477d-87b9-f68f22f1f1ca/And yeah, rural drinking water does have a reputation for being contaminated:https://www.texastribune.org/2018/01/22/texas-drinking-water-contamination-problem-pronounced-rural-areas/
Time for you to do the honorable thing and admit that you made a terrible life decision by moving to a rural area.Replies: @John smith 2
This is so dumb. Just test your well water every few years for 100 bucks. We don’t have any issues, just like 90% of other people in the study. Got a uv filter just in case