Posted on 11/09/2015 6:42:59 AM PST by pabianice
Of all the growing divides in America—red-blue, conservative-liberal, Republican-Democrat, white-nonwhite—none is sharper than that between city and country. The nation’s urbanites increasingly govern those living in the hinterlands, even as vanishing rural Americans still feed and fuel the nation. At the nation’s birth, it took nine farmers to feed one city dweller. Today, one farmer supports 99 urbanites—evidence, supposedly, that almost everyone has been freed from the drudgery of agricultural work.
City and country are not coequals by any demographic, political, or cultural measure. The urban is growing and ascendant; the rural shrinks and becomes increasingly culturally irrelevant. California is now the most urbanized state in the nation. Over 95 percent of the population lives in what the census classifies as urban clusters of 50,000 people or more—an underappreciated phenomenon, given the huge size and mostly open areas of the state. America’s most densely urbanized area is currently the Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim basin, where almost 7,000 people crowd in per square mile. Second place goes to the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Area (6,266 people per square mile), and third to the Silicon Valley–San Jose corridor (5,820). Aside from these and the Sacramento and Fresno urban clusters, in terms of geography, California remains mostly an empty state. Housing is cheap in Sanger and is out of reach in Santa Cruz, three hours away, in part because people don’t wish any longer to live in small towns or on homesteads when they can enjoy a culture that puts a premium on going to concerts, the community beach, basketball games, or shopping malls—or, at least, being among people who do.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
How about not having to drive an hour to do basic shopping? How about being in reach of a job? I understand that the job and the "grocery shopping" were the same thing, back in subsistence farming days, but I'm not interested in subsistence farming unless there is no other choice.
Later.
Country people and their children function quite well in the city even if we don’t prefer the lifestyle. City people are like fish out of water in the country. There is MUCH to be said for especially raising children with the ‘drudgery’ of farm life. I hate the rat race type of drudgery and based on friends that visit us, the peace and quiet and scenery are a welcome relief.
Good piece by VDH. Of course, FReepers might recall I have often pointed out that some stupidities that others want to attribute to the left are are actually urbanite stupidities — ideas that are probably good in places of high population density, but useless or harmful as uniform policy for the entire country (light rail and electric cars being two that spring readily to mind).
I traded the rural life for city life last year.
I lived 45 miles (45 minutes) from work and 20 miles (twenty minutes) from the grocery store.
I now live 12 miles (35 minutes) and 3 miles (20 minutes including finding a parking space) from the grocery store.
My fuel bill is lower but city life has not turned out to be a lot more convenient.
good read. vdh has honed his mirrored wisdom of the ages to a diamond hard finish.
There can also be the life-saving value of a 20 minute trip tops to a hospital or not taking all day to see a specialist, round trip.
Yes, that is true. In addition to being five minutes from a grocery store and fifteen minutes from church, I live five minutes from a 24-hour clinic and 15 minutes from a hospital. Also five minutes from a fire station.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.