Just curious. I know at least one of us lives in a really big city and I got to wondering how much of a variety there is to the rural/urban area we live in. So here’s an anonymous poll with a few size categories I chose in a non-scientific manner. (I made 'em up).
If anyone cares to add a message with why you live there, like it or hate it, whatever, that an option.
Small town, about 13,000 residents.
I love this place. I can walk from home to a large grocery about 8/10ths of a mile distant along a tree shaded not quite busy two lane street with center turning lane. {I was walking to the store for a couple of small items when this idea came to me}. Other people you meet walking almost always give a nod, say hi or something to acknowledge you exist. Most bicyclists stop at crosswalks for pedestrians wanting to cross, cars always do.
I voted:
Large city 500,000 to 3,000,000
I live in Palm Desert, which only has a population of about 50,000.
But in my opinion, Palm Desert is part of a metropolitan area called the Coachella Valley, which has a population as high as 600,000.
The population of the Coachella Valley changes with the weather.
In the winter, there’s about twice as many people here as in the summer because the winters are very nice and the summers are pretty brutal.
I do like living here.
Everywhere else that I would rather live are way more expensive than here, so I take the summers in stride, though I do enjoy complaining about the extreme heat at times.
Five or six years ago, I bought my first small house in a village and moved there. It took 40-50 minutes to commute from home to work place and vice versa using my motorbike.
I like living here and wishing to have enough fortune to buy a bigger land nearby.
I voted: Rural. My wife bought her childhood home and has never HAD to move. We graduated same year from the same small town school, although we are not “High School Sweethearts.” Not much out here except fields and a stiff breeze. We live on a dead end road. Closest inhabited residence is about a quarter mile away. Edit: forgot to mention I LOVE IT HERE!
Closest town/villiage, whatever. A whopping 146 people. Small machine shop, Dollar General and a post office. There use to be a bar. It got ran through by a dump truck. Nice little store use to sit on the corner as well. It burned to the ground.
Which do you prefer, high population density or low population density?
Anyway, although my family lives in Palm Desert, we live on the very outskirts of town where most homes are on 5 acres of land.
It’s really nice to have our neighbors so far away from us.
I personally prefer a lower population density. I grew up in the middle of nowhere so that probably makes me biased. Still, I suspect the world would be a lot more peaceful if cities had some kind of population density cap.
Medium city. I wouldn’t enjoy living in a big city as much, but would still prefer it over a non-city (I consider anything under 75k people 100% not a city, that’s a large town). The sweet spot for me is populated but still walkable and good public transit, so I can actually go out and drink, but still having enough space to be able to have off street parking and a garage because I love driving (but hate having to drive), I work on my cars, and I care about them enough to avoid street parking if possible. I guess I would describe my perfect as “largest place I can have a house (not a flat) with a driveway and garage, located somewhere I’m unlikely to get hatecrimed or my existence criminalised”. I very much hate the city I am currently in, but that’s just due to its location and the general incompetence of both the local and state government; size-wise it’s fine, and I would like it if it was in a blue state… Hopefully moving soon though.
I find having access to nature is important, but I (and my sinuses) don’t want to be surrounded by it all the time or have to drive 20 minutes each way just to buy food, and I’d rather have reliable power and a decent internet connection and roads that aren’t either dirt tracks or full of craters, I enjoy walking in a city as much as a forest (and would probably get depressed if either was unavailable to me).
I grew up not quite in the middle of nowhere, but near it, and it made me never want to repeat that experience ever again…
Lower density preferred myself. We used to be rural… measured in sq miles per person rather than people per sq mile. I enjoy the in town area where we are now. I can walk to the library, pool, many stores, restaurants if I want. Or I can drive and nothing is very far, but it does not seem congested. Because of the topography of many canyons separating the flat finger-like mesa tops where most homes are, many people do have to drive a bit more.
I forgot that. Surprisingly, for a small town, there is a public transit system. It provides connections from outlying areas to the Central area. It is also a no-fare service.
Hmm…
Although the Coachella Valley has public transit, it doesn’t go out to our house because we live in the middle of nowhere.
I’d have to walk a couple of miles to get to the bus stop, which isn’t too bad if it isn’t too hot, but the return trip from the bus stop to our house is uphill, and that’s a real pain.
That depends very much on the nature of the density.
High density in almost every American city I’ve visited is fkn miserable - value engineered (read: cheaply-built/unpleasant) multifamily apartments bound by congested stroads which atop single-use zoning all but mandates a car to do the most basic of tasks. The sprawl nearly rivals suburbia and the few nominally walkable parts are either historical accidents or enclaves for the wealthy; I can afford neither and would still need to own an automobile.
True low density - as in unincorporated rural acreage - buys one the sort of tranquility and freedom to do whatever you want that comes with physical margins and a lack of zoning. But man is that isolation a very very real thing. Folks live on a ~7 acre plot: “town” (~2k, grocery store went under 5 years ago) is 15 minutes away and the closest “city” (~10k) is 30 minutes away; the fact that they have fiber internet is positively miraculous.
Ideal for me I think would be the prototypical university town of >10k. Compact, potentially walkable, the school will keep things lively, probably good internet + transportation links, reasonable cost of living, close proximity to the countryside.
I lived in the city once. About 45,000 folks. I made it a complete 30 days. Worst 30 days of my life. Got in trouble for building a fire, changing my oil in the driveway, walking my weapon out to my truck and not paying some HOA fee, whatever that is. I was renting short term so I wasn’t paying any HOA thing.
I can understand the need to be close to things. Gas isn’t cheap and neither is vehicle cost. I’m sure it would be nice to be close to public transit. I have to drive 15 minutes for a gallon of milk or something. I don’t mind.
Isolation isn’t really a thing for me and shouldn’t be for anyone who lives rural but can still get around. Lots of activities going on in rural communities almost year round. Lots of churches too if that is your thing. I have never felt isolated but I love the isolation most of the time.
