Living Car Free - Dilemma

Just wanting some other peoples ideas here. Which do you think is better:

Living in the city, with higher density easier to be car free, more sustainable for the world as a whole.

or


Living in the country, where I can make my own power, grow my on food, harder to be car free, sustainable for me, but probably not for the world.

I have lived in both and I will take the density and carfree living of the city.

Just because you are in the "country" doesn't mean you have a farm or can produce your own food, not to mention the other items you need to live a bare bones livestyle. All of that takes time and money up front. Better to stockpile your food, and supplies.

Jerry

City. The more innervated the infrastructure, the more options one has for getting from A to B.

My personal preference ... a small town.

A town just big enough to have a grocery store, hardware store, medical professionals, school, etc. A town big enough to offer viable employment opportunities either in the town or surrounding area (and seeing as my most recent education qualifies me to be a teacher, a school would satisfy that requirement).

A town small enough to have large lots for the houses in the town so that the residents could put in a decent-sized garden, and could simply maintain space between each other. A town small enough so that cycling from one end to the other would take a matter of minutes, rather than hours, and small enough that it would be easy to walk wherever I needed to go. A town small enough so that a traffic jam consists of 3 cars on the road at the same time.


I'm not fond of cities, and living way out in the country has its own hassles.

I spent 11 years living in a town like the one I describe above ... and I liked it. In addition to what I described above, the town had a smallish city about 30 kms away, just in case we needed anything the town could not supply.

I would love to be self-sufficient enough to live far far away from everybody. ;) (Okay, except my boyfriend. And we should have cats.) But I see two big downsides of living far from people:

1) Emergency services. How long does it take for a fire engine or an ambulance to get to any particular place? If you're in the city they could be right around the corner; if you're fifty miles from the nearest settlement they might not get there in time. How far is the nearest hospital or emergency clinic if you need to drive yourself or a family member somewhere? Are you connected to the road system well enough that a vehicle can get in and out even in bad weather?

2) Communications. Your internet communications will be limited to either dial-up or satellite, because cable and DSL generally don't get extended away from city centres. Your phone line might just be one line into your place and it might take a while to get maintenance if something's wrong. Broadcast TV is being phased out, at least in the US and Canada, so you'd need satellite if you wanted TV. Maintenance of these systems can be harder to get in rural areas. This isn't frivolous stuff, because being able to send and receive information can be serious (you might need to contact aforementioned emergency services, or there might be a tornado warning being shown on the TV stations). Even if you mostly want to live off the grid, you need to ask yourself whether you want these resources on hand for emergencies.

People are social animals, for the most part. I would prefer to see people learn how to live sustainably and harmoniously in groups, so that they can communicate and help each other out, but also stay out of each other's way and not tread on each other's rights and privacy.

1) Emergency services. How long does it take for a fire engine or an ambulance to get to any particular place? If you're in the city they could be right around the corner; if you're fifty miles from the nearest settlement they might not get there in time. How far is the nearest hospital or emergency clinic if you need to drive yourself or a family member somewhere? Are you connected to the road system well enough that a vehicle can get in and out even in bad weather?

2) Communications. Not as dire as the first one, but still something to think about. Do you want TV and internet? Do you want a celphone? Are these things going to work out there? As broadcast television goes extinct, the only way to get this stuff out in the middle of nowhere will be satellite, because cable and DSL are generally not extended far from urban centres.





This is where small towns are the way to go. The small town I lived in had a volunteer fire service, which was probably just about as fast as a city service.

And in answer to your questions ... I can live without TV and a cellphone. There isn't much on TV, and I rarely watch it. And I strongly dislike cellphones ... they are annoying, and there are few people I want to talk to anyway. But I'd like internet, even if it is just dial-up.

I've lived in small towns, big cities, and lots of things in between. I don't think the size of the place is nearly as important as the infrastructure, whether in terms of transportation, social services, or politics. I'd much rather live somewhere with collective healthcare, inclusive transportation, and a general interdependent mindset toward life than somewhere where people are basically on their own in the aformentioned categories, regardless of the size of the location. Naturally, such locations are rarely found in the US.

In the city vs. country dichotomy, there's one other thing you need to figure in: Your age.

I'm 58, the wife is 57. We're nicely living car light five miles from town (grocery store, post office, bar, bank, etc.) for the moment, but I'm looking forward to the next 10-15 years. I have a feeling that, after my 65th birthday, I'm going to start looking at living in the small/medium sized town 15 miles away, and 15 miles from the big city that currently contains my employment.

Main motivation is the realization that no matter how much I bike, and how good of shape I'm in, I'm at the point of life where my physical condition is going to start seriously deteriorating in the future, and I'd really prefer to have a neighbor thirty feet away should either myself or the wife collapse from some physical failure. And that collapse is going to happen. Not tomorrow, not next month, but don't ask me to start taking bets 10-15 years from now.

My personal preference ... a small town.

A town just big enough to have a grocery store, hardware store, medical professionals, school, etc. A town big enough to offer viable employment opportunities either in the town or surrounding area (and seeing as my most recent education qualifies me to be a teacher, a school would satisfy that requirement).

A town small enough to have large lots for the houses in the town so that the residents could put in a decent-sized garden, and could simply maintain space between each other. A town small enough so that cycling from one end to the other would take a matter of minutes, rather than hours, and small enough that it would be easy to walk wherever I needed to go. A town small enough so that a traffic jam consists of 3 cars on the road at the same time.


I'm not fond of cities, and living way out in the country has its own hassles.

I spent 11 years living in a town like the one I describe above ... and I liked it. In addition to what I described above, the town had a smallish city about 30 kms away, just in case we needed anything the town could not supply.

That would be nice, but except for Mayberry, they don't exsist. I live in the rural utopia you speak of. Its only a population of 4000. With the services you stated, you have only enough jobs for about 50 folks, and that is puching it. Where are the others going to work? Maybe in the large town that they have to travel many miles to get to. And how can they put out those nice large gardens when you have to work OT just to pay for gas and taxes and food and supplies?

You don't just dig a hole and plant a seed and a nice healthy plant grows. It takes alot of work to break the ground and ready the land, even if its been turned the season before. Then its the actual plants and upkeep of the plants. Then the harvesting and preserving of the crops, probably the most labor, time, and money consuming part of the ordeal.

Jerry

That small town where I lived had a population of 1000 in those days (it has probably grown now), and had 2 "industries" ... a large canola processing plant and a college. Most of the town was employed in those 2 places.

That small town where I lived had a population of 1000 in those days (it has probably grown now), and had 2 "industries" ... a large canola processing plant and a college. Most of the town was employed in those 2 places.


As Tom Petty sang, "you got lucky babe."

I don't think there is enough colleges or plants to fit into every small town, do you? Take the population of Canada and see how many times 4000 goes into it. That's how many large plants or employment opertunities that will be needed to support you rural utopia.

Coal mines closed up around here in the 90s. Maytag left Herrin five years back. There ain't nothing around here to support anyone. If it wasn't for IDOC and the crime in Chicago, I would be working at the nearest 7/11 and car free!

Jerry

The situation in my small town doesn't happen in every small town, but it happens in some. Around here oil is the big thing and you can be employed in something associated with the oil industry in a lot of small towns. For example, the plant where I work is situated right next to an extremely small town (probably hamlet status) ... too small for me because it doesn't have the grocery store, bank, etc. etc. I'd want, but someone who wanted to "get away from it all" and yet be within walking distance of work might live there.

There are quite a few towns out there like Machka describes. I have lived in a few over the years. However the North American's penchant for cheap goods has destroyed much of our manufacturing base and take a lot of the small town jobs with it. The rise of the automobile and fall of interstate mass transit has taken it's toll too. The town we have/had our small retail shop in was a good example; about 10k population, full hospital, plenty of stores, mostly flat, laid out on a grid. There was still a decent manufacturing base, jobs were available, but if you wanted to make more than general wages you would need to travel to the larger city an hour away. No mass transit of any kind, it has all been killed off by use of the car. Every place is going to have it pluses and minuses, you just have to decide which one works best for you. Also FWIW I live 3/4 mile down a gravel driveway off of a rural road and have high speed internet (DSL). We live on the last 40 acres of my wife's side of the family farm. There has been a VFD within 2 miles of the house for over 40 years. And they have one of the best response times in the state. The area has changed a lot in the past dozen years and has become much more suburban. One thing that can be done in denser areas for food is community gardens, sharing with your neighbors, get together and decide who is going to grow what and share.

For Jerry in So IL...check out Square Foot Gardening (http://www.squarefootgardening.com/)...it really works, we use it quite a bit. Another thing we do is Edible Landscaping, we plant things like Black Berries, Grapes, Blueberries, fruit trees, nut trees, etc. Do away with grass, boxwoods and the like. Our goal is to make the landscape work for us, not make work for us.:thumb:

Aaron:)

You know, Aaron, I really like the way you think...

I have lived small city and now reside country in Australia. I don't grow my own food, but it is on the agenda (I gobble away as much of the prime quality fruit as I can during season on the orchard where I work, however).

I live 25km awy from the cheapest supermarket; I live 8km away from a tiny town store that is expensive, but has the local post office, and is run by a delightful couple.

Some observations:

1. Unless you're someone like skyerocker with fears about ageing, or someone with an ailment that would prevent them from cycling (ie, something serious), the emergency services issue for remote locations is always overstated. It's used as an excuse, not a reason.

2. Employment is a critical factor, and proximity of residence to work follows on from that. For many, the country lifestyle will remain a dream unless the individual is self-supporting (that is, is wealthy with private investment income -- in which see squattocracry below) or has local employment (in which case, see my final comment below).

3. Terrain and weather are important elements. As pointed out, alternative non-car transport arrangements are often very limited in country locations, particularly if it is raining/snowing, or one simply doesn't want to tackle the huge hill outside the front door today.

4. It takes a special emotional outlook to like living in the country. City people dream of it, but about 1%, in my view, would be able to tolerate it. That's why there is a real gulf between the understanding between both sets of folks, and in particular city folks' appreciation of the hardness of real country life (not the part-time, wealthy squattocracy excuse for country living that doctors, lawyers and politicians seem to delight in). I see city people (mainly backpackers) filter through each year looking for work on the orchard -- they are overweight, ill-equipped, ill-dressed, ill-skilled and incapable of undertaking a full day of hard labour in any type of weather after the first day.

5. Silence. It generally drives city people crazy. The nights can be almost noiseless, and what noise there is, generated by the odd passing motor car, but more so by the eerie sounds of nocturnal animals, can drive a city person mental. I know -- a female neighbour lasted about three months before retreating to her safe, normal city life and before a nervous breakdown overtook her. Then there is that scary black sky with all those stars that can overwhelm a city person because those myriad wonderful tiny lights really make them feel so minute in the bigger scheme of things.

6. Long-term country people generally are welcoming and social, despite the distances they might have to travel (by car, naturally) to get together. This, I find, is in stark contrast to city folk who lock themselves away in walled estates or flats or condos or whatever and wouldn't even know their neighbours' surnames let alone first names. A country person is likely to slow and wave encouragement to me as they pass me bicycling; city people still have that get-out-of-my-way attitude that drives their stress levels to overload in the city.

7. Country-grown and marketed food is so different to the crap that is served up in city supermarkets... well, if you grow your own in large pots, you can emulate it even on a deck outside a multi-storey block of units.

8. Did I mentioned the freshness of the air?

9. Lack of communication is another furphy. People who want all the city trimmings in communication aren't serious about moving to the country. I am happy with dial-up (but actually can access broadband if I wanted to spend the money), I get a bit of cell phone coverage, but rarely use that phone anyway, and my landline phone works well enough to talk to my wife in Canada every day if I wish.

I dislike intently big cities. They remove your individuality and impose a herd mentality. In the country, I am an individual, am known as such, and there are such scant few of us out here, no-one is ever going to make us into a herd.

Oh yeah... there are no traffic lights in this part of the world, either!

Having said all that, I am fascinated by what the OP is trying to achieve in asking the question. I am also interested in the "making my own power" statement -- what does that mean? Are you really showing your scant knowledge of how country people live by thinking that reticulated power is supplied only to cities? I am also interested in the sustainability thing in the post. You see, the issues of high-density living are quite significant in terms of utility delivery and removal of waste... in the country, you generally have to deal with issues like water supply and sewerage processing yourself. And because of that, capital investment can be quite expensive.

Machka is right, of course. A small town (with employment options) is an ideal compromise -- a bridge between the two lifestyles, if you like. I heard recently of several families who live in small towns and have adapted their lives to generate their own power and, most importantly in a very dry country, store their rainwater that not only washes them and slakes their thirst, but waters vegetable gardens that have been carefully designed and covered with compost and mulch to provide nutrients and prevent water loss from the soil.

On the employment side, I am also interested in what Americans would think of engaging in manual labour on, say, a farm as an option for "sustainable" country living. Or has the slave mentality remained deeply ingrained so that sort of work remains only the domain of low-paid, "unskilled" immigrant workers?

I grew up in a rural area and moved to a small city when I was sixteen, and then to a big city when I was twenty-one. Having lived in and enjoyed aspects of both, I'd like to provide an alternate opinion on a couple of points...



1. Unless you're someone like skyerocker with fears about ageing, or someone with an ailment that would prevent them from cycling (ie, something serious), the emergency services issue for remote locations is always overstated. It's used as an excuse, not a reason.

Older people and those with existing health problems can anticipate a higher probability that they'll need medical help, but accidents can happen to anyone. In addition, for city folk choosing country life, the romance of 'self-sufficiency' leads them to try doing things alone that they really should have help with, and getting themselves hurt.

I respect people's choices as long as they're educated choices, and as long as people understand and take seriously the dangers that they will face wherever they choose to live. I think too many people who have never lived rural before downplay things like the possibility of accidents and the difficulty of dealing with them alone, rather than seriously considering the reality.



I dislike intently big cities. They remove your individuality and impose a herd mentality. In the country, I am an individual, am known as such, and there are such scant few of us out here, no-one is ever going to make us into a herd.

Try saying that stuff to someone who inherently does not 'fit in' in a small town or rural community -- it is an incredibly painful kind of ostracism. Small communities can be very insular and excluding of anyone that they see as different. I felt this kind of hostility in the towns and rural communities where I grew up, just for having a different political leaning than the rest of the locals, and for questioning my faith instead of just obediently going to church like everyone else did.

I can't imagine what it would be like to be gay or Muslim or an immigrant, choosing to live in the fresh air and having to deal with attitudes like that from the locals. If you fit in, you have a solid community around you; otherwise, it's worse than being alone.

In cities you might not find a large group of people who are 'like you', but you'll see scatterings of all different kinds of people across racial, religious, and political spectra. As a result, most of them tend to be more tolerant of the differences. In a city you can't afford to only associate with people who are 'like you' (unless you're really rich and live in certain white-bread neighbourhoods, but that's another story).

I think I leaning toward the small town, particularly if I can find one with regular train service to a large city. My wife is more of a big city gal.

On the employment side, I am also interested in what Americans would think of engaging in manual labour on, say, a farm as an option for "sustainable" country living. Or has the slave mentality remained deeply ingrained so that sort of work remains only the domain of low-paid, "unskilled" immigrant workers?


There are relatively few permanent farm workers in this country. Commodity farms are highly automated and the family that owns the land does most of the work on them. Food crop farms are also automated, but may remain dependant on seasonal labor to plant crops or pick them. They hire seasonal laborers (we call them migrant workers), who are among the lowest paid individuals in our economy. Some of these hard workers are from Central America, others are US citizens. It's not a career that BF members are likely to pursue. ;)

What does happen here is that a lot of people who don't own land rent it from people who do, then work it themselves just as an owner would.

City folks--shop at a farmer's market or join a CSA. The food you buy is just as good as food you grow at home. Also, many (probably most) USA farmers do NOT grow their own food. The buy the same crap at Krogers that the rest of us do. (Or maybe they go to the farmer's market.)

We're currently living in the "country," although that might be debatable to some. Town of 6,000 in southern Maine. I bike commute 17.5 mi to my job in a small city (Portsmouth NH), three towns and a state line away. Within that 17.5 mi radius is everything and anything I can ever imagine needing out of civilization like healthcare facilities, grocery stores, entertainment, bus and train stations, hardware stores, etc. Ends up being kind of in between true city environment and true country, and from what I've seen, pretty ideal for our situation.

Trouble is that if I left my job, the company moved, or any other scenario which would find me unemployed, the nearest job market that could support the type and level of work I do at our necessary income range is Boston, about 80 mi away.

In the meantime, we converted some of our lawn (more next year...) to garden and have had all the squash, tomatoes, and herbs we can eat this summer. We planted more, but some things worked out in some garden space while others didn't. Great learning experience and will inform our planning for next year. Outside of what we grow, we're close to my ex-in-laws, who run an organic, grass fed beef farm, and there are all kinds of farmers markets in the area for the stuff we don't grow ourselves. We have less than an acre of land, but if we managed it right, I'm sure we could get as much as we could eat out of it.

Come to think of it, our current situation isn't too much different than what could be a typical suburban situation.

Before this, I was living in the city, with a 7 mi bike commute. There was a grocery store right across the street with the usual assortment of retial hangers on, like a chain drug store, liquor store, restaurants, etc. Basically anything needed was within 2-3 mi, or even walking distance if need be, rather than definitely biking distance in our current home. I found the noise was a trade-off: the noise level is just as great in the country as it is in the city, just that it's birds, coyotes, weather, trees, etc. making the noise instead of cars, alarms, sirens, drunk screaming people, etc. Interaction with others didn't change too much--slightly cool with a definite you mind your business and I'll mind mine mindset, typical of New England and suits us fine.

We don't have the choice restaurants like in the city, also cultural entertainment or enrichment opportunities are fewer. There's also a certain monoculture in our neck of the woods and I miss the diversity of city life. The city seems to offer more distractions and ways to separate a person from their cash.

City. The more innervated the infrastructure, the more options one has for getting from A to B.

"Innervated"? I don't think that was the word you are looking for. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/innervated) As a matter of fact, I'm not sure what the right word was.

Just wanting some other peoples ideas here. Which do you think is better:

Living in the city, with higher density easier to be car free, more sustainable for the world as a whole.

or

Living in the country, where I can make my own power, grow my on food, harder to be car free, sustainable for me, but probably not for the world.
:roflmao2:
Living in the country and being off-grid as much as possible is the most sustainable life you can live.

Living on-grid and (particularly) in an urban environment shields you from much of the true costs of the items that you use regularly. The personal incentive for efficient living is greatly decreased.


~~~~~

That noted--there are a number of practical concerns, your employment being a primary one. Your health concerns (or those of your loved ones) could be another. I've not had the chance to do it myself yet, I don't know that I ever really will, but living off-grid is rather something of a job in itself and I don't blame anybody for not doing it. None of the people I've heard from who has done it seems to say that it's convenient, but it can be extremely inexpensive in financial terms.
~

"Innervated"? I don't think that was the word you are looking for. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/innervated) As a matter of fact, I'm not sure what the right word was.

That was exactly the word I meant to use. Any transportation system is a basic network, whether the data being transferred are blood (circulatory system), oxygen (respiratory system), electrical impulses (nervous system), websites (internet), or people (highways, streets, and roads). : D

I vote for city. I lived in a small town for awhile in my early twenties and I found it annoying. The movie theatre never had anything interesting, the library had no budget so no books published before 1985, the grocery store owner stared at me like I had a budgie growing out of my head whenever I went in to buy milk, my neighbour had a son who threw his cigarette butts on my porch and no polite requests to quit it were ever acknowledged, the sole bus in or out of time only ran between 9 am and 9 pm so it was hard getting to work on time and I could never stay out late, the town was full of animal haters and considered running over pets with their cars a kind of sport, and even though the town was surrounded by fertile farms I never found decent produce in the grocery store.

I left as soon as I could -- it was a horrible year.

City city city. At least I have plenty of choices about where to live, work, shop, and entertain.

I didn't have a bike when I lived in that $%^& crummy town, but I imagine I would've ended up like all those squished pets I saw on the roads.

I vote for city. I lived in a small town for awhile in my early twenties and I found it annoying. The movie theatre never had anything interesting, the library had no budget so no books published before 1985, the grocery store owner stared at me like I had a budgie growing out of my head whenever I went in to buy milk, my neighbour had a son who threw his cigarette butts on my porch and no polite requests to quit it were ever acknowledged, the sole bus in or out of time only ran between 9 am and 9 pm so it was hard getting to work on time and I could never stay out late, the town was full of animal haters and considered running over pets with their cars a kind of sport, and even though the town was surrounded by fertile farms I never found decent produce in the grocery store.

I left as soon as I could -- it was a horrible year.

City city city. At least I have plenty of choices about where to live, work, shop, and entertain.

I didn't have a bike when I lived in that $%^& crummy town, but I imagine I would've ended up like all those squished pets I saw on the roads.
:lol:

Your small town experiences are very close to mine. The stores and services are bad. As for public transportation, it was a little shuttle van that picked you up at your house and dropped you off at your destination. Since it also picked up other people, you couldn't be sure when you would arrive for an appointment. You had to plan to be an hour early in order to be an hour late.

Being carfree in a small town is impossible unless you work in the town, or don't work at all. I was working in the nearest city, about 20 miles away. To get to work at 3:00 PM, I had to leave on the shuttle van at noon. The van took me to a shopping mall outside the city, where I had to catch a city bus to work. When I got off work at 11:30 PM, there was no transit home. If I didn't get a ride from someone, I was stuck in the city.

Needless to say, I moved PDQ--back to the city.

Sometimes the choice of city or country is a matter of necessity rather than choice. I prefer to live near work and I would like to live where there are friends and family. Those are more important than some notion of sustainability or whatever. Like Aaron, I also get to follow the Square Foot Gardening methodology. Only difference is that I practice it in my small backyard. I planted an apple tree this year and have several other fruit-bearing perennials like raspberries and rhubard. I'm also slowly getting rid of the lawn monoculture back there. I read somewhere that many large cities are partly self-sufficient in vegetable produce... which doesn't surprise me.

So I'll say this: I like country-living in the city :)

Rowan brings up some good points about the labor pool. I will/would be interested to see what happens to the US if the gloom and doom boys get their way with the forecast economic meltdown. I think we will see a percentage of the population do what it takes to make do for themselves, a portion of the population will wait for a government handout, and another portion of the population will resort to violence and looting to get what they want.

Many of the skills required to raise one's own food and maintain a small farmstead are fast becoming lost arts. I am very fortunate in that my FIL who is near 80 farmed with mules in his day and still remembers how to do it. We don't have a mule, but know people who do, we do still have the mule drawn equipment, most of the harnesses and the ability to reproduce what is missing. There are kids and I am sure some adults today that have no clue where food comes from other than the grocery store.

I have long been a fan of the edible landscape movement, most places I lived growing up we always had a fruit or nut tree and kept a small kitchen garden. A couple of chickens could be kept on most urban lots without an issue if local ordinances allow it. We have a fair sized flock and a ready market for our eggs.

Aaron:)

While I seem to be able to kill most house plants (although I've had a fern now for a couple years which is thriving), I have done some gardening in the past. In fact, I've had quite large gardens. I'm not a traditional gardener ... one who plants one row of 15 different veggies ... I'm a "specialist". I'll pick two things I like and fill my garden with those two things. :D

And when I lived in an apartment in Winnipeg, I had a garden in pots out on the balcony.

I'm looking forward to trying my hand at more gardening in the not-to-distant future.

I also have some experience in the fruit harvesting industry ... I spent several summers in lower mainland BC picking raspberries for a summer job when I was in high school. Now there's a job that'll keep you in shape! :D

Even though I'm a renter, I have picking rights to grapes, apples, pears and cherries in my yard. I also have permission to plant a garden, but so far I've been too lazy to do it. Does that make me a sharecropper?

When I was a kid, we planted a large family garden behind my father's workplace. Several times a week my sister and I would bike out there (5 or 6 miles) to tend the garden.

As an adult, I've planted in community gardens. These are free plots that residents can plant in parks or vacant lots. One in Lansing even has a hoophouse for year-round gardening. In fact, this hoophouse was started in part by a former member of this forum, which I think is pretty cool.

There is a degree of commitment to live any lifestyle, including living without owning a motor vehicle. The same applies to living country (or city). It's a matter of assessing the risks and positives -- a SWAT analysis, I suppose -- before making the lifestyle change. Some can do it, others just come up with excuses.

Maybe y'all should go see how the Amish and others do it. Is their lifestyle too esoteric and ascetic? Maybe, for you.

I will throw in another factor that obviously has shaped people's opinions on country living -- age. I think the 17yo girl who lives right nextdoor to me wants desperately to be more mobile and despite the cost of fuel and the millstone she inevitably will wear around her neck, her only ambition right now is... to save enough money to buy a car. She rarely gets outside the house, preferring instead to play loud doof-doof music (heaven knows how her parents put up with it), and I've never seen her exercise (which accounts for her increasing podginess). Yet she was brought up in a household before moving here where power was generated on the farm.

I am at the other end of the age spectrum. Which probably greatly influences my desire to avoid big-city life (and by that I mean Melbourne, Sydney, LA, NY, etc). And I grew up in Tasmania, Hobart to be exact, where water and mountains were almost on my doorstep. I was spoilt as a kid from that point of view, and I've lived in several small country towns since, some successfully, some not so much so.

for me, the city.

or at least an area in which you can:

* walk to the grocery store (i walk about five blocks to QFC)
* use a bus/transit system
* have jobs to choose from

while cities aren't the most sustainable things, (on-grid) single-occupancy houses in the burbs/country-side are even less so, i'd think.

plus i'd miss Critical Mass if i lived in the middle of nowhere!

for me, the city.

or at least an area in which you can:

* walk to the grocery store (i walk about five blocks to QFC)
* use a bus/transit system
* have jobs to choose from

while cities aren't the most sustainable things, (on-grid) single-occupancy houses in the burbs/country-side are even less so, i'd think.

plus i'd miss Critical Mass if i lived in the middle of nowhere!

No you wouldn't. Critical Mass is irrelevant in the country.

One of the issues that I see with cities, apart from waste disposal in particular, is the heat sink created by the hard surfaces that proliferate. It means that much of our energy resources now go to creating artifical cooling (through air conditioning); it's a serious situation when the power authorities fear the peak load in the middle of SUMMER rather than in the middle of winter.

Add that to the pall of smog that hangs over big cities, plus removal of almost all plantlife, and creation of artificial biosystems involving introduced bird and animal species (including homospiens) to totally displace native flora and fauna means that cities can never be regarded as naturally sustainable.

As the footnote, I counted up the other day the number of native bird species I am likely to see on any one day -- it totalled over 25, and wasn't exhaustive.

No you wouldn't. Critical Mass is irrelevant in the country.

i'd miss the feeling of riding with a gigantic group, i meant.. seems like it'd be awfully lonely (as a cyclist) out in the stix..

your other points are pretty good. but what about the population density of the city? in an apartment complex, you have people sharing the same vertical space. this means you can consolidate utilities into one place, etc.

if everyone in the city spread out to the countryside, seems like we'd end up killing/changing more land than what is done already in the city.

You know, Aaron, I really like the way you think...

I have lived small city and now reside country in Australia. I don't grow my own food, but it is on the agenda (I gobble away as much of the prime quality fruit as I can during season on the orchard where I work, however).

I live 25km awy from the cheapest supermarket; I live 8km away from a tiny town store that is expensive, but has the local post office, and is run by a delightful couple.

Some observations:

1. Unless you're someone like skyerocker with fears about ageing, or someone with an ailment that would prevent them from cycling (ie, something serious), the emergency services issue for remote locations is always overstated. It's used as an excuse, not a reason.

2. Employment is a critical factor, and proximity of residence to work follows on from that. For many, the country lifestyle will remain a dream unless the individual is self-supporting (that is, is wealthy with private investment income -- in which see squattocracry below) or has local employment (in which case, see my final comment below).

3. Terrain and weather are important elements. As pointed out, alternative non-car transport arrangements are often very limited in country locations, particularly if it is raining/snowing, or one simply doesn't want to tackle the huge hill outside the front door today.

4. It takes a special emotional outlook to like living in the country. City people dream of it, but about 1%, in my view, would be able to tolerate it. That's why there is a real gulf between the understanding between both sets of folks, and in particular city folks' appreciation of the hardness of real country life (not the part-time, wealthy squattocracy excuse for country living that doctors, lawyers and politicians seem to delight in). I see city people (mainly backpackers) filter through each year looking for work on the orchard -- they are overweight, ill-equipped, ill-dressed, ill-skilled and incapable of undertaking a full day of hard labour in any type of weather after the first day.

5. Silence. It generally drives city people crazy. The nights can be almost noiseless, and what noise there is, generated by the odd passing motor car, but more so by the eerie sounds of nocturnal animals, can drive a city person mental. I know -- a female neighbour lasted about three months before retreating to her safe, normal city life and before a nervous breakdown overtook her. Then there is that scary black sky with all those stars that can overwhelm a city person because those myriad wonderful tiny lights really make them feel so minute in the bigger scheme of things.

6. Long-term country people generally are welcoming and social, despite the distances they might have to travel (by car, naturally) to get together. This, I find, is in stark contrast to city folk who lock themselves away in walled estates or flats or condos or whatever and wouldn't even know their neighbours' surnames let alone first names. A country person is likely to slow and wave encouragement to me as they pass me bicycling; city people still have that get-out-of-my-way attitude that drives their stress levels to overload in the city.

7. Country-grown and marketed food is so different to the crap that is served up in city supermarkets... well, if you grow your own in large pots, you can emulate it even on a deck outside a multi-storey block of units.

8. Did I mentioned the freshness of the air?

9. Lack of communication is another furphy. People who want all the city trimmings in communication aren't serious about moving to the country. I am happy with dial-up (but actually can access broadband if I wanted to spend the money), I get a bit of cell phone coverage, but rarely use that phone anyway, and my landline phone works well enough to talk to my wife in Canada every day if I wish.

I dislike intently big cities. They remove your individuality and impose a herd mentality. In the country, I am an individual, am known as such, and there are such scant few of us out here, no-one is ever going to make us into a herd.

Oh yeah... there are no traffic lights in this part of the world, either!

Having said all that, I am fascinated by what the OP is trying to achieve in asking the question. I am also interested in the "making my own power" statement -- what does that mean? Are you really showing your scant knowledge of how country people live by thinking that reticulated power is supplied only to cities? I am also interested in the sustainability thing in the post. You see, the issues of high-density living are quite significant in terms of utility delivery and removal of waste... in the country, you generally have to deal with issues like water supply and sewerage processing yourself. And because of that, capital investment can be quite expensive.

Machka is right, of course. A small town (with employment options) is an ideal compromise -- a bridge between the two lifestyles, if you like. I heard recently of several families who live in small towns and have adapted their lives to generate their own power and, most importantly in a very dry country, store their rainwater that not only washes them and slakes their thirst, but waters vegetable gardens that have been carefully designed and covered with compost and mulch to provide nutrients and prevent water loss from the soil.

On the employment side, I am also interested in what Americans would think of engaging in manual labour on, say, a farm as an option for "sustainable" country living. Or has the slave mentality remained deeply ingrained so that sort of work remains only the domain of low-paid, "unskilled" immigrant workers?

You're speaking from your own experience and perhaps much of it is valid, but I'd say there's also a fair amount of speculation, prejudice and misinformation in that post. Lots of city jobs - construction, landscaping, postal worker, loading dock, delivery, etc etc. are physically demanding jobs, and in North America there is more obesity and more general stress in rural life than in cities. Of course it's difficult for someone to step into a field and start harvesting crops if they've never done, it, just as it is difficult to adapt to any new type of manual labour. It's pretty hard to imaging the night sky and occasional animal call driving many people to insanity even if your neighbour claimed to have that experience. Much more likely it was the unexpected social isolation and other cultural differences that got to her. Regarding social contact, it's true that apartments and condos are not conducive to getting to know your neighbours, since you don't tend to see much of each other coming and going and there's constant turnover in apartments, but those people generally have large networks of friends and coworkers that they see regularily, so there's no motivation to knock on doors up and down the hallway introducing themselves. Urban house dwellers have regular interactions with their neighbours just as rural people do. People who are loners by nature can be that way in the city or the country, and the same holds true for gregarious folk.

People should be able to migrate as they choose. But alas the monetary system that our society has created does not allow most of us to do so. The city it is.

i'd miss the feeling of riding with a gigantic group, i meant.. seems like it'd be awfully lonely (as a cyclist) out in the stix..



Riding by yourself ... or possibly with one or two other people on occasion ... is the best!! :) I ride with a group of more a small handful of times a year, and that's enough.

I'm just not that much of a people person. I like being alone and/or being with the one I love, without tripping over a whole pile of people every time I step out my door. One of the things that drives me crazy about University are all the other people there. I'd much rather have gotten my education through correspondence, but that option was not available to me.

And for me ... cities are way too noisy. There's always the sounds of other people around ... traffic, people yakking to each other or on the phone, construction, etc. etc. etc. I enjoy the silence of the middle of the night in the country ... not a sound, no one around. :) And during the day, it's a different kind of noise ... wind, birds, animals, babbling brooks, etc. Not humans.

Riding by yourself ... or possibly with one or two other people on occasion ... is the best!! :) I ride with a group of more a small handful of times a year, and that's enough.

don't get me wrong, most of my rides are solo. and while brevets usually start out in groups, i'm sure you know all too well about riding through the night by yourself!! but there's no other opportunity (outside of racing) to roll with 100-300 other cyclists, except for Mass. if you haven't tried it yet, i highly suggest giving it a spin.


And for me ... cities are way too noisy. There's always the sounds of other people around ... traffic, people yakking to each other or on the phone, construction, etc. etc. etc. I enjoy the silence of the middle of the night in the country ... not a sound, no one around. :) And during the day, it's a different kind of noise ... wind, birds, animals, babbling brooks, etc. Not humans.

i must be lucky, but living near downtown seattle it's actually pretty quiet at night. yeah we've got loud neighbors, but when they're quiet all i can hear is the buzz of I-5, and the occasional footsteps of peds. it ain't all that bad in the city!! you just need to find the right streets.. but this is of course 'city quiet', which i will admit isn't the same as actual silence.

don't get me wrong, most of my rides are solo. and while brevets usually start out in groups, i'm sure you know all too well about riding through the night by yourself!! but there's no other opportunity (outside of racing) to roll with 100-300 other cyclists, except for Mass. if you haven't tried it yet, i highly suggest giving it a spin.

Sorry, critical mass is something I disagree with and will not be a part of. If you want to ride with lots of people though, do the SIR or PBP. :)




i must be lucky, but living near downtown seattle it's actually pretty quiet at night. yeah we've got loud neighbors, but when they're quiet all i can hear is the buzz of I-5, and the occasional footsteps of peds. it ain't all that bad in the city!! you just need to find the right streets.. but this is of course 'city quiet', which i will admit isn't the same as actual silence.

I've lived in cities most of my life, and the longer I do, the more I long for the country. Sure there are quiet areas in the city, but I've never felt alone in the city. For example, when I went to visit Rowan in February, the first couple days he had to work, and I was recovering from jet lag, so I slept a lot, and then spent my afternoons sitting out and reading in the middle of one of the yard areas on the property where he lives. It was just me, the horses, and the kookaburras .... for hours. And it was WONDERFUL!! I could do that for days and days!

My experience with the city is that I would head into the local park to read, and find a nice quiet spot with no one around. Within 5 minutes I've got a family with screaming kids throwing balls 20 feet away, and a bunch of kids with their ghettoblasters on full blast 30 feet in the other direction, and a picnic for someone's birthday moving in behind me ......... and my irritation level starts to hit exploding proportions.

I grew up way, way out in the country in Northern Georgia, US, and since have lived in Venice, Italy, a really small town in between Venice and Milan called Vicenza, York-England, London, in Washington DC, San Francisco (currently), and several places in Afghanistan. For me, it really is all about personal preference. I get homesick for the country a lot, but find I really miss the excitement and hustle and bustle and diversity of the city when I go home to visit my family. I get really sick of the city sometimes though, and just have to get away to the country.
The best place I have lived was that small town in Italy or in York, UK. There was not much in the way of public transportation, but once you got into town, it was really dense and felt like being in a big city, but when I was at my house on the edge of town, it felt like being in the country. It was a lot like having the best of three worlds, city, country and small town.
Then again I am still young and really thrive on the excitement of the city, but a country boy at heart.
My wife is from India, though, and when we go home to visit my parents in the south, there are many areas she just will not go because of the constant looks of "unwelcomeness" she gets from people out in the country. Even here in California, once we get out into the country, even I notice the looks she gets, and I am pretty oblivious to most stuff, keep my head in the clouds usually.
As far as living off the grid...very difficult to do that and have a job at the same time. Its almost a subsistance lifestyle. While it is admirable, it is not for everyone, and in fact it is unlikely the earth could support 7 billion living like that. That volume of humanity requires some level of industrial production, especially of food, in order to support it, and each person would need a much larger footprint to survive producing everything for themselves.
We were probably 60% self sufficient growing up, and it is incredibly time consuming. Both my parents had full time jobs, and worked on the property from getting home from work until dark, and before work too, and somehow squeezed helping us with homework, being parents, little league, etc in there as well. It was fun though.
As for the person who said that cities stifle people's individuality??? They must have never visited Paris or San Francisco or Greenwich Village in NY, or DC. I have never seen individuality and diversity displayed in such a garish way as I have in SF. It is almost like you are the wierd one if you appear "normal"

...6. Long-term country people generally are welcoming and social, despite the distances they might have to travel (by car, naturally) to get together. This, I find, is in stark contrast to city folk who lock themselves away in walled estates or flats or condos or whatever and wouldn't even know their neighbours' surnames let alone first names. A country person is likely to slow and wave encouragement to me as they pass me bicycling; city people still have that get-out-of-my-way attitude that drives their stress levels to overload in the city.
I have seen this attitude noted elsewhere as well, and it prompted me to post:
A lot of people who are advocates of urban living seem to think that country/remote living is somehow more "anti-social", and I think there is a difference they don't quite understand.

In a remote area it is possible to do many of the day-to-day things you need without ever seeing anyone else. When someone who lives in a remote area makes the effort to attend a social event (going into town to a bar or whatever) they are doing it voluntarily, specifically to be social with others, and the general attitude is much better.

In the city, there are always lots of people close at hand and you have to deal with them a lot--even if you wish to or not. In practical terms you can't get away from them. The number of social interactions is higher, but the quality of those interactions--the level of "friendliness"--is much lower than you see in rural areas.

Living near a large number of people simply doesn't mean that interacting with many of those people is going to be particularly enjoyable.


You see, the issues of high-density living are quite significant in terms of utility delivery and removal of waste... in the country, you generally have to deal with issues like water supply and sewerage processing yourself. And because of that, capital investment can be quite expensive.
I have noted this as well--that if you are using common utilities (power and water) and resources (like grocery stores!) in a city, much of the true cost of their operation is hidden from you. If you live in the country off-grid, you are much more aware of how much energy and resources you are using, because obtaining more of those resources immediately results in more work or cost for you--and so you are more likely to be conservative with them.


On the employment side, I am also interested in what Americans would think of engaging in manual labour on, say, a farm as an option for "sustainable" country living. Or has the slave mentality remained deeply ingrained so that sort of work remains only the domain of low-paid, "unskilled" immigrant workers?
This is an interesting question.
A lot of typical people (myself included) tend to define their lives partly by their incomes. That income requirement goes a long way to defining where we thing of as suitable to live.

There is a documentary called Off the Grid: Life On The Mesa (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=OFF+THE+GRID%3A+Life+On+The+Mesa&btnG=Search), about people living basically as squatters in the New Mexico desert (it's been chopped up and uploaded to free video sites, if you search around). Where much of what most "normal" people desire often can be resolved down to a dollar amount that could buy what they want, these people live with very little to no money at all.
~

Apart from the Amish, for those who question how billions of people can live simply outside the city environment and survive, look also at how the Chinese and generally the Asians lived for centuries until Western settlement imposed on them the concept of capitalism, big cities and the requirement to judge your standard of living against that of the comfortable middle class in the US, Europe, Australia or some other "civilised" country.

The problem comes down to people judging others by their standard of living (ie, income and possessions and comfort versus subsistence and "living off the land").

I also can tell you that one thing city people just don't have a clue about is how much agriculture (and hence country life) is a lottery based entirely on something out of human control -- the weather. When it comes to broadacre farming (as opposed to under-glass horticulture where some control can be imposed over the micro-climate), the weather can decide from year to year if a farm remains viable or not. Add to that the I-want-it-now-now-now attitude of many city people, and it becomes a real challenge for them to literally sit and watch the grass (crops) grow.

In the city, there are always lots of people close at hand and you have to deal with them a lot--even if you wish to or not. In practical terms you can't get away from them. The number of social interactions is higher, but the quality of those interactions--the level of "friendliness"--is much lower than you see in rural areas.

Living near a large number of people simply doesn't mean that interacting with many of those people is going to be particularly enjoyable.


That's exactly what I dislike about cities. You can't get away from people. They are always there ... standing near you, touching you, randomly talking to you, making noise in general ...... and the interactions are rarely what I would call enjoyable.

I have to admit that as much as I like the convienence of the city, and the "excitement," Machka has a good point. It can get truly irritating always having so many people around. I have found that I can barely make it 1 block from my house without having a beggar ask me for money, and my vehicle has been broken into 3 times in the last 2 months. There are certainly alot of trade offs between living in the city versus the country.

I also can tell you that one thing city people just don't have a clue about

What is it with you and the constant urban bashing?

What is it with you and the constant urban bashing?

It's not their fault. Good ol country folk tend to have a thing about being all up in your business and sh#t.

People should be able to migrate as they choose. But alas the monetary system that our society has created does not allow most of us to do so. The city it is.
Yes--but the matter to consider here is that the job you have needs to pay enough for your costs of living, and your costs of living are mostly dictated by needing to live within a practical distance of the job you choose to accept.

I ted to think that (-to a degree-) higher-populated areas tend to encourage needless consumerism.
~

I'm torn between a town such as Machka describes and a larger city with lots of transportation options and a wide variety of stores/businesses to explore. Either is better than where I currently live, which is a fairly large town (100,000+) that is completely car obsessed.

What is it with you and the constant urban bashing?

You must be from the city. See ..... most country folk I talk to have the same opinions as Rowan. His opinions are definitely not unique!! :)

Ask a city kid where his meat comes from and he'll tell you, "The grocery store", and will be horrified to discover it comes from a cow (and may not believe you). Tell a country kid that story, and he'll laugh ... and say, "Yep! Typical city kids." :D :lol:


Now keep in mind that both Rowan and I have lived significant portions of our lives in cities ... so we've seen city people in action. No one is bashing city people ...... just making observations from experience. :D

Ask a city kid where his meat comes from and he'll tell you, "The grocery store", and will be horrified to discover it comes from a cow (and may not believe you). Tell a country kid that story, and he'll laugh ... and say, "Yep! Typical city kids." :D :lol:

Whether or not city kids are sometimes ignorant about agriculture, or country ones gullible when told stories, isn't the point, I was commenting on his tendency to mock people. Feel free to rebuke me if I do the same.

Whether or not city kids are sometimes ignorant about agriculture, or country ones gullible when told stories, isn't the point, I was commenting on his tendency to mock people. Feel free to rebuke me if I do the same.

It all depends on how you read it .... you're just sensitive because you're from the "Centre of the Universe". Hehehehe. :lol:

It all depends on how you read it .... you're just sensitive because you're from the "Centre of the Universe". Hehehehe. :lol:
That's actually an illustrative example. I never hear people in Toronto ranting about the failings of some other part of Canada. The prejudice goes all in one direction.

That's actually an illustrative example. I never hear people in Toronto ranting about the failings of some other part of Canada. The prejudice goes all in one direction.


Ever wonder why that is?? :roflmao: