Originally Posted by
Machka
Yes. Your lack of experience still disqualifies you from the discussion ... especially when one reads what you wrote both above and below.
Once you get out into certain rural areas, such as what you might find in North Dakota, you'll be going a whole lot further than 10-20 miles.
I don't assume that all rural areas are the same, but you're assuming that they are when you 'disqualify' me from discussing all of them because of what some may or may not be like, according to your view.
Why don't you post the name of a locality in the North Dakota region or elsewhere, so people who aren't familiar with it can google-map it and think about how we would approach LCF there. Even if we're wrong, it would be interesting to see how we approach the prospect.
You asked for an image ... OK then, look up Piangil, Victoria, Australia. Piangil, and the surrounding rural area, have and approximate population of 333. Don't just look at the town ... look around the whole area.
From the satellite view, it looks like Piangil has a centrally-located general store and some businesses, and a number of farms within a few miles distance. The river corridor looks green and nice, but idk how much multi-day hiking/biking/camping you could do along that river if all the land around it is private and you can't filter the water and/or camp nearby without disturbing local residents.
So much comes down to jobs/income, doesn't it? If you had a job at the local post-office and could shop at the store, then you could LCF pretty easily there, no? If you got a job driving a truck carrying supplies to the store, mail, etc. to and from a larger commercial hub, you could maybe coordinate your travel to other areas that way.
If commercial (truck) drivers are interested in ride-sharing, you could set up a system where people trade off the task of driving commercial shipments, and whoever is driving that week would take along other ride-sharers coordinating trips to other areas. In this way, you could avoid unnecessary driving if you wanted to, but I think it would be hard to motivate people to do this if they have a sense of abundance where there's no problem just taking a car for the sake of having the autonomy of not coordinating rides with shipments, etc.
One of the obstacles to LCF I've noticed in more congested automotive areas is that people just generally don't feel like bothering with any level of sacrifice to avoid driving. So even when they have transit options available, or they could walk or bike a couple miles, they will choose to drive to save a little time, or because it's just no big deal for them to drive. Once you develop the habit of hopping in the car, turning the key, and whizzing off to whatever destination, it's as easy as whipping up a meal on a stove, doing laundry, or pedaling a few miles to people who are experienced and habituated to those tasks.
Areas like many parts of the midwest US and rural Victoria, Australia etc. will never become suburbs. They're simply too far away from anything to be a suburb of. People drive there out of necessity ... and even driving isn't particularly convenient.
Idk. I think it depends on long term population trends. The Florida peninsula is gradually suburbanizing between larger metropolitan centers, which are filling up with more/wider freeways, which connect multilane roads designed for 40+mph driving to all destinations. Such driving-dependent expansion has population limits that creep up faster than with LCF population growth. There are many good initiatives/efforts to improve LCF options, but I think there are few people who really want to commit to LCF. I think it is more common to want to increase the ability to do things CF sometimes, and drive whenever you prefer. That's a nice option for people who want it all, but I still think the infrastructure/sprawl growth is progressing toward limits of convenience that stimulate people to seek new areas to move to where there is less traffic.
So, in short, I think there will continue to be an interest in moving to new, expanding suburban areas as long as the big, driving-dependent areas are expanding. Within a few generations, that automotive-suburbanism could easily spillover into many of the rural areas of the world, which will be connected with shipping arteries to supply them with food and stuff to tote around while they drive. I would like to see this kind of growth go slower and have less environmental impact by happening car-free, but as so many posters here are fond of asserting, LCF just isn't that popular (yet), nor is the will to increase its urgency as a duty of social-environmental responsibility.
And I don't understand your last sentence. There is no "will to avert sprawl-growth". For us, the desire to depend on motor vehicles a bit less in a rural situation usually comes down to economics (it's less expensive to cycle whenever possible) and to a desire for fitness.
Yes, I see that you just don't look that far ahead into the future; nor do you see how lifestyle trends in one area of the world can gradually spillover into others, and result in sprawl-growth. If you've lived in N American, you should recognize that anywhere there is a successful suburban population, developers will create more subdivisions within driving distance. If there aren't sufficient jobs, they figure government and business will somehow create those jobs and that people will drive back and forth to them. In this way, growth fuels development and development fuels growth.