Rowan

People in rural areas don't live in isolation. They form very strong communities because often they go similar hardships, when markets downturn, or there are seriously unfavourable weather conditions that cause crops to fail.

The country town is a hub that provides what these communities need. Here in Australia, the local government areas can be huge, and they must provide much of the linking infrastructure outside state and national highways. And you mentioned a darned good list of other services that are in these larger centres, as well as the smaller towns within those local government zones.

There are all sorts of things that city people just don't appreciate about the land. In many cases, it's the long, long distances required to socialise, for example. You know, seeing friends and family. In parts of rural Australia that I have lived, you may travel up to five hours between major centres just to catch up with friends.

Irrespctive of what the LCF fundamentalists might think, the notion of personal transport is never going to disappear, and that means the motor car. As I have said so many times before, the internal combustion engine will be replaced by something else, but the motor car is NOT going to disappear, at all.

I am waiting with bated breath to see what Elon Musk's electric semi-truck is going to be like. It's launch has been put back a month for some reason, and it may indeed take 10 to 15 years to get it right.

But make no mistake, irrespective of what you also might think about big agriculture, if you can't get the food that has been grown to either market or the processors, you will have starving people on your hands... and that may mean wars.

Machka 

I'll just put this here ...

tandempower

You have to post thoughts like this in P&R, because the mods don't want us discussing them in regular forums.

tandempower

My life experiences are what they are and what they will continue to be. I think you're making more of experience than is sensible. Experience can be a source of understanding, but you can only convey understanding by explaining the logical reasoning about something to someone who doesn't have experience. Merely telling them to trust you because you have experience that they lack doesn't do anything to help them understand what they don't.

Roody

Congrats on becoming a moderator.

tandempower

All I did was add a side-note in response to what you said about "nothing wrong with driving." My point was not to start the debate that ensued about choice-to-drive vs. LCF, but only to note that just because driving might be irresistible for various reasons in a rural situation, that doesn't mean there's "nothing wrong" with it. I don't understand why I can't note something like that without my various haters swooping in to badger me for it.

I mentioned the bikeable distances to local affordable general stores in an earlier post, but I was told that I was confusing suburbs with rural areas and my lack of experience disqualified me from the discussion. In the southeastern US, at least, such affordable general stores are located every 10-20 miles, at least, so LCF in rural areas is possible.

To the extent that people choose LCF to shift culture toward more sustainable forms of transportation, the choice to bike/walk/hike in rural areas instead of driving is most relevant to the extent it prevents such areas from evolving into suburbs due to population growth. If people move to the countryside and drive, and doing so proves affordable and convenient, word gets around and more people move out there and do the same. Gradually, that can lead to sprawl where there is an economic motive to drive around long distances for daily activities, and a deficiency of destinations within biking/walking distance. Theoretically, if people LCF in a rural area, any population growth that occurs would not result in sprawl, and the tendency to suburbanize would be undermined.

Idk if that is the reasoning behind every wish to LCF rurally. Do some people not care if rural areas gradually turn into suburbs, but they want to LCF there either way? I'm not sure I understand the interest in living car-free rurally beyond the will to avert sprawl-growth.

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.

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.



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.

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.

Rowan

At least I have been invited to be one... thank your lucky stars that I declined.

tandempower

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.

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.

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.


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.

Machka 

Pick a spot ... any spot. Not in Bismark, obviously, but pick some road out in the middle of nowhere there. Or in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, eastern Alberta, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, eastern Colorado, Kansas ...

Try Last Chance, Colorado!




If a person were to move to an area like that, chances are the person would get work in agriculture somewhere in that area ... in orchards, vineyards, etc. either as a picker/packer during the harvest season or as a more permanent worker.



Commercial truck drivers often have restrictions on carrying private passengers.



That's Florida.

The places I'm referring to haven't had much in the way of growth in a long time. In fact, many of them are dying.

Take another look at Last Chance ... and it's friend up the road, Arickaree, CO ... and Abarr, CO.


This is why I keep saying that you need to go to these places. Spend some time cycling through the area. It is not an insult to suggest this, it is a genuine suggestion that may enhance or alter your perspective of your own country.

tandempower

The problem is I can't identify shipping traffic by looking at the satellite map. If there is a store, and that store gets supplied via shipping traffic, then the store is essentially a hub/extension of a larger shipping network. In this sense, every 'outpost' of that supply-chain is potentially a car-free area, depending on the local economy surrounding the store. If the area supplies agricultural products to the larger economy, there is also shipping traffic from the farms to elsewhere. That could be by train or truck, but I'm assuming truck traffic is more likely these days in most places.

Whatever the case, if you work on a single farm, you can LCF near that farm, assuming you can get needed supplies from the local store. If you work at various farms, it depends on how far those farms are from each other and how the work is organized. Like with your Harvest Trail, if you can organize a week of work at one location followed by a week of work at another location far away, then you can make a season of migrating week-to-week by bike if you don't mind the nomadic lifestyle; but of course it's still dependent on whether you can access supplies and how you can live while traveling/working. I wouldn't mind living in a tent for a week while doing agricultural work, for example, but idk if I could justify sacrificing other opportunities or other things to do so. But then, I also wouldn't want to sacrifice LCF to live in a rural area and drive everywhere.

So then it's worth considering modifications to regulations/practices that allow commercial shippers to expand their operations to include passenger service. I can picture a tractor-trailer hauling freight plus a second passenger compartment, like a bus without a motor. The entire thing would be like an articulated bus with cargo/freight in one of the segments.

Did you read what I wrote about expanding populations spilling over into new locations? Orlando can only grow and expand so much. People leave metropolitan areas like Orlando and Jacksonville to move to less urban suburban areas like Ft. Meyers, which are growing. As those areas expand into metropolises, the demand for other areas to grow will increase. As I understand it, Chinese cities are also expanding and becoming more driving-dependent. You can't assume that population growth within such countries is going to stay limited within national borders. Every so often there are deals struck to allow migration, and countries often welcome it when it comes with economic incentives to develop and grow economically. When driving-dependency is the transportation culture of the kind of successful, middle-class migrants whose influx is welcomed as a source of economic stimulus, it expands the automotive-sprawl paradigm, and the possibility is diminished of expanding LCF to reduce the volumetric-pressures of human population.

First of all, I don't appreciate the notion that any places are more my territory because I happen to be recognized as having citizenship by the same government that people living there are recognized as having. In other words, it's not 'my own' land there any more than anywhere else. 'This land is your land; this land is my land,' is a line from a patriotic US song, but it refers to a general feeling that everyone essentially belongs everywhere, so please don't assume your view that some people belong more in some places than others is shared by everyone. The reason I don't like traveling is because it makes me sad when I encounter territorial sentiments in the people I meet. When people express the sentiment that "this land is my land and not someone else's" in some way, it ruins the positive feelings I get from traveling and connecting with the diversity of the planet/universe.

Second, I may be able to travel around such areas one day, but the fact is that land-use and economic connectivity is what it is and transportation/shipping networks are maleable to some degree, depending on how the people of a given areas are willing to live. In rural areas, the maleability is somewhat greater because there aren't as many people, roads, and businesses to re-orient to facilitate LCF.

Machka 

This is where you really need to experience these areas.

I get the feeling that your idea of "the local store" and the reality of "the local store" are two different things.

In the places I've indicated, yes, there may or may not be a "local store" but if there is ... it is TINY. It may be able to provide a person with the mere basics in the way of food and maybe one or two other things at quite a high price. They are places where you get supplies because you miscalculated on your last grocery run to the city a couple hours drive away and ran out of something like milk.

In the case of Piangil, Swan Hill would be the nearest place where someone would go for supplies. In the case of the places in Colorado I mentioned, you'd probably make a weekly or fortnightly run into Denver 80+ miles away.


And the commercial truck restrictions have to do with insurance. Highly doubt that's going to change any time soon!

jon c. 

Living in the southeast, I can tell you that this is not true in many rural areas. There are many areas where it's more on the order of 40-50 miles between stores and services. The proliferation of big box stores in rural areas brings more goods to people who live near them, but the trend has killed off smaller, independent stores that had previously served more remote areas.

Roody

I'm a bit skeptical that you could live 40 or 50 miles from a store anywhere east of the Mississippi. Not even in northern Minnesota or Michigan, let alone the Southeast. Where did you have in mind?

Walter S

I agree there would be a "store" somewhere. Whether you'll find a well stocked grocery store and other supplies for a practical carfree life, that's another question. Plant yourself in south central Georgia and maybe you can get some balona at a Piggly Wiggly in return for a half day ride. Good luck finding fresh produce.

SHBR

Aye, too much pot stirring in this thread.

I have lived in a rural area many years ago, well before I was old enough to drive.

Rode my bike to school almost everyday, nearest town was 5 miles away, winter was the limiting factor.

Moved back to Minneapolis as a teenager and continued to ride my bicycle year round to school, across the lake rather than around it during the winter.

Now, many years later, I live in one of the most populated cities in the world, and I can't say I miss living in the country much.

Nice to visit, great for camping, or getting away from the noise and stress of the city.

Eventually its gets boring, not much changes, except for the weather, and thats often the ONLY conversation topic in rural areas.

Also spent a couple of years in a suburban area, was completely car reliant at that time, a dark chapter of being totally entrenched in car culture, a place where cyclists are relegated to the nearest family park M.U.P.

I-Like-To-Bike

Were you living car free on your own in a rural area, or were you living with parents/relatives who were not dependent on bicycles to provide you your various necessities for living (other than transportation to school) while you lived in their home?

SHBR

Well, its been awhile, but yes, that is what responsible parents should do for their children right?

If only I had responsible parents though.

Had to raid the neighbors kitchen for food more times than I care to remember, and on a good day I might have got some drive through MCD for dinner .

I think I survived mostly on school lunches most of the year, was the skinniest kid in class, not really by choice.

Heat was optional in the winter, many nights were spent watching my cold breath fill up the room.

Yes, I did have a house to sleep in, and once and awhile necessities for living were provided.

Especially if a social worker might show up.

Rural living was a real treat.

Feel free to share with us your rural living experience, or lack of it.

I-Like-To-Bike

I thought your previous post was meant to brag and extol about the virtues/advantages of your youthful rural car free living; apparently not, eh?

tandempower

I am always surprised by the product selection at stores that aren't standardized chains.

Right, but do you think about who is stocking these stores as why their selection is what it is? I.e. someone has to truck the products to the store, and someone has to invest in which products to stock, and someone has to invest the money; so if you wanted to, you could coordinate with the store-keeper and invest in stocking more products that you want to have locally available. You would basically be ride-sharing with the store-keeper for long shopping-trips, except you might have to take turns driving the shipping vehicle that stocks the store so they can avoid the trip, if they don't want to go and do your shopping for you.

So basically you'd want to live in such a remote area because of farm work you can do there, but then you want to do shopping 80+ miles away, but you also want to LCF? So this basically comes down to 1) ride-sharing for shopping trips and/or 2) stocking up on dry, non-perishables and living off those. You could, if you really wanted to, ride 80 miles to Denver once or twice a month to stock up on pasta/rice/oats/sugar etc. and rely on locally-grown produce for everything with water-weight.

What is it that you want, here? Do you want me to concede that driving is the best way to live in a remote rural area where the nearest shopping area is 80+ miles away? If that was the case, then my question would be how many local residents would it take to justify setting up a store, and then move that many people out there to live within a car-free community.

The question is if there are so many restrictions on things that would help people LCF in rural areas, why would someone who wants to live rurally want to LCF, or why would someone who wants to LCF want to live rurally?

If the issue is wanting to go LCF to save money, then you would either have to move closer to shopping or figure out a way to coordinate shopping trips with someone else who drives, and maybe contribute to their driving budget. That's essentially what every LCF person is doing when they shop anywhere, since the money they/we spend on shipped products pays for drivers to truck the stuff we buy to the store where we pick it up.

tandempower

Can you give an example of such a place, so I can look it up on the map and see the route(s) to the nearest store(s)?

As for the topic of big box stores 'killing off' smaller 'independent' stores, that's a topic that will be considered P&R if we discuss it, I think. For me, personally, I don't mind shopping at independent stores, but I always feel some pressure not to be price-conscious there, because of the vulnerability of the independent merchant, so that creates an awkward conflict with the normal economic rationality of watching my spending/budget.

Walter S

OK let's say you live in Rockford Alabama. For groceries there's Kelly's Crossroad Groceries just four miles up the road. But it's basically a barn. Doesn't look like a full service grocery store. Then there's Quality Food Mart 15 miles the opposite direction (in case you wanted to go to both). It's a small hole in the wall. A full size Piggly Wiggly is over 20 miles. I wouldn't recommend a vegetarian diet that depends on fresh produce

It's hard to find a place that's more than 10 miles from a "store". But the selection may be lacking and your "other" store is likely the other direction. And personally (I guess I'm a wimp) I would not always want a 8 mile round trip being my minimum bicycle shopping experience, i.e. the store that only has a little of what I need.

elocs

What is rural? Well, many of us have the romantic notion that it is some place out in the boonies with maybe a gas station, general store, tavern, and a church, or maybe only one of them far or at least a long, long bike ride from a city with lots of blocks and sidewalks and a city hall. Even so, not every rural area is the same in geography or being isolated.

The U.S. Census Bureau has an actual definition as to what is rural and what is not. Pretty much whatever is not defined as urban is considered rural. Here is an interesting site that explains it:
https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/ref...ning_Rural.pdf.

A 120 years ago most Americans were living in rural areas and most of them got along quite nicely without having cars. But these days many of us who are senior citizens explain to our grandchildren how in the olden days we had to get up off the couch and walk over to the tv to change the channel, turn the volume up or down, or turn it off or on and they can't quite believe it.
I'm guessing there was a time in our not too distant past when the conversation was about the oldsters not having cars to take them wherever they needed to go and the kids would find it equally unbelievable.

I-Like-To-Bike

What makes you think, (critically or not) that there is anything but an infinitesimal (if that much) sliver of the adult U.S. population that is seeking to live rurally and car free?
Who do you think besides you dreams that there is any basis to this fantasy of any significant interest in actually living such a lifestyle?

jon c. 

You're right. I was thinking of roads where you can drive 40 or 50 miles between outposts of civilization. But even if you live exactly in between, you're still only going to be half that distance to the nearest store.

And I wasn't meaning to suggest this is common, just that even in regions we think of of being fairly dense, you can still find a pretty good degree of isolation in a few spots.

(Haven't driven up there in 30 years, but I recall western Minnesota as having some long and desolate drives.)