Ruralism and Mustachianism

[Askel]

Yeah, I know- this is a bit of a riff on @Log 's thread (https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/urbanism-and-mustachianism/), but hear me out.   

Like Log, I too grew up in a suburban hellscape.  I knew I hated it growing up, but could never quite put my finger on it. Unlike Log though, my life took a turn towards the rural. I now live in a county with a population density of 36 people per square mile. We're maybe 60 miles short of the furthest you can get from an interstate highway in the continental united states. We live on 40 acres that's backed up against another ~400 acres with a conservation easement on it (it'll never be developed).   

Also like Log, I love youtube channels like "Not Just Bikes", "City Beautiful", and "Eco Gecko". If only because I can indulge in a certain amount of "HA! I WAS RIGHT! SUBRUBS ACTUALLY DO SUCK!". 

But I look around at my current neighborhood and wonder how sustainable this is.  Am I maybe taking advantage of some quirks that make this place cheap but not sustainable much the way the suburbs are/used to be?   

Some interesting trends/observations I've seen:
-Housing prices have gone bonkers.  10 years ago, you could buy $25k houses around here all day. Not great houses, but livable. Those are long gone. Houses with acreage are but unobtanium now. We bought our house and 40 acres for $100k in 2019. A month ago the neighbor's house on 25 acres sold- asking price: $439k. Sure, it's a much nicer house but not 4 times nicer.   And housing costs aren't just anecdotal either: https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2022/01/26/northern-michigan-university-study-shows-housing-rental-costs-increasing-across-upper-michigan/

-I provide a lot of my own infrastructure. Besides the obvious stuff like well and septic, I also get to play amateur road commission with the $30k tractor sitting in my barn. We have over a 1/3 of mile of driveway to clear snow off of and maintain the surface (put about $6k of gravel on it when we moved in). 

Some bright spots:
-I do live close enough to town and work that I can complete almost all my travel by bike. The only thing that really limits me is the weather (lots and lots of snow)

-I can heat somewhat "sustainably" with wood harvested from our land.   Although this requires lots of gas powered implements so is still something of a function of fossil fuel consumption. 

Long term concerns I think about:
-Either directly or indirectly- I'm still very very dependent on fossil fuel consumption.  Some stuff can be electrified but, hey- maintaining an electric grid in a sparsely populated area is expensive so we have very high electricity rates.   

-Population growth pressures. Everybody wants to live the dream on their own 40 and people will drive crazy distances to do so. Is this the making of some kind of uber-suburb?   

Just some thoughts that have been bouncing around my head for a while.   

[Just Joe]

We like your choices and have made similar choices though on a smaller scale.

~15 acres, about half wooded about ~10 minutes of 45 mph driving from smallish town. 45 mph happens to be the sweet spot for fuel economy on our aged CRV. Only one stop light on our commute right next to our employer. DW and I have made choices so we can carpool. Utilities are affordable here. When the CRV wears out, we'll replace it with an EV. A used Leaf would be perfect. 

House is reasonable size if you consider that we barely heat/cool the basement. Basement stays a reasonable temp most of the year. A blanket while watching TV is all that is necessary in the winter. In the summer it is still cool and that is of course welcome. The main floor is a reasonable size and well insulated. As things like the HVAC wears out we'll make efficiency improvements. We have made some improvements now. We heat to 65F and cool to 78F and find it comfortable. Winter requires another layer and summer runs the a/c enough to manage interior humidity. We open the house as many weeks as possible each year. By cooling the house a little more at night when it is cooler, the a/c runs less during the day.

I mow the place with an electric lawn tractor. It costs diddly to recharge. My ebike costs a nickel to charge. The tractor costs under a quarter I'd guess. I should measure that next time I mow with it. The machine is ~50 years old now and needs very little maintenance or parts. This year will see the tractor repainted I hope if I have time.

We'd like to consider ground based solar eventually. We have an excellent spot for it.

Our "rural commute" is shorter than that of some of our suburban/metro based friends whose jobs and responsibilities take them back and forth across the suburban/metro regions they live. More miles, more fuel, more time in the car. Our employers, entertainment and shopping choices are closer due to the smaller town we live near. Yes we do drive to the big city a few times per year for entertainment or extended shopping trips but 95% of our driving is 8-10 miles each way. 

We are very cognizant of how well our choices have worked out for us. We are thankful to be here rather than the crowded famous places.

[Ron Scott]

I have lived for significant periods of time in the city, suburbs, and rural areas. Loved it all.

My experience is that people differ more based on their educational level and the region of the country they live in than by population density per se. A random NYC resident would have more in common with someone in rural NH than he would with someone in Huntsville. But an educated NYC/Huntsville pair might be more alike than either would be to an uneducated person from rural NH.

I would never want to live so far from a city or a mountain trail that I couldn’t visit either on a morning whim.

[roomtempmayo]

But I look around at my current neighborhood and wonder how sustainable this is.  Am I maybe taking advantage of some quirks that make this place cheap but not sustainable much the way the suburbs are/used to be?   

[...]

-Population growth pressures. Everybody wants to live the dream on their own 40 and people will drive crazy distances to do so. Is this the making of some kind of uber-suburb?   

I've lived in both major cities and very much in the country.  They're both great, and they can both be sustainable.

The world needs more people who are willing to go full Wendell Berry. 

What it really, really doesn't need are people moving out there consuming the landscape and community while maintaining a household that's commuting a combined 100 (or 200!) miles a day.  That's toxic for them, for their community, and for the environment.

[Askel]

The world needs more people who are willing to go full Wendell Berry. 

Huh, first time I've ever come across that name. I'm intrigued.   

[PDXTabs]

Also like Log, I love youtube channels like "Not Just Bikes", "City Beautiful", and "Eco Gecko". If only because I can indulge in a certain amount of "HA! I WAS RIGHT! SUBRUBS ACTUALLY DO SUCK!".

I started my life in a rural area, moved to the suburbs for my formative years, and then made it into an urban environment for my college years. It was there that I found I instantly felt at home. But I agree: the suburbs suck, we were sold a lie. And for as much as I prefer urban living, I understand why people like rural living. I get it, I can see the appeal, and occasionally I even contemplate it.

To put it another way: there are obvious advantages to living in an urban neighborhood. There are different obvious advantages to living a rural life even though I don't think that I'll partake.

[GodlessCommie]

Two parts to it, from my perspective:
- rural life as in "work in agriculture or industries supporting it"
- live in an area with extremely low population density, not being involved in agriculture or related activities

On the former, it's a vital part of any society, we need to support it and subsidize it if needed. Whatever cannot be done in a "green" way needs to be offset - as bad as climate change is, dying from hunger today is worse.

On the latter... It can be done in a way that's sustainable on an individual level. It cannot be a blueprint for how we find our way, as a society, from the suburban hellscape we built ourselves into. I'm not here to criticize anyone's choices, as I'm a beneficiary of policies that are not exactly just myself; but it's not wrong to point out that rural lifestyle would be more difficult and expensive if not for the support that we as a society provide for agriculture.

[Just Joe]

I would consider living in a dense city if it was more Dutch than American. Many of the famous places in the USA are still too car-centric for my taste.

[Just Joe]

On the latter... It can be done in a way that's sustainable on an individual level. It cannot be a blueprint for how we find our way, as a society, from the suburban hellscape we built ourselves into. I'm not here to criticize anyone's choices, as I'm a beneficiary of policies that are not exactly just myself; but it's not wrong to point out that rural lifestyle would be more difficult and expensive if not for the support that we as a society provide for agriculture.

I think you make good points.

People aren't always reliant on new roads and utilities. In some places, people first build along existing roads that connect one community to another and tap into existing utilities. Later development might require new roads and utilities but at least in my part of the country, the developer is required to pay for the initial installations of these things. Then the county or city will maintain them with tax revenues. Being that we live in a milder part of the country, these things typically last many years.

[PDXTabs]

People aren't always reliant on new roads and utilities. In some places, people first build along existing roads that connect one community to another and tap into existing utilities. Later development might require new roads and utilities but at least in my part of the country, the developer is required to pay for the initial installations of these things. Then the county or city will maintain them with tax revenues. Being that we live in a milder part of the country, these things typically last many years.

1. Normally the tax revenues aren't actually enough to maintain all of those services. If you think about it that makes sense, so much maintained by so few, further reading.
2. Not everyone living a rural life demands taxpayer subsidized roads and utilities. Eg, Martijn Doolaard and his Italian cabin.

[GodlessCommie]

People aren't always reliant on new roads and utilities. In some places, people first build along existing roads that connect one community to another and tap into existing utilities. Later development might require new roads and utilities but at least in my part of the country, the developer is required to pay for the initial installations of these things. Then the county or city will maintain them with tax revenues. Being that we live in a milder part of the country, these things typically last many years.

Again, I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush, as there is a lot of variation. But I saw data on the share of school budgets covered with local taxes in Virginia. More rural = lower share. Wealth transfer from urban/suburban to rural. Estimates are that our urban and dense suburban areas get 15 cents of services on every dollar in state taxes they pay.

[Askel]

On the latter... It can be done in a way that's sustainable on an individual level. It cannot be a blueprint for how we find our way, as a society, from the suburban hellscape we built ourselves into. I'm not here to criticize anyone's choices, as I'm a beneficiary of policies that are not exactly just myself; but it's not wrong to point out that rural lifestyle would be more difficult and expensive if not for the support that we as a society provide for agriculture.

Agreed, well said.  Especially relevant because where I live was originally developed for agriculture.  Originally settled by Finnish homesteaders, the agricultural industry sort of lost steam around here just prior to WWII.  The only reason any of the roads around here exist is because of that original agricultural development.   

I've theorized that incredibly cheap transportation made it much more economical to move food production to more productive climates and just truck everything we need in, but have never tried to run the numbers.   

[roomtempmayo]

People aren't always reliant on new roads and utilities. In some places, people first build along existing roads that connect one community to another and tap into existing utilities. Later development might require new roads and utilities but at least in my part of the country, the developer is required to pay for the initial installations of these things. Then the county or city will maintain them with tax revenues. Being that we live in a milder part of the country, these things typically last many years.

Again, I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush, as there is a lot of variation. But I saw data on the share of school budgets covered with local taxes in Virginia. More rural = lower share. Wealth transfer from urban/suburban to rural. Estimates are that our urban and dense suburban areas get 15 cents of services on every dollar in state taxes they pay.

One of the lasting impressions that living in the rural northeast left on me was that they'd be far better off with about 25% of their existing infrastructure.  The whole place was built on a horse and buggy scale, and then all those little two tracks between the farms were paved, and electric was strung along the roads, largely using state and federal money in both cases.  It may never have been sustainable, but it's sure not now after two generations of shrinking population and declining workforce productivity.

If we hypothetically discovered a peninsula of undeveloped land off Washington State that was just like northern New England, it would be the next hot place to move.  So why is New England losing population rather than gaining it?  I'd say it's because few people want to move to a landscape that's been developed in a way that doesn't fit modern life, and they don't want to move in next to the guy who's still squatting in the old dilapidated farmhouse even after the bank took the farm in 1989.

I have no idea how you could feasibly go about shrinking the infrastructure to fit the residents' ability to pay for it.  Any possible solution is going to seem retrogressive.

What it probably should teach all the states in the inland west now seeing population surge is to absolutely refuse to grow their infrastructure in low population areas.  If people want to hash the countryside up into 20 acre ranchettes, they're going to have to figure out their own access and utilities, because the county isn't going to turn that old pasture access road into a county road and the REA isn't going to maintain hundreds of miles of new lines running to McMansions.  States who can still do it need to draw a hard line and refuse to allow the shifting of costs for private development with private benefits onto the public purse. 

[chemistk]

I think a lot of the rural appeal also comes from the overly-stylized snapshots we see of camera-friendly rural living.

Living rurally can be downright tough, although I've never personally lived anywhere but a suburb I have many family and friends who are rural to varying degrees. You see none of that when browsing real estate, or looking at HGTV, or BH&G magazine, or even on social media. What you end up seeing is the best angles captured at the best times of year.

I have an aunt and uncle who also live in the UP, and they went into it knowing what they got themselves into. They always have a 4WD vehicle in the garage, they have contingency plans for too much snow or too much rain. They have to shovel their roof and grade their driveway and procure backup fuel.

It's also isolating, even more so than you would expect it to be. People do genuinely want to be away from others but there are plenty who realize that they hate how isolated they are and soon after pick up and move closer to a community.

It's another symptom of a culture that has been designed to believe that if you want to do something, you can do it no matter the long term cost or tradeoff. It absolutely poses a longer-term risk to rural life, because the infrastructure built to accommodate urban and suburban refugees is not nearly as sustainable as the infrastructure to support the 3k people in a county who just want to live in the woods off a dirt road knowing that they might not have electricity for a couple days a month.

Unfortunately, the issues that plague urban and suburban areas aren't ones that can be corrected in a short window of time. I can't necessarily blame people who, mid-life, move out to the sticks to live how they want because the suburban or urban areas aren't changing how they like, but that revenue drain is a huge demotivator to get anything meaningful done. Why bother pushing to fix something that you might not see the result of when you can just peace out to a new build that will be too expensive for your kids or future owners to maintain long after you're dead?

[chemistk]

People aren't always reliant on new roads and utilities. In some places, people first build along existing roads that connect one community to another and tap into existing utilities. Later development might require new roads and utilities but at least in my part of the country, the developer is required to pay for the initial installations of these things. Then the county or city will maintain them with tax revenues. Being that we live in a milder part of the country, these things typically last many years.

Again, I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush, as there is a lot of variation. But I saw data on the share of school budgets covered with local taxes in Virginia. More rural = lower share. Wealth transfer from urban/suburban to rural. Estimates are that our urban and dense suburban areas get 15 cents of services on every dollar in state taxes they pay.

One of the lasting impressions that living in the rural northeast left on me was that they'd be far better off with about 25% of their existing infrastructure.  The whole place was built on a horse and buggy scale, and then all those little two tracks between the farms were paved, and electric was strung along the roads, largely using state and federal money in both cases.  It may never have been sustainable, but it's sure not now after two generations of shrinking population and declining workforce productivity.

If we hypothetically discovered a peninsula of undeveloped land off Washington State that was just like northern New England, it would be the next hot place to move.  So why is New England losing population rather than gaining it?  I'd say it's because few people want to move to a landscape that's been developed in a way that doesn't fit modern life, and they don't want to move in next to the guy who's still squatting in the old dilapidated farmhouse even after the bank took the farm in 1989.

I have no idea how you could feasibly go about shrinking the infrastructure to fit the residents' ability to pay for it.  Any possible solution is going to seem retrogressive.

What it probably should teach all the states in the inland west now seeing population surge is to absolutely refuse to grow their infrastructure in low population areas.  If people want to hash the countryside up into 20 acre ranchettes, they're going to have to figure out their own access and utilities, because the county isn't going to turn that old pasture access road into a county road and the REA isn't going to maintain hundreds of miles of new lines running to McMansions.  States who can still do it need to draw a hard line and refuse to allow the shifting of costs for private development with private benefits onto the public purse.

I really like this - have a defined capacity limit for just about everything.

Problem is, what happens when the original owners die? Do the kids or future owners have a case to make their private infrastructure public? Or would the locality just let the structure collapse, abandoned?

[roomtempmayo]

I really like this - have a defined capacity limit for just about everything.

Problem is, what happens when the original owners die? Do the kids or future owners have a case to make their private infrastructure public? Or would the locality just let the structure collapse, abandoned?

The pressure to get the public to pay is always going to be relentless.

There was a joke where I grew up that the county commission was just a rotating cast of characters who were there to get the road in front of their house paved.  Once their road was paved, they were done with politics.  And there was some truth to it, judging by the number of random paved county roads that didn't really go anywhere.

But in a lot of the west there's already something of a tradition of private roads and a culture of being on your own.  They've got to double down on their ethos of independence and let all the newcomers know that they can do what they like, but they shouldn't expect any help doing it, now or ever.  If they don't pay to maintain their access road, then it just doesn't get maintained.

[GodlessCommie]

If people want to hash the countryside up into 20 acre ranchettes, they're going to have to figure out their own access and utilities, because the county isn't going to turn that old pasture access road into a county road and the REA isn't going to maintain hundreds of miles of new lines running to McMansions. 

This is what happened in outer Northern Virginia. McMansions on lots of minimum size to qualify as rural for zoning purposes. Owners of which proceed to bitch and moan about lack of services, rural areas being abandoned, and so on. While few people who are involved in what's remaining of agriculture are being pushed out. Worse of both worlds, essentially super-low density suburbs.

Makes me sympathetic to rural counties further out, which are staunchly anti-development. Once you let this genie out of the bottle, there's no getting it back in.

[dignam]

I grew up in almost-rural area.  Our house was in a small subdivision, with our property right on a cornfield.  I could walk the fence lines almost all the way to my best friend's house.  I've also lived in the city (high rise apartments with insane parking costs), and currently am in the burbs.  In my ideal situation, it would be a more rural setting than I'm in now.

I'm envious of my brother's cabin (really 2nd house though).  It's on 40 acres (almost all wooded), surrounded on all sides by national forest.  Obviously, completely off the grid so he's on solar mostly, with a generator backup.  It really only runs occasionally in the winter with the very low sun angle and tall trees.  Wood burning stove to supplement radiator and in floor heating.  He now has Starlink there with very respectable speeds.  Nearest paved road is about 2 miles away, and he sees more ATVs/snowmobiles vs cars.  I've gone deer hunting several times on his property, and there plenty of lakes around too for fishing/ice fishing.  I don't even know how close the nearest traffic signal is...at least 35 minutes away by car, 2 hours by snowmobile.

That said, that sort of setup requires quite a lot of capital, but not necessarily a ton to keep it going.

[Watchmaker]

Dairy country, where I live, requires good paved roads to all of the farms so the milk trucks can make their pickups (well, unless we go back to a model of on-farm processing). This means the infrastructure is already there if you want to build on 15 acres in the country. The extra car traffic isn't really affecting the roads which will be worn out by weather and heavy milk trucks long before the passenger cars make a dent. There's some loss of agricultural land, but not much, and residential owners do more than the farmers to promote healthy and diverse habitats so I think there's some benefits as well. But I agree that it's not a scalable solution.

[Askel]

Oh man, Not Just Bikes triggered my weird data visualization/map fetish.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI


It doesn't help that I'm sort of familiar with this data set by stalking my neighbors via acrevalue.com/zillow.com to find their tax assessments.   

The township treasurer is going to be so sick of my shit. Probably mostly because I'm riding my bicycle down the middle of her road in the winter, but my endless requests for data won't contribute positively.   

[roomtempmayo]

It doesn't help that I'm sort of familiar with this data set by stalking my neighbors via acrevalue.com

There's a primal part of me that wants to own some land.  Even if it's just a few acres of timber.

I have a feeling that a Zillow-equivalent for land is going to be a time sink for me.

[Askel]

It's not quite a zillow equivalent unless you're a farmer.  It only values open land here and its algorithms tend to be way off from market rates. 

For goobers like you and me who just need to scratch that primal itch to refer to themselves as "landed gentry", it's probably not the best tool. 

But it does give me free access to property boundaries, names of the owners, and tax IDs which is cool. 

[HenryDavid]

As a lifelong suburb-hater, I've tried this thought experiment: just remove the cars and the fossil fuels.
Now how do the 'burbs look?

You can easily move around in a 10-mile radius with an e-bike. Yes, even in winter. And if your house is heated with a heat pump, on renewably-generated electricity, the CO2 cost of sprawl goes away.

So now the burbs are just a bunch of wide streets for biking, houses with room for veggie gardens, a city in one direction and rural-world in the other.

Anyway, this is just for fun, but--imagine if the 'burbs could be reshaped a bit, so they were no longer just bedrooms for commuters with hellish commutes, and storage for mountains of overconsumption shit, but something sustainable and sort of  . . . nice?

[roomtempmayo]

It's not quite a zillow equivalent unless you're a farmer.  It only values open land here and its algorithms tend to be way off from market rates. 

For goobers like you and me who just need to scratch that primal itch to refer to themselves as "landed gentry", it's probably not the best tool. 

But it does give me free access to property boundaries, names of the owners, and tax IDs which is cool.

Ah, I see.  I've had an OnX subscription for a few years for hunting, and I've found it absolutely worth it.  I actually find myself using it a lot walking around the city to see who lives where.  OnX + Google is a pretty powerful toolkit for scratching the, "Who lives in that house, and what do they do?" itch.

[Askel]

Fun article about rural NIMBYs.  https://journalnow.com/news/local/neighbors-battle-plan-to-build-61-houses-on-tree-lined-conrad-road-in-lewisville/article_c64a9e22-9f14-11ec-80cf-e365b0cac719.html

[Just Joe]

As i drove through our state's capitol last night I kept wondering what it costs to keep the place powered? All the street lights, all the 24 hour businesses, etc. It is a vast number of light bulbs and LEDs.

Parked for a bit while I waited on my family's activity to end and listened to all the traffic banging along the rough highways.

$4.29 for gas and nobody seems too bothered by it. I mean they complain but they are still in their cars.

[sonofsven]

Fun article about rural NIMBYs.  https://journalnow.com/news/local/neighbors-battle-plan-to-build-61-houses-on-tree-lined-conrad-road-in-lewisville/article_c64a9e22-9f14-11ec-80cf-e365b0cac719.html

It's crazy isn't it? Near me on the OR coast existing homeowners are complaining about a proposed new neighborhood next to their homes.
All the existing homes were built in the last thirty years on a fairly steep hill. The new homes will be built on raw land that is identical in topography to the existing homes yet the complaints are all emphasizing the "dangerous" nature of the new construction due to the topography.
I was told this joke years ago: What's the difference between a "developer" and an "environmentalist"?
The "environmentalist" already lives in a nice home in the woods.

[Askel]

I was told this joke years ago: What's the difference between a "developer" and an "environmentalist"?
The "environmentalist" already lives in a nice home in the woods.

Haha, this is great, I'm stealing it!   


(and I do already live in a nice home in the woods....)

[Shane]

Twenty years of living in an off-grid home we built on a rural acreage, 25 miles from the nearest town, was an amazing experience for me and my family. For the environment, though, not so much. In hindsight, I cringe remembering all of the resources we squandered driving our 4WD vehicles back and forth to town. Twelve months a year, every two weeks, I spent 4-5 hours mowing about an acre of lawn, and mowed another 16 acres of pastures, whenever I could find the time. Weeks when I didn't mow, I weedwacked, also for 4-5 hours. The amount of gasoline I burned and carbon I released into the atmosphere from running mowers and weedwackers, all so we could keep our property looking nice, makes me sick, now, thinking about it. We always tried, as much as possible, to combine trips into town, but still. It was 25 miles, one way. Fifty miles, round trip, just to pick up a box of screws at Home Despot, or a jug of milk and a loaf of bread, all so we could 'live the dream' on 17 acres in the country. For the first 13 years of living on our land, we and our (few) neighbors were the road maintenance crew for the 2 miles of gravel roads that neither the county, nor the state, claimed responsibility for. Finally, after years of lobbying local government officials, the county finally paved the road for us, almost up to our property. Woooooohoooooooo! Again, getting the road paved helped us a lot, personally, but it sure didn't do any favors for the environment. As others have said above, it's unfair to paint with too broad a brush, as there probably are some people who can live sustainably in the country. Maybe they WFH, or whatever. But, in my lived experience, cheap gasoline and heavily subsidized public roads were what made it possible for me, my family, and our neighbors to live where we did. Although I wouldn't trade the experiences and the things we learned living in the country for anything, looking back on it now, it feels kind of selfish. It was fun for us to drive big 4WDs, cut down big trees with chainsaws, and make giant bonfires to impress our friends from the city, when we had parties. Somehow, though, I think the planet would be happier and we'd probably even be richer if we had stayed in our little basement studio apartment in town for 20 years, rather than moving out into the country.

[eyesonthehorizon]

As a lifelong suburb-hater, I've tried this thought experiment: just remove the cars and the fossil fuels.
Now how do the 'burbs look?

You can easily move around in a 10-mile radius with an e-bike. Yes, even in winter. And if your house is heated with a heat pump, on renewably-generated electricity, the CO2 cost of sprawl goes away.

So now the burbs are just a bunch of wide streets for biking, houses with room for veggie gardens, a city in one direction and rural-world in the other.

Anyway, this is just for fun, but--imagine if the 'burbs could be reshaped a bit, so they were no longer just bedrooms for commuters with hellish commutes, and storage for mountains of overconsumption shit, but something sustainable and sort of  . . . nice?

I've had this thought too. Cover those roofs with panels, maybe bring in some convenient local transit like e-buses or trams to get people between neighborhoods. The streets could be narrowed & a full car lane devoted to proper bike lanes - streets wouldn't need to be more than two lanes wide because street parking of full-size vehicles would be rare - which would introduce a large amount of space at intersections especially. Add more green spaces for better drainage. Buy up corner lots to bring back the corner stores that many neighborhoods used to have. Those who still would need to use car-style transit wouldn't be caught in a size competition, so conveyances could be suited to one human body. Make it illegal for HOAs to mandate lawns, to ban vegetable gardens or outdoor laundry-drying. Sounds like a pretty pleasant, walkable, low-energy-demand environment, much more suited to human wellbeing.

[roomtempmayo]

Fun article about rural NIMBYs.  https://journalnow.com/news/local/neighbors-battle-plan-to-build-61-houses-on-tree-lined-conrad-road-in-lewisville/article_c64a9e22-9f14-11ec-80cf-e365b0cac719.html

Looks from the photos like a bunch of exurbanites at each others throats.

Rural folks make their livings off the land, and I've never heard of a big controversy over a housing development in a rural area.  Probably because there aren't housing developments in rural areas.

If you can see more than one mailbox from your own you probably aren't rural, you just have some brush around your house.

[Just Joe]

I've had this thought too. Cover those roofs with panels, maybe bring in some convenient local transit like e-buses or trams to get people between neighborhoods. The streets could be narrowed & a full car lane devoted to proper bike lanes - streets wouldn't need to be more than two lanes wide because street parking of full-size vehicles would be rare - which would introduce a large amount of space at intersections especially. Add more green spaces for better drainage. Buy up corner lots to bring back the corner stores that many neighborhoods used to have. Those who still would need to use car-style transit wouldn't be caught in a size competition, so conveyances could be suited to one human body. Make it illegal for HOAs to mandate lawns, to ban vegetable gardens or outdoor laundry-drying. Sounds like a pretty pleasant, walkable, low-energy-demand environment, much more suited to human well being.

If only...

[Sailor Sam]

As i drove through our state's capitol last night I kept wondering what it costs to keep the place powered? All the street lights, all the 24 hour businesses, etc. It is a vast number of light bulbs and LEDs.

Parked for a bit while I waited on my family's activity to end and listened to all the traffic banging along the rough highways.

$4.29 for gas and nobody seems too bothered by it. I mean they complain but they are still in their cars.

Wait, did you mean for this to be satire? If so, well played!

[ChpBstrd]

Rural Dependencies:
     Cheap transportation (low prices for cars and fuel)
     Reliable roads, utilities, deliveries, etc. generally subsidized by others because it's not economical on its own
     Ability to obtain parts for all the equipment and infrastructure "required" to live rural
     Economically viable industries, whether agricultural or work-from-home

Urban Dependencies:
     Low-enough levels of violence from crime, the government, war, riots, etc.
     Reliable supply chains for food, water, and energy
     Housing supply can meet demand

Basically, what's bad for the cities is good for the country. If the legislators trying to win votes from rural areas can force urban areas to subsidize roads, utilities, and communication links to every backwoods area, they win. Likewise, if cities decay into crime-ridden, violent places where nobody can afford to live, then people with rural real estate can expect appreciation. On the other hand, cities can solve the majority of their own problems (crime, housing, education, etc) and become thriving economic centers, leaving rural areas in the dust. The pendulum swings each way over the course of decades, and the growth of suburbs can be thought of as a way for people to play both ends against the middle.

There's reason to think the cities are waning and rural areas are gaining appeal. High home prices and rising crime are again running people out of many thriving urban areas, and these same people are finding that broadband internet access allows them to work from rural places where they can own a home and avoid commutes. The WFH revolution could make it possible to live rural, earn a professional salary, and not be dependent upon 1-2 potential employers within commuting range. However, I fail to see how it is possible to live a Mustachian lifestyle with such very long supply lines, with massive amounts of expensive equipment like tractors, trucks, implements, barns, generators, well water purification systems, fences, etc, and with the difficulty of obtaining benefits such as income-boosting educational services or the ability to buy used things without driving 50 miles for them. I know a lot of people pull it off, living in a trailer on a one acre lot driving a Prius with 300k miles to a gas station job, but that's not what most of us have in mind.

[Fishindude]

However, I fail to see how it is possible to live a Mustachian lifestyle with such very long supply lines, with massive amounts of expensive equipment like tractors, trucks, implements, barns, generators, well water purification systems, fences, etc, and with the difficulty of obtaining benefits such as income-boosting educational services or the ability to buy used things without driving 50 miles for them. I know a lot of people pull it off, living in a trailer on a one acre lot driving a Prius with 300k miles to a gas station job, but that's not what most of us have in mind.

The majority of our rural neighbors do not own or need; tractors, trucks (maybe a pickup), implements, barns, generators, well water purification systems, fences, etc,
They just have a simple country home where they have some privacy, a garden, peace and quiet, and be left alone to do as they please.  I know quite a few that pull it off pretty cheap.

Most have all the education they need or want and it affords them the ability to live where they want.  Amazon / UPS / Fed X delivers stuff right to your doorstep same as in town.
If you are a long way from town, you make less trips, you plan your trips, and you keep a list going for everything you need next trip to town.

[Blackeagle]

The majority of our rural neighbors do not own or need; tractors, trucks (maybe a pickup), implements, barns, generators, well water purification systems, fences, etc,
They just have a simple country home where they have some privacy, a garden, peace and quiet, and be left alone to do as they please.  I know quite a few that pull it off pretty cheap.

This is hugely dependent on what the climate is like and what services you get from the government.  Those that live someplace where they have to provide their own snow removal, road grading, water, power, etc. absolutely do need many of those things.

Part of the problem is “rural” covers a huge swath of different situations.  I’m reminded of another discussion many years ago on a different forum where someone was trying to emphasize how rural a particular area was.  He said something along the lines of, “It may be an hour before the next car comes along.”  My response was, “I’ve been places where it may be days before the next car comes along.”  Rural Mississippi is not the same as rural New England, which is not the same as rural Montana.

[PDXTabs]

Rural Mississippi is not the same as rural New England, which is not the same as rural Montana.

Or rural Albania, Mongolia, Ukraine, etc.

[Shane]

If you can see more than one mailbox from your own you probably aren't rural, you just have some brush around your house.

This made me laugh, because where we lived having a mailbox was a clear sign that you weren't rural. For 20 years, USPS, UPS and Fedex wouldn't deliver mail to our property, because they claimed their vehicles couldn't drive on unpaved roads. Every week day, we had to drive 4 miles, each way, to the local post office to pick up our mail, and when a package came by Fedex or UPS, usually we ended up having to drive 25 miles into town to pick it up at their office. From the bottom gate to our property, where I guess we would've put a mailbox if we had had one, there was no way we could've seen any of our neighbors' mailboxes, if they had had them. So, I guess we were rural.

[MMMarbleheader]

Rural vs urban vs suburbs is an interesting one for me. Based from a New England perspective

I hate the suburbs, the worst things about living rural and in the city. Especially in New England here all the new developments have septics and wells anyways.

I liked city/street car suburb living but the housing costs were crazy and all of our houses were super old like 1700s to early 1900s. Lead paint, cast iron plumbing, single pain windows, etc. Also the residents though somewhat frugal spent on ways I don’t know even existed like renting a ski condo for the entire season and using it on the weekends?? Or joining two yacht clubs?

We live rural now (close to Dartmouth college) and it’s a fun mix of intellectual stuff within 20 mins and being rural. Again this is Vermont so the populous is different but rural people deformity embrace the mustachian lifestyle more than the urban people. Lots of potlucks, sharing of resources, etc. these Yankees have way much more free fun than the people we knew in the city.

[Askel]

[
This made me laugh, because where we lived having a mailbox was a clear sign that you weren't rural. For 20 years, USPS, UPS and Fedex wouldn't deliver mail to our property, because they claimed their vehicles couldn't drive on unpaved roads.

Our FedEx guy always texts me for driveway condition updates whenever he's delivering a package after he got stuck on it once. 

We ended up putting a bin at the end of the driveway for deliveries. 

I think the UPS guy might have been mildly disappointed, he seemed to like drifting his rig around the last corner before out house. :D