Telling Rural People To Move Won’t Solve Poverty

[MasterJedi]

Government should incentivize living in an urban area and disincentivize living in rural areas unless you're actual farmers or need to be there for some reason.

Are you of a fan of Ceausescu's Systematization?

These things have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass.  The birth rate in Romania doubled from 1966 to 1967 thanks to his decree... but then fell generally back to rates slightly higher than the 1966 levels.

Then, when those "decretei" babies reached adulthood, they were an integral part of removing Ceausescu from this earth.

In the US at least getting people to live in urban areas would be a good thing. Overall consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl. We could build much better effective public transit systems that would hopefully decrease car use. Would provide easier access to jobs and concentration of labor for businesses. No real reason for people to live in rural areas.

Wait...what?

I'm all for more public transit and a better environment, but this argument doesn't make sense at all.

Urban areas are the sprawl. Dallas-Fort Worth is one example of many. Our urban area has sprawled so large that it now takes over an hour to get from one part to the other. Is that a good example of "consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl" and "decreased car use"? No. What you are likely referring to is people moving to the cities. The problem with that; however, is that in many urban cores the cities are already packed. For this reason, people move to the sprawling suburbs in the same urban area when they want to move away from a rural area.

Making more people move to an urban area won't solve the problem. It'll become the problem.

I don't mean urban area as in how the census department defines it, so no, suburban isn't urban. I mean dense city cores with condo/apartment towers or inner ring burbs, not the sprawl you're describing.

Read the bold.

There is nothing "packed" about Dallas (3,876/sq mi), Fort Worth (2,181.0/sq mi), or Houston (3,660/sq mi). The contention that these places are congested entirely because of car-centered sprawl is entirely correct.

Exactly what's said above, almost all sunbelt and southern cities are really large and really spread out. But then you also need to demolish and build up.

[wxtransit]

Government should incentivize living in an urban area and disincentivize living in rural areas unless you're actual farmers or need to be there for some reason.

Are you of a fan of Ceausescu's Systematization?

These things have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass.  The birth rate in Romania doubled from 1966 to 1967 thanks to his decree... but then fell generally back to rates slightly higher than the 1966 levels.

Then, when those "decretei" babies reached adulthood, they were an integral part of removing Ceausescu from this earth.

In the US at least getting people to live in urban areas would be a good thing. Overall consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl. We could build much better effective public transit systems that would hopefully decrease car use. Would provide easier access to jobs and concentration of labor for businesses. No real reason for people to live in rural areas.

Wait...what?

I'm all for more public transit and a better environment, but this argument doesn't make sense at all.

Urban areas are the sprawl. Dallas-Fort Worth is one example of many. Our urban area has sprawled so large that it now takes over an hour to get from one part to the other. Is that a good example of "consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl" and "decreased car use"? No. What you are likely referring to is people moving to the cities. The problem with that; however, is that in many urban cores the cities are already packed. For this reason, people move to the sprawling suburbs in the same urban area when they want to move away from a rural area.

Making more people move to an urban area won't solve the problem. It'll become the problem.

I don't mean urban area as in how the census department defines it, so no, suburban isn't urban. I mean dense city cores with condo/apartment towers or inner ring burbs, not the sprawl you're describing.

Read the bold.

There is nothing "packed" about Dallas (3,876/sq mi), Fort Worth (2,181.0/sq mi), or Houston (3,660/sq mi). The contention that these places are congested entirely because of car-centered sprawl is entirely correct.

The "urban areas" he speaks of, at least according to him, sound like Downtown, Uptown, Park Cities, Midtown, the Central corridor, and basically the rest of Dallas in the 635 loop. Unless you advocate demoloshing decades old homes that people don't want to move from, you don't have very many options to build the many hundreds of homes or apartment/condo units that will be needed. There are only a few unbuilt parcels left in the inner city and inner suburb ring.

And yes, the assumption "that these places are congested entirely because of car-centered sprawl is entirely correct." Why should we expand this sprawl? That is what forcing the entire rural population into cities will do.

Also, of note: many Sunbelt cities also include many suburbs inside the city limits. While I do not contest the fact that these cities are spread out, these density figures are misleading.

[MasterJedi]

Government should incentivize living in an urban area and disincentivize living in rural areas unless you're actual farmers or need to be there for some reason.

Are you of a fan of Ceausescu's Systematization?

These things have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass.  The birth rate in Romania doubled from 1966 to 1967 thanks to his decree... but then fell generally back to rates slightly higher than the 1966 levels.

Then, when those "decretei" babies reached adulthood, they were an integral part of removing Ceausescu from this earth.

In the US at least getting people to live in urban areas would be a good thing. Overall consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl. We could build much better effective public transit systems that would hopefully decrease car use. Would provide easier access to jobs and concentration of labor for businesses. No real reason for people to live in rural areas.

Wait...what?

I'm all for more public transit and a better environment, but this argument doesn't make sense at all.

Urban areas are the sprawl. Dallas-Fort Worth is one example of many. Our urban area has sprawled so large that it now takes over an hour to get from one part to the other. Is that a good example of "consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl" and "decreased car use"? No. What you are likely referring to is people moving to the cities. The problem with that; however, is that in many urban cores the cities are already packed. For this reason, people move to the sprawling suburbs in the same urban area when they want to move away from a rural area.

Making more people move to an urban area won't solve the problem. It'll become the problem.

I don't mean urban area as in how the census department defines it, so no, suburban isn't urban. I mean dense city cores with condo/apartment towers or inner ring burbs, not the sprawl you're describing.

Read the bold.

There is nothing "packed" about Dallas (3,876/sq mi), Fort Worth (2,181.0/sq mi), or Houston (3,660/sq mi). The contention that these places are congested entirely because of car-centered sprawl is entirely correct.

The "urban areas" he speaks of, at least according to him, sound like Downtown, Uptown, Park Cities, Midtown, the Central corridor, and basically the rest of Dallas in the 635 loop. Unless you advocate demoloshing decades old homes that people don't want to move from, you don't have very many options to build the many hundreds of homes or apartment/condo units that will be needed. There are only a few unbuilt parcels left in the inner city and inner suburb ring.

And yes, the assumption "that these places are congested entirely because of car-centered sprawl is entirely correct." Why should we expand this sprawl? That is what forcing the entire rural population into cities will do.

It kinda just sounds like you hate cities. But in reality we can build excellent, world class public transportation. There are millions of people that would give up that car commute if given the chance but the US is worse than third world countries for public transportation, mostly due to conservative opposition.

[wxtransit]

Government should incentivize living in an urban area and disincentivize living in rural areas unless you're actual farmers or need to be there for some reason.

Are you of a fan of Ceausescu's Systematization?

These things have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass.  The birth rate in Romania doubled from 1966 to 1967 thanks to his decree... but then fell generally back to rates slightly higher than the 1966 levels.

Then, when those "decretei" babies reached adulthood, they were an integral part of removing Ceausescu from this earth.

In the US at least getting people to live in urban areas would be a good thing. Overall consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl. We could build much better effective public transit systems that would hopefully decrease car use. Would provide easier access to jobs and concentration of labor for businesses. No real reason for people to live in rural areas.

Wait...what?

I'm all for more public transit and a better environment, but this argument doesn't make sense at all.

Urban areas are the sprawl. Dallas-Fort Worth is one example of many. Our urban area has sprawled so large that it now takes over an hour to get from one part to the other. Is that a good example of "consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl" and "decreased car use"? No. What you are likely referring to is people moving to the cities. The problem with that; however, is that in many urban cores the cities are already packed. For this reason, people move to the sprawling suburbs in the same urban area when they want to move away from a rural area.

Making more people move to an urban area won't solve the problem. It'll become the problem.

I don't mean urban area as in how the census department defines it, so no, suburban isn't urban. I mean dense city cores with condo/apartment towers or inner ring burbs, not the sprawl you're describing.

Read the bold.

There is nothing "packed" about Dallas (3,876/sq mi), Fort Worth (2,181.0/sq mi), or Houston (3,660/sq mi). The contention that these places are congested entirely because of car-centered sprawl is entirely correct.

The "urban areas" he speaks of, at least according to him, sound like Downtown, Uptown, Park Cities, Midtown, the Central corridor, and basically the rest of Dallas in the 635 loop. Unless you advocate demoloshing decades old homes that people don't want to move from, you don't have very many options to build the many hundreds of homes or apartment/condo units that will be needed. There are only a few unbuilt parcels left in the inner city and inner suburb ring.

And yes, the assumption "that these places are congested entirely because of car-centered sprawl is entirely correct." Why should we expand this sprawl? That is what forcing the entire rural population into cities will do.

It kinda just sounds like you hate cities. But in reality we can build excellent, world class public transportation. There are millions of people that would give up that car commute if given the chance but the US is worse than third world countries for public transportation, mostly due to conservative opposition.

And I see we've started the ad hominem attacks.

It's actually quite funny you think I hate cities, while in reality I live in the urbanized city, love it, and am a huge advocate for public transportation (see my username, wxtransit). However, forcing millions to uproot their generations-old livelihoods and displacing those that currently live in the city to accomplish this is not the way to go.

[MasterJedi]

Government should incentivize living in an urban area and disincentivize living in rural areas unless you're actual farmers or need to be there for some reason.

Are you of a fan of Ceausescu's Systematization?

These things have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass.  The birth rate in Romania doubled from 1966 to 1967 thanks to his decree... but then fell generally back to rates slightly higher than the 1966 levels.

Then, when those "decretei" babies reached adulthood, they were an integral part of removing Ceausescu from this earth.

In the US at least getting people to live in urban areas would be a good thing. Overall consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl. We could build much better effective public transit systems that would hopefully decrease car use. Would provide easier access to jobs and concentration of labor for businesses. No real reason for people to live in rural areas.

Wait...what?

I'm all for more public transit and a better environment, but this argument doesn't make sense at all.

Urban areas are the sprawl. Dallas-Fort Worth is one example of many. Our urban area has sprawled so large that it now takes over an hour to get from one part to the other. Is that a good example of "consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl" and "decreased car use"? No. What you are likely referring to is people moving to the cities. The problem with that; however, is that in many urban cores the cities are already packed. For this reason, people move to the sprawling suburbs in the same urban area when they want to move away from a rural area.

Making more people move to an urban area won't solve the problem. It'll become the problem.

I don't mean urban area as in how the census department defines it, so no, suburban isn't urban. I mean dense city cores with condo/apartment towers or inner ring burbs, not the sprawl you're describing.

Read the bold.

There is nothing "packed" about Dallas (3,876/sq mi), Fort Worth (2,181.0/sq mi), or Houston (3,660/sq mi). The contention that these places are congested entirely because of car-centered sprawl is entirely correct.

The "urban areas" he speaks of, at least according to him, sound like Downtown, Uptown, Park Cities, Midtown, the Central corridor, and basically the rest of Dallas in the 635 loop. Unless you advocate demoloshing decades old homes that people don't want to move from, you don't have very many options to build the many hundreds of homes or apartment/condo units that will be needed. There are only a few unbuilt parcels left in the inner city and inner suburb ring.

And yes, the assumption "that these places are congested entirely because of car-centered sprawl is entirely correct." Why should we expand this sprawl? That is what forcing the entire rural population into cities will do.

It kinda just sounds like you hate cities. But in reality we can build excellent, world class public transportation. There are millions of people that would give up that car commute if given the chance but the US is worse than third world countries for public transportation, mostly due to conservative opposition.

And I see we've started the ad hominem attacks.

It's actually quite funny you think I hate cities, while in reality I live in the urbanized city, love it, and am a huge advocate for public transportation (see my username, wxtransit). However, forcing millions to uproot their generations-old livelihoods and displacing those that currently live in the city to accomplish this is not the way to go.

Never said force, I said incentivize those who do, and maybe not disencentivise but give them no benefit for living in rural areas. Like rural areas will have higher taxes than urban areas, so the choice remains.

[pbrower2a]

Many in rural areas are unskilled or marginally skilled. That people are making six-figure incomes as programmers and software engineers in Silicon Valley is completely irrelevant to a farm laborer in California's impoverished Central Valley. Going from a retail, car service, or restaurant job in Coalinga to one in Cupertino might get one a raise, but the difference in rent will overpower that raise. The San Francisco Bay Area has been losing its low-paid factory jobs to places (including the impoverished Central Valley) in which the cost of living isn't so high.

People must leave small towns in rural areas if they are unhappy just so that they can find some dignity in life. But they had better have good jobs awaiting them if they are to be happy with what their new lives.  

[RINO Tom]

I think this forum really overestimates how "poor" rural areas are, quality-of-life speaking.  There are a lot of people in Iowa City - a vibrant college town - that "make more" than most in the poorer town of Keokuk in SE Iowa ... but a lot of those "poorer" people in Keokuk enjoy dirt cheap drinks at their favorite bars, boating on the Mississippi River with their friends and a decent sized house for comparatively cheap.  Your taste and preference is that living in Keokuk would be boring as hell and absolutely terrible?  So what?  LOL, joke's on you!

[DINGO Joe]

I think this forum really overestimates how "poor" rural areas are, quality-of-life speaking.  There are a lot of people in Iowa City - a vibrant college town - that "make more" than most in the poorer town of Keokuk in SE Iowa ... but a lot of those "poorer" people in Keokuk enjoy dirt cheap drinks at their favorite bars, boating on the Mississippi River with their friends and a decent sized house for comparatively cheap.  Your taste and preference is that living in Keokuk would be boring as hell and absolutely terrible?  So what?  LOL, joke's on you!

I guess Keokuk would be OK if you can sustain a life there, but given the steady population loss over many decades, I guess fewer and fewer people can.  Besides the population loss, the county Keokuk is in (Lee) is substantially older than the nation as a whole (20% 65+ vs 16%), which doesn't bode well for future growth either.  You can enjoy your cheap house in Keokuk but  there may not be anyone to sell it to when your done (unless some hi-falutin Iowa City kid wants a weekend home)

And things could get worse as America's worst case scenario, West Virginia, can always show.

http://www.wvva.com/story/38153485/2018/05/Wednesday/appalachian-power-seeks-rate-increase-due-to-decline-electricity-usage

http://wvpublic.org/post/west-virginia-american-water-requests-rate-increase#stream/0

Both the water and electric companies cite population decline as the need to increase rates.  It's hard to maintain the same infrastructure over the same geographic area with fewer people to pay for it, although Iowa is relatively flat while WV isn't, so I'm sure it's even harder in WV.

But then, maybe Iowa and WV aren't that different as the town of Buxton, IA may show:

http://www.iptv.org/iowapathways/mypath/great-buxton

A coal mining town in Southern Iowa that had 5000 people or more, half black, half Swede and Welsh.  Even sent a black man to the state lege. and then poof completely disappeared.  Some say the coal ran out, some say a strange visitor from the future, a  Amabo Kcarab came to town and destroyed it. Whatever happened it's nothing but farmland today.

My parents both came from small towns in Iowa, NE of Waterloo.  Too far away from the interstate or "metros" to be of any interest to people nowadays.  My Grandparents had a farmhouse but moved into town in the 50s.  The town had a small main street with businesses on both sides for about a block.  Maybe 10-12 that I could remember from the 70s including my grandfather's Produce and mill.  They rented the farm house or let people live there in exchange for maintenance over the years.  Super cheap.  In the 90s grandma sold the farm (only 80 acres) after Grandpa died and after I, the only adult male grandchild in the family declined an offer to go "Green Acres".  The new owner tore the farmhouse and barn down because that was another half-acre that could be farmed.  The house that they lived in in town still stands and has actually been built out a bit by a couple that moved back to Iowa after being in California for decades, but I'd estimate that a quarter of the houses in town have been torn down over the years.  There are only two buildings left on main street, the volunteer firehouse and the Tap.  Everything else torn or burned down including my grandfather's building.

I go back to Iowa every 3-5 years, still have kin doing well up there, but except for one family that own a 600 acre farm everyone else has gravitated towards Dubuque or around Cedar Rapids-Iowa City (Solon and Mt. Vernon specifically). I guess my point is rural people have been moving for quite some time now and will continue too, and it did reduce poverty because there is nothing there.  I do think that in conjunction with the baby boomers approaching the end, it leaves the WVs and Keokuks of the world in an even more precarious situation than they've been in for decades now.  If your community wasn't "dynamic" enough to attract immigrants over the last few decades, your population pyramid is old and looks like a cliff in some places (I'm looking at you WV)

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

Government should incentivize living in an urban area and disincentivize living in rural areas unless you're actual farmers or need to be there for some reason.

Are you of a fan of Ceausescu's Systematization?

These things have a way of coming back to bite you in the ass.  The birth rate in Romania doubled from 1966 to 1967 thanks to his decree... but then fell generally back to rates slightly higher than the 1966 levels.

Then, when those "decretei" babies reached adulthood, they were an integral part of removing Ceausescu from this earth.

In the US at least getting people to live in urban areas would be a good thing. Overall consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl. We could build much better effective public transit systems that would hopefully decrease car use. Would provide easier access to jobs and concentration of labor for businesses. No real reason for people to live in rural areas.

Wait...what?

I'm all for more public transit and a better environment, but this argument doesn't make sense at all.

Urban areas are the sprawl. Dallas-Fort Worth is one example of many. Our urban area has sprawled so large that it now takes over an hour to get from one part to the other. Is that a good example of "consolidation of services, less environmental destruction due to sprawl" and "decreased car use"? No. What you are likely referring to is people moving to the cities. The problem with that; however, is that in many urban cores the cities are already packed. For this reason, people move to the sprawling suburbs in the same urban area when they want to move away from a rural area.

Making more people move to an urban area won't solve the problem. It'll become the problem.

I don't mean urban area as in how the census department defines it, so no, suburban isn't urban. I mean dense city cores with condo/apartment towers or inner ring burbs, not the sprawl you're describing.

Read the bold.

There is nothing "packed" about Dallas (3,876/sq mi), Fort Worth (2,181.0/sq mi), or Houston (3,660/sq mi). The contention that these places are congested entirely because of car-centered sprawl is entirely correct.

The "urban areas" he speaks of, at least according to him, sound like Downtown, Uptown, Park Cities, Midtown, the Central corridor, and basically the rest of Dallas in the 635 loop. Unless you advocate demoloshing decades old homes that people don't want to move from, you don't have very many options to build the many hundreds of homes or apartment/condo units that will be needed. There are only a few unbuilt parcels left in the inner city and inner suburb ring.

And yes, the assumption "that these places are congested entirely because of car-centered sprawl is entirely correct." Why should we expand this sprawl? That is what forcing the entire rural population into cities will do.

It kinda just sounds like you hate cities. But in reality we can build excellent, world class public transportation. There are millions of people that would give up that car commute if given the chance but the US is worse than third world countries for public transportation, mostly due to conservative opposition.

And I see we've started the ad hominem attacks.

It's actually quite funny you think I hate cities, while in reality I live in the urbanized city, love it, and am a huge advocate for public transportation (see my username, wxtransit). However, forcing millions to uproot their generations-old livelihoods and displacing those that currently live in the city to accomplish this is not the way to go.

Just up zone everything and watch people sell their homes to a developer. Or build a greenfield high rise district in Arlington. Or replace Love Field with 20 story buildings. There are a lot of non-disruptive ways to double the population of a city like Dallas. Even just replacing strip malls with 7-story mixed users would add thousands of apartments.

[DINGO Joe]

A pretty interesting article about this exact subject having to do with Adams County, Ohio.  A poor rural county with the largest employer, a coal plant, in the process of shutting down.  Should people move or should there be investment by the state to "reinvent" the county?

https://www.propublica.org/article/adams-county-ohio-coal-forced-to-choose-between-a-job-and-a-community

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

Interesting opinion piece on this https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/03/donald-trump-white-working-class-dysfunction-real-opportunity-needed-not-trump/