this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Drive through rural America and see how many underpopulated small towns there are. Shuttered businesses for lack of customers. Abandoned buildings. These places need people.
It's kind of wild to me how many really small towns there are in the US. About 32% of towns in the U.S. have less than 500 residents.
For comparison, here in Brazil I lived most of my life in a town with ~35K residents and it was already considered a small rural town. Some of my family lives in a neighboring town with ~11K residents, and even in my hometown people joke about how small it is, and that there's basically nothing going on there. 1288 of towns in Brazil have less than 5K residents, or about 23.1%, and there are no towns with less than 500 residents. Meanwhile in the US 76% of towns have less than 5K residents.
Again, it's just kind of wild to me. I remember playing (reading?) the Echo VN and thinking "Man, a dying town with only 50 people? That doesn't sound realistic," but apparently that's way more common than I thought.
My slightly educated guess would be that's a consequence of America's race westward in the 1800's, only stopping long enough to annihilate the indigenous population and set up a rest stop for the next batch.
Railroads played big role. Trains needed more water or coal to run the engine. So every 15 to 20 miles or so, depending on terrain, a water depot was erected, and there a new town popped up. Some survived. Some didnt. Few are thriving. Just pull up a map and follow a rail line in the great plains region of the usa. Then just measure it out. Its impossible to miss once you notice it.
The same thing happened again when they built the interstates. Pixar made a documentary about it with talking cars.
It’s more modern than that. I don’t have time to look for stats, but I believe there’s been general migration to cities for like half a century or more
Of course, but I'm talking about why all these little towns existed in the first place. It's not like they were all bustling metropolises before everyone left. ;)
A lot were busy manufacturing, mining, or farming towns.
The mines run out or become unprofitable.
The manufacturing has largely moved to out of the states, or been automated.
And big farms and grocery stores have squeezed independent farmers out of everywhere but the farmers markets near rich cities.
The stereotype is always a coal mining town. There used to be a mine employing many people, but now it’s automated or the mine played out
The town I grew up in was a bustling town with one dominant employer. When that employer moved out it left a big gap and an entire generation of younger people moved away
The town my father grew up in was never bustling. However it was a significant center of a rural area with many family farms. By the time I was growing up, those farms were no longer economical, so people moved away and there’s no need for a population center
A small town I used to visit all the time was once a bustling tourist town, but no one goes there anymore. It’s really just regional now, instead of the busy season drawing people from anywhere between Montreal and NYC. It’s probably cheap flying as much as anything else: who wants to vacation on a cold beach when you can hop a flight down south for the same cost
Bingo, the town I went to school in had barely 500 people when the school which had taken over for two other closed schools kids. It’s even less now. My grade was the largest at 32 kids too. There were former “towns” dotted all over from the rush west where train tracks used to be. All gone now and just somewhere used for cow shelter in the winter. These towns were simply stops for railroad cars to result water on the route west. Once that wasn’t needed the slow march to 0 began. My nearest non family member was over 7 miles away. There is a lot of interior USA that is really sparsely populated and is really just returning to pre colonial eras of mainly giant farmland or grazing pastures.
Precolonial big ag? What on earth are you talking about?
Population sizes in pre colonial times.
We also have "towns" that are insufficient in size and unlisted or are under another towns "address". A town near me has less than 1000 people and that includes the towns under it that are 3-5mi apart.
One of my friends lives in what used to be considered a town. Currently it has a population of like 10 people 4 of which are their family and another is one of their roommates. It is now part of the nearest town about 20 miles away and makes for some logistical novelties like mail delivery and school bus routes
Funny thing is that even the immigrants are smart enough to know the shouldn’t settle in these places because they’re going down the toilet. But the locals? We’re being ignored! Save our useless town with no economic prospects, no educated workforce, and no infrastructure to support anything worthwhile! No, of course we won’t move!. ..while they proceed to vote against any social policy that might help them or their future generations out of their trap.
Try "Can't"
I don't know why you city slickers think packing up all your shit and moving into a new house in a new town is free, but it isn't. We ARE being ignored, worse than that, we're being left to die.
You wanna get me outta the ruins of farmland? Send a bus to pick me up, make sure there's a two month paid in advance hotel waiting for me when I get there, and have me a job waiting.
Yeah. I get that. I’m actually super aware of the difficulty in upending your life and spending years making shit money with the hope it will get better. I’ve done it.
But seeing as you “country bumpkins” (are we really doing lousy stereotypes?) constantly tell others to pick themselves up by their bootstraps while undercutting social programs as well I figure it was fair game. Y’know, the same people working jobs that minimum wage hasn’t kept up with for more than a decade but keep getting told those jobs aren’t supposed to support a living. No, of course you won’t move. No, you don’t want anything that might change the situation either. No, you won’t take advantage of loans or other assistance and upend your life to make a major change, because doing that sucks and is risky. But that thought process never applies to other people. Crabs in a bucket. Just reinstate some magical yesteryear that in reality pretty much sucked just as bad except for the part where mom still made dinners for you. Your comment is in a nutshell all of this. We won’t change, and fuck those fictional guys over there for taking advantage of a system that doesn’t actually exist.
I'm actually in a blue county, rural blue areas exist. We know the Republicans wanna eat us, but we wanna know why the Democrats aren't doing anything outside of barely keeping the wolves at bay.
We're not dumb, we know the Republicans will end social programs keeping us alive, but we all see the writing on the wall. We know that we will die here.
I find it hard to disagree with anything you said. Having lived in towns small enough to make someone say “There’s a town here?” That is definitely the case.
But the rural parts are also extremely unwelcoming. I have a remote job and those places are typically beautiful and cheap. But it's Trump country where everyone hates people of color, lgbtq, people of no religion, and anyone different. New money could be injected there plenty by the openness of digital work, but who wants to go be surrounded by hate and Trump supporters?
Sorry, not generalizing about you specifically, but the areas for sure.
This is why I want to move out to the country to not have to interact with anyone. Acres of land and not another soul in sight is the way.
I actually live in a Blue County.....
I mean, I did too, but Texas was so batshit being in a blue county didn't help much.
Fwiw (I sure hope this is not an empty platitude), as a trans woman who'd love to be able to feel safe outside of cities in blue states, who very much knows and experienced that it's not free:
You're absolutely right.
I read this back early 2016, been reeling from it ever since: https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/
We have been divided by the american mythos of "pinko city slicker vs rugged indvidualist rednecks" and the truth is it's all so the boss can take the whole plate of cookies, while scapegoating your brown/queer/whatever co-worker "He's gonna eat your cookie"
I refuse, at least for my inner child anyway, to surrender the love I have for my fellow common person, regardless of where you're from. Sweeping generalization.
There's lots of blame to go around. Big Pharma, Politicians, the way in which the midwest and south's entire economies that were always built on the idea of very high capital using extractive methods to get resources out of the land either cotton or mining or oil or water or agri business, those economies always depend on a few people with a lot of money, and then a whole bunch of people who are poor.
I blame them, not you. I see you. We are not alone. There has got to be a better way.
Tack on the attempts to maintain high/high quality amenities in sparsely populated, low tax revenue areas, and you have a nice fat deficit for your small town compounding that problem.
Don't worry. This isn't the only Trump plan that will tank the economy. I just wish the rest of us didn't have to suffer because of all those idiots not paying attention.
The east coast is densely populated. California and large areas of the west coast is densely populated.
But Ohio to the Rockies? Uhhhh......there's corn. We got corn. Do you like corn?
Yeah. There's a reason nobody can name anything in Nebraska. Nobodys ever been there. Not even sure they have corn there.
I’m from Iowa and have been through Nebraska (no one stops in Nebraska) and I’m here to report: yes, they do have corn there.
The east coast has more big cities than those other places, but there are still. HUGE number of teeny-tiny dying towns all up and down the eastern seaboard.
You can find these places less than a hundred miles from NYC. Just drive to Scranton, go south on I-81, and get off at any exit.
Yeah but they don’t want those people. Now who are those people they don’t want? Brown people, black people, queer people, woke people, educated people, different people…
Do the immigrants actually settle there?
Yes, or nearby. They're the ones working the farms.