Urban/Rural Divide

[godfry n. glad]

I'm an urban resident.

I live in the relative center of an urban agglomeration. It's not as intensively developed a neighborhood in a really big city, but there are more people in my immediate neighborhood than in most towns in the state. My neighborhood is one of 106 in the city.

I grew up here. I started kindergarten here, after moving, with my family at the age of five, to Puddle City. I'm originally from the dry side of the state. High desert, actually.

I'm the first generation in my entire family's history to be fully urban. My father was a member of the transitional generation, have been born on a farm. He was in construction and help build the urban agglomeration in which I live. But he retired to a small town up the valley.

Although I've been here all my life, my city is growing beyond what I find comfortable. Urban living is beginning to wear on me. I live in a big city with and increasingly faster pace of life and more people. I'd rather be in a small city and have a slower pace of life.

Does anybody else think about this aspect of our lives? What are your rambling thoughts on urban versus rural?

[quiet bear]

Oh, my, Godfrey. I am appreciative every day that I live in a quiet place. I couldn't handle walking out my front door with the possibility, every day, of seeing another person immediately.

I know some who thrive on the urban lifestyle, and would be lost if they were to suddenly find themselves with no one else around.

I have nothing against the lifestyle. I enjoy going to the city and walking around. I enjoy observing people. There is so much to see. I think people who live in the city take for granted sometimes everything there is to see. I am truly a rube when I go to Philadelphia. I can't look at everything fast enough. LOL.

But as a way of life? Thanks, but no thanks.

I prefer my slowed down life. I never grow tired of it, and am always quite aware of my surroundings. I can sit on my back porch, and look at the trees. I did that when I got home from work today. I ate my tomato and cucumber sandwich, and listened to the wind. In the summer, the song of the wind is hissy and light through the leaves. I like the wind in the trees best in the winter, though.

The same wind that sings through the trees in summer, howls and protests the cold in winter. I sit and imagine the wind's pattern, flowing through the bare branches, like bones sticking up from the earth.

Sorry. Waxing for winter, I suppose.

[godfry n. glad]

Thanks, qb.

Just what I hoped for. :manhug:

[SharonDee]

I was raised in a rural setting. "Going to town" meant we drove to the nearby small city, shopped at Kmart and ate at McDonald's. They didn't have tables or chairs then; we'd get our food and eat it in the car. Mom & Dad sat up front to eat, while Sis and I set up a makeshift table in the rear window's dash.

Anyway, now I work in an urban setting and live in a suburban one. Sometimes I pine for the rural way of life but then I remember the conveniences here I'd have to go without there (e.g., broadband, cell phone, dining and shopping within ten minutes of home) and realize I got it good right here.

So I settle for sitting on my deck with its illusion of privacy. If I look straight ahead I see my big yard, with trees and pasture beyond my chainlink fence. No looking to the left, where I'll see my neighbor's yard and storage buildings ... and no standing at the fence to look at the house. This would shatter the illusion.

[/babbling]

[quiet bear]

Anyway, now I work in an urban setting and live in a suburban one. Sometimes I pine for the rural way of life but then I remember the conveniences here I'd have to go without there (e.g., broadband, cell phone, dining and shopping within ten minutes of home) and realize I got it good right here.




These are some of exact things I enjoy most about living in the sticks. I'm fortunate enough to be in that blurry line between suburbs and rural life. Close enough to have access, but far enough away for privacy.

As far as the shopping, that, I think, is one of the most gratifying things, for me. When I shop, it's like insuring my survival. Granted, it's nowhere near that drastic, but it gives me a good feeling to carry all that stuff in the house, and store it. I'm no hunter, but I would say I get the same satisfaction by stocking my freezer with things I bought at Costcos, that a hunter gets when they stock a freezer with the food they went out and got on their own. It's a secure feeling. I don't think I'd have the same sense of accomplishment if I knew there was everything I need right at my fingertips.

[godfry n. glad]

Sometimes I wonder if there isn't some primal desire to relate to nature.

I was most taken while wandering the streets of Kyoto. This is a city which has been such for over a thousand years. Population has been a problem in the past. The land is intesively cultivated and people are enclosed in a high-density urban living situation. Yet, tucked into every third block or so was a lot that was a shinto shrine. But for care and the usual stone monuments (and occasional saki casks), the space was natural. It was greenery amidst some of the most intensively transformed human habitation in the world. It was Kyoto, not Tokyo. But still, I wonder at that. Such preservation of a past attachment.

Elsewhere, I've aired my fantasies of buying acreage and setting up an ass ranch. I've come to realize that I'm not really cut out for that. I like my creature comforts (a bow to Angakuk). I'd just like to live in a small city with a university. A college town.

[Angakuk]

I grew up in a suburb of San Diego, I have lived in, Berkeley, Oakland and Harbor City, Calif. and Phoenix, Ariz. I have also lived in a small North Dakota farm town, and an Alaskan Inupiat Village (both with populations under 300) and currently live on an acreage half way between a town of 50 and one of 2,000. My nearest neighbor lives right across the street, but that is still at least 100 yards distant. My next nearest neighbor is a good 1/4 mile away. It is about 70 miles to the nearest major metropolitan community (or what passes for such in the Midwest). I miss just four things about life in the city; bookstores, libraries, restaurants and bars with a decent selection of beer (what is it with all the Budweiser anyway?). I love the fact that I can't hear my neighbors arguing, don't have to hunt for parking spaces and that I know most of the folks in the room when I walk into one of the local diners. I am pretty much a cultural philistine, so I don't miss the museums and theaters. I have mostly gotten over my onetime urge to be a gentleman farmer, but one of the original attractions to life in the country was the chance to keep a couple of milk cows, raise my own beef and poultry and mess around on a tractor.

On the whole I would have to say that I prefer the rural to the urban lifestyle, but I believe that I could be content just about anywhere, so long as I am engaged in meaningful work. Lacking meaningful work and equipped with an independent income, I think I would like to live on the beach somewhere in Polynesia or Micronesia.

Angakuk

[wildernesse]

I grew up on a small part-time farm in a old railroad stop of a "town". Groceries, piano lessons, movies, etc. were all twenty minutes expressway drive away in a small city. My parents and brother still live there, on the same road where my grandmother and great-grandmother were born, in the house that my great-grandfather built. It's very Southern.

I love it there. If I stand in the middle of the road, watching woodpeckers with my binoculars, and so engrossed in them that I don't even hear the truck coming, the neighbors won't run me over. They might think I'm crazy, but they'd be used to that. There are lots of birds there--all kinds. My grandparents' land down the road is like a fairytale to me, because the cows keep the privet and whatnot down in the woods so it's like a park. There's always somewhere to go and something to look at (critters and dirt and plants and clouds), and all you have to do is open the door and run down the steps, out to the monkey-tree and down the road. The road is safe to ride on. You can have chickens, or donkeys, or cows, or anything! The world is wide open. And you have the place to yourself. The people who inhabit that world are known three and four generations deep. It is a good life.

I used to say when I was little that I could never bear to live in a neighborhood with a name--a subdivision. And yet I've lived in apartments, townhouses, and duplexes, with people piled all on top of each other for all of my adult life. I don't like it really--I do feel fenced in. Suburbia isn't really for me, you can't leave your house and be somewhere--you're just in front of someone else's house. Strangers. You have to get in your car to go anywhere--to ride a bike, to go to a park, to be under tall trees. If you go outside to do something, there are always people there. At least they forgot the street light on my road so, while you feel as if the juveniles could run up and mug you at night, at least you can see a good amount of stars while you fumble for your keys.

But, after living in Athens for a while, I know what I would miss if I moved away from a vibrant little city. Good restaurants. Odd to me art. Transit. Street festivals.

[Julie]

Strangly enough I live in both...I'm right on the edge. I live in an apartment building, if I look out the front I see farmland and beyond that wilderness vast tracts of untamed mountian forests.....If I turn my back to that I look over a small city. One that if you only knew where to look many would reconise. We are a very popular place for filming of movies and TV shows. Including Jakie Chans "rumble in the bronx" ...we are about as far from New York as you can get! But perfect for filming because you can be filming in a small town and at a farm all with in a 2 min drive from each other :)

[The Lone Ranger]

"I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on Earth."
-- Steve McQueen


Right now, I live at the edge of a college town. Not actually in the city (if Pullman counts as a city; I know most people probably wouldn't consider it to be one), but right on the edge. I'd far rather be living way out in the country.


I've lived in the country all my life. I was born in rural Maine, grew up on a farm in North Carolina, and have never actually lived in a city. (I lived on the outskirts of Greensboro, North Carolina during college, though.) It's nice to have a city within convenient driving distance -- for movies, museums, etc. -- but I most-definitely have no desire whatsoever to live in a city.

My "dream home" is a farmhouse tucked in a wooded valley somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains. I'd spend my days puttering around in the garden and roaming in the woods. At night, I'd lie back and watch the stars and the fireflies while listening to the crickets and the whip-poor-wills.


I would never willingly live in a city -- any city.




Sometimes I wonder if there isn't some primal desire to relate to nature.
The biologist E. O. Wilson has proposed what he calls the "Biophilia Hypothesis." He argues that humans have an "instinctive" need for living things around them, and that one of the reasons people living in big cities tend to have much higer stress levels than people living more more suburban or rural areas is because they don't get enough "nature" in their lives.

He claims that "instinctive" need is one reason why so many people insist on having green lawns even if they live in the middle of the desert, why they like to have plants in their homes, and why they like to have pets.


Cheers,

Michael

[curses]

I live in the 'burbs. If anything, I wish I lived in a more urban environment. I'd like to live in a larger city than Atlanta. When visiting places like New York and London, I found it quite nice to be able to walk everywhere. Wanna see a movie? Walk 4 blocks, catch the Metro, then another few blocks to the theater. I like being in large crowds most of the time. People both horrify and fascinate me. I like the abundance of choices for everything. I like the structures; the architecture. Most of all, I like to be constantly doing and going..

I'm also first generation urban dweller in the family. Mom and her siblings were born on a farm in Glennville, GA. She moved to the city to work when she was in her late 20s. Perhaps I have an underlying desire to move as far away from those roots as possible? Who knows.

[TomJoe]

I grew up in THE big city, NYC. A driveway separated our house from the one to the left, and a 3 foot wide alley separated us from the other one. Lived like that until I was 13. Then my folks moved "upstate", to Orange County (about 45 miles north) and we had two neighbors within a half mile of either direction of us.

I liked having my friends so close by when I was in NYC, but the streets were tough, and I was as likely to get into a fight as I was to find my way into a game of stickball. Usually the fights came first. I wasn't too sad to leave the city, and having several acres of wooded area behind my house was more fun than I could have imagined growing up in the concrete jungle.

To this day, I take friends (taking my girlfriend this winter) to NYC because they've never been ... but I do it because I take them to all the places I like (Museum of Natural History, FAO Schwartz, Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick's Cathedral). The city, nice place to visit ... wouldn't want to live there ever again. When I finally get the money to buy a house, I'll live well outside city limits. I'll gladly pay the extra money in gas to commute (or if I get lucky, I'll live in a southern state and I can get a motorcycle to ride into work on) if it means that at the end of the day, I can go home, sit on a swinging bench with my honey and see the stars.

[Plant Woman]

We moved out to a somewhat rural area 8 years ago. We are 10 minutes from a small town and a ferry boat away from the larger city of Seattle. From our neighborhood beach we can see the Seattle skyline and that is as close as I want to be. I live in a neighborhood, behind me there are woods. We tried to buy the 1/2 lots next door to us but builders had the inside scoop on them and we were to late. They mowed the trees down and buildt houses. The one house is a problem for us and we had to move our bedroom to the other end of the house, because of their noise pollution all hours of the night. So we may look for another place eventually.

[Dingfod]

My first four years were on a farm, farm life was all my father ever knew up until then. My mother had lived most of her life in the nearest town of about 1,500 people until marrying my dad and living in the three-room farmhouse. From age 5 to adulthood, we mostly lived in suburbs of cities, both large and small. Several times lived literally on the edge of suburbia, on an acre north of Wichita, at the last house at the end of the last street in Phillips, Texas (now a ghost town), in a two block wide subdivision in the middle of a pasture on the Yates Ranch 3 miles from town. My whole life I dreamed of living out in the country.

In adulthood, I chose to live in places as close to the country as I could get, a mobile home on a hill 3-1/2 miles from town, two houses away from the edge of a town of 300 people, an apartment complex out in the country, a mobile home park at the edge of a town of 1,200 people in Wyoming (moose and deer seen across the hayfield next to us), in a town of 600 people in a very rural part of Colorado (whole county only had 1,500 population). Then for reasons that escape me now, I got the idea to move to the city, Salt Lake City, where we lived in suburbs of that city for 10 years before moving to a golf course subdivision out in a rural county 30 miles west of Salt Lake City.

When the opportunity came up to move to Oklahoma in 2000, we seized the chance to take advantage of the lower cost real estate and bought five acres just 10 miles out of downtown Tulsa. We are clearly out in the country, but close enough to run into to the city to shop, go out to eat or the movies, etc. However, if left completely up to me, if I were to win the lottery or come into a large inheritance, I'd probably buy large ranch in rural Wyoming or Montana and build a house right smack in the middle of it.

[quiet bear]

However, if left completely up to me, if I were to win the lottery or come into a large inheritance, I'd probably buy large ranch in rural Wyoming or Montana and build a house right smack in the middle of it.


Ding, this is exactly where my mind wanders when I think of where I'd be happiest.

To be able to ride a horse for two days in any direction and not see another human being. Bliss.


Oh, and I went to Muskogee once, for work. It was March, I believe, and incredibly hot, compared to Delaware for that time of year. I mentioned something to the woman who was leading us, saying something like "Heck, it's summer here already!"

She just shrugged and said "Oh, it's not hot yet. It doesn't get really hot until tornado season."

Apparently, it's no big deal, if it's just a part your your life. I couldn't imagine it. LOL.

[godfry n. glad]

I think it has to do with to what one is acclimated. I suspect most people can eventually acclimate to whatever climate in which they spend a couple of years.

I find the midwest, mid-Atlantic and southern states all relatively humid, but that's because how it seems to me. I'm used to it being dry when it's warm for extended periods. Muggy days, usually transient, are fairly few.

I think I'm more averse to the warm humidity, more than the warm temperatures. I think it would be easier for me to acclimate to a dry warm climate than a wet one.

[Dingfod]

Personally, I prefer a dry cool climate, like that of the parts of Wyoming and Colorado that I lived in.

[godfry n. glad]

I can see that, but I like trees. I guess I'm arboreal. Trees rather presume a level of transpiration, and thus, moisture in the air. Not to mention in the soil, too. I live very, very near a temperate rain forest.

[Dingfod]

There were trees where I lived in Wyoming and Colorado. Elms, cottonwoods and willows along the streams, scrub oaks, pines and aspen on the mountainsides.

[Penni]

I agree with minus. I think the urban environment is stimulating, convenient and more responsible than suburban and rural. My ideal is that we would all live in very urban environments and preserve vast swaths of urban and rural landscape for enjoyment. I say this because I like to go enjoy that type of landscape, but not to live and toil day-to-day in it. I live in San Diego, which is pretty urban, but as an avid backpacker, I enjoy vacations in the wilderness of the Sierras where you may not run into another soul for a couple of days, no matter how far your feet take you. And you know what? I wouldn't like it 1/10 as well if I lived that way. I love it because it is different than my work life and day to day life. Because I have to struggle with inconveniences I don't normally face that would become overwhelmingly frustrating if faced every day of my life. Because it is so beautiful that I would hate to ever become bored by it (which I would since I am an impatient person). By not living in it, I ensure that when I visit it, it's like a special gift of pleasure and pain that I can fully enjoy.

But in my everyday life, where I need to make sure I'm making money and paying bills and getting to community meetings, etc., I would like to live in an even more urban city than San Diego, where I truly could walk everywhere I needed to be, and never even think about owning one of those hateful machines called cars.

Now, the only other advancement I need to be perfectly happy is to be able to transport myself from my urban environment to rural in a flash. I hate spending 5 or more hours getting between the two. Oh, and probably needless to say, the suburbs have no place whatsoever in my ideal.

[ceptimus]

There are urban myths but I've not heard the term 'rural myths'. I suppose there are some (bigfoot?) but the term isn't applied.

[Beth]

Wouldn't they be called folk tales or stories?

[Puck]

I'm way out in the middle of a cotton field. In a 100+ year old farm house. And I'm happy as can be. I can see 10 miles away from my little rise in the land. The dirt road when it is very dusty gets me a little crabby, but I wouldn't be anywhere else than here. Well, maybe a tropical island, but I'm not rich enough.

Like wildernesse, I can walk outside and see no one. If the wind is just right, sometimes I can hear my neighbors, but they are rather loud folks. I can sit on the back porch and see Deer. There is a Bobcat that makes it's route around here, and we've spent close to an hour watching her hunt, or lounge about in the shade, the shade of the tree right outside of the window. Bunnies galore. Birds of every kind that the South has to offer. Including Hummingbirds. And hawks. That the little green parrot that lives with me freaks out over when it is near the house. And owls in the barn on a winters night, going whoo-whoo-hoo, hoo, hoo.

The stars. OMFG, the stars. So many that you think surely the sky should be humming with the energy of them.

And we have crop dusters. That fly so close to the house that I can wave to the pilot. When he swoops up over the house, the leaves in the pecan trees whoosh from his downdraft. When he flys level across the back side of the house, he's only about 20 feet from the ground! When the wind is right, I stand outside and watch him in amazement.

Who needs pizza delivery, when you have all that?

[Plant Woman]

No kidding!

And we have crop dusters. That fly so close to the house that I can wave to the pilot. When he swoops up over the house, the leaves in the pecan trees whoosh from his downdraft. When he flys level across the back side of the house, he's only about 20 feet from the ground! When the wind is right, I stand outside and watch him in amazement.

That reminds me of a scrumptious work by Annie Dillard that I just finished reading, called The Writer's Life. One section she tells a story about a stunt pilot, she quotes a crop−duster pilot in Wyoming: “[He] told me the life expectancy of a crop−duster pilot is five years. They fly too low. They hit buildings and power lines...”[/i] She asks a crop duster how long has he been crop dusting, 6 years I believe was his answer. It stood out because all the times we watch them take off from a short grass field and it amazed me how they did that, because the other end was a dike to keep flood waters off the field. I always thought they would hit it.

Thanks for reminding me, because I borrowed the book and gave it back, I want a copy of it to read again and again.

[The Lone Ranger]

It can be really impressive to watch the crop dusters going over the rolling hills of the Palouse. Time and time again, I've watched those guys skimming just over the ground, only to pull up at the very last instant to avoid a power line or some such thing.


No doubt about it; those guys are some of the most skilled -- and daring -- pilots around.


Cheers,

Michael

[Dingfod]

One thing that always puzzles me is why city people that move out into the country end up complaining about things that normally go on out in the country, like this Nebraska man does about his neighbor's miniature horses (http://www.wowt.com/news/features/6/3480397.html). Not only has he complained about the manure smell, he has allegedly shot the little fellows with a pellet gun to make them go to the other end of the pasture. What an assbutt-hole.

[Beth]

One thing that always puzzles me is why city people that move out into the country end up complaining about things that normally go on out in the country, like this Nebraska man does about his neighbor's miniature horses (http://www.wowt.com/news/features/6/3480397.html). Not only has he complained about the manure smell, he has allegedly shot the little fellows with a pellet gun to make them go to the other end of the pasture. What an assbutt-hole.
Oh, how awful! I know. The country takes some adjusting to and I think that some people never adjust. I know that a lot of people move to the country to escape congestion and because they think it is a better place to raise kids.

We live in the country, country enough for my county. Land is running between fifty (for undeveloped) and a two hundred thou an acre out here because, see, we really aren't country, but we still have the cow pastures and large lot zoning laws. Unfortunately, the orange groves and pastures are getting developed at a fast pace.

[Angakuk]

Mark says out of frustration he used a pellet gun to try and scare the horses back up the pasture but the animal owners say he used that pellet gun to shoot at the horses."

Neighbor Darlys Kopisch says, "I seen him point the gun and after it popped, the horses bolted."

Dr. Janulewicz says, "No, I've not hurt these animals and I really don't want to hurt these animals. It's not my goal. I just don't want the horse manure right out my back yard."
How do you frighten horses with a pellet gun unless you aim to hit them? The noise is sure not going to do it. Maybe he thinks it doesn't hurt horses to be hit with a itty bitty old pellet gun. Idiot!

Moving out to the country and complaining about horse manure is like moving next to an airport and complaining about the noise the planes make.

[Dingfod]

Moving out to the country and complaining about horse manure is like moving next to an airport and complaining about the noise the planes make.I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but people do make that into a big issue. At this very time, Tulsa International Airport and the FAA are wrapping up a sound abatement program here that involved buying quite a few homes outright and equipping others with better insulation and double or triple-glazed windows.

Then there's the people who buy homes near the freeway and complain about the traffic noise enough so that the government puts up sound barrier walls just to shut them the hell up. Whiners.

[Beth]

I remember having a chance to buy a gorgeous home that was near the railroad tracks. It was so beautiful, an old Florida two-story style with columns on the front porch, and it had such a gorgeous yard and the price was very affordable. But we decided that there was no way that we could live with the noise.

[Angakuk]

Ding,
I wasn't being sarcastic, I was being serious. I know that people make those kinds of complaints and I think it is just plain stupid. Look before you buy. In the Nebraska case, if there were no horses in the pasture when the guy bought the place, he may just have a point. However, there was a pasture there and, in the countryside, it is not unusual for pastures to have livestock in them. The situation could have been reasonably anticipated.

[godfry n. glad]

This is why we are urged to love our neighbors and to love our enemies.

They are often the same people.

Before deciding on a place to live, one should always take possibilities into consideration. Pasturage is pasturage. It's probably been partially cleared to accomodate pasturage. It was pasturage prior to the complantant ever lived near it. If it's zoned to allow grazing of livestock, then it can be reasonably expected.

[Puck]

Hey, I didn't move in next to an elementary school. I hate the noise of kids. Why would I do that? I'd be an idiot to buy a house next to a grade school and then expect the kids to start being quiet.

Some people are just idiots by nature.