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Comment by paulddraper | Hacker News Reader

It's inexorable due to increasing urbanization.

More people want to live next to more people.

No. Many people want to live somewhere they can get decent Internet connectivity and public services, and probably also some job they can survive off of.

Neither are present in many rural areas and the amount of investment needed especially for infra to catch up is enormous - too much for governments facing a tax competition to rock bottom.

IDK about what level of "public services" are needed, but rural or rural-ish locations often have broadband connectivity, and are arguable easier to earn a living wage due to the low cost of living.

I lived in Provo (college town, 50 miles south of Salt Lake City) a few years ago. Had Google Fiber, lots of jobs, and houses for <$200k.

People want to live next to other people.

I grew up in Orem. Provo is not small or an example of most rural towns. Provo is incredibly progressive given the local church culture and university. I live in rural Iowa and broadband internet and the issue of low-education and long standing segregation have caused exactly the same issues of a depressed economy in our 5,000 people community. The laws of small numbers make it very difficult to succeed in big numbers capitalism.

Unless it's immediately adjacent to other communities, 5,000 total population is indeed very rural. I've also lived in Belfair, WA which is <4,000 and isolated. [1].

The fiftieth largest high school stadium in Texas seats more than 2x that number. [2]

Yellowstone National Park staffs that many people during the summer. [3]

So, yeah, that's small.

I understand why actually rural communities are popular for only a few people. But there's a lot that available between 10 people/sqmi farmland and NY/LA/DC/SF/Chicago metro area. Yet, big cities are still exploding. Because people like them.

[1] https://suburbanstats.org/population/washington/how-many-peo...

[2] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-largest-high-school-...

[3] https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/parkfacts.htm

  the amount of investment needed especially for infra to catch up is enormous

Only if you see hardwire (e.g.fiber) as necessary. 4+G provides sufficient speeds now.

Much of the third world skipped ISDN/DSL/etc and went straight to mobile for data.

5G maybe, I can still see and feel the latency issues on German Telekom LTE network.

Any 4G/5G tower worth its salt requires digging for a fiber uplink, and that "long haul" is the expensive thing. The difference between linking up a cell tower and a village is not much.

So allow for greater density.

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