The typical urbanite attitude seems to be that everything outside the city should be untouched, pristine wilderness which exists only for their occasional amusement when they feel like hiking, camping or bike riding.
The Suburbanites are the real problem. Urban Sprawl. And of course it isn't the people themselves who are at fault. They have no choice. It's the idiotic way we've developed around cars. This was only ever considered a good idea to begin with because the Auto/Oil industry pushed it thru propaganda and lobbying; and now it's sunken into people brains.
Surely more people die by vehicle traffic accident, cancer or respiratory issues than accidentally being infected by manure?
1. When you develop new stuff like a suburban neighborhood or one of those roads that has fast food restaurants and gas stations on it that are copy pasted all over our country, you get money from various different sources.
2. Federal > State > Local all fund this based on the idea that it's an overall good thing to develop stuff. So the Local cost is a small fraction of the total.
3. Cool. It's built now and once stuff is built then that's it right? No.
4. Maintenance. This doesn't rear its head until around 10-15 years later. Federal, and maybe State, have nothing to do with this cost. The Locals are responsible. OK! Well lets take all that month the new development made us and maintain it... But wait... the taxes don't even cover the costs. That McDonalds doesn't actually generate that much for the Local gov due to the ENORMOUS amount of space it takes up with a parking lot. Those Suburbia taxes won't even replace the roads.
5. Ponzy. Welp we gotta get money from somewhere.... So we build MORE Suburbia and MORE giant parking lot fast food restaurants, take that lump sum from Federal/State funds, use part of that to maintain our existing debt, and kick the can.
This is who pays for Suburbia. The only places that generate a net positive for a Local gov are city center-ish types. You know that nice little shopping area that has lots of different food/shop options that people flock to to walk around. That's probably net positive. That downtown Main St zone of a small city that's mostly dead now? Believe it or not even THAT is probably still net positive. The ugly road littered with nothing but shit food and gas stations? Paid for by the above. The asphalt hellscape with dots of corporate feed troughs (Applebees, Longhorn, Olive Garden, etc)? Paid for by the above unless they circle a shopping mall that covers them.
*The other guy seems to have deleted his post that this was responding to
Feel as irked as you want about it, you're free to continue whatever lifestyle you please, but the ecological footprint of rural living is an order of magnitude higher than that of urban living. Rural living, outside those with careers in agriculture, is not scalable or sustainable.
> Rural living, outside those with careers in agriculture, is not scalable or sustainable.
I have no idea what you mean by this. Everyone outside of the city isn't a rancher or farmer. Ag is a huge industry with a lot of opportunity, but not the only game in town.
If you're talking about population density, we could easily double the number of people in my area with very little change in observable density. In the sq mile that I live there is only one other family.
Combine remote work with low property taxes and lower real estate values, living in a rural area is increasingly attractive and makes a hell of a lot of sense to those interested in that lifestyle.
Ugh...
I want to assume the best about comments like this, but what is the point of citing this metric without context? It just feels like the only point is shaming and virtue signaling.
And the reason it is more expensive to live in a city is because more people find it more attractive to live there. That, and that fuel is subsidised and agrarian roads are disproportionally paid by taxpayers.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great...
> > Rural living, outside those with careers in agriculture, is not scalable or sustainable.
> I have no idea what you mean by this.
It was an attempt to explain how rural living is not scalable or sustainable. Maybe you do understand how unsustainable carbon emissions are, especially in terms of the rural versus urban footprint. I don't know.
But he asks why rural living? I have to question that too. The thing I love most about rural living is everything is right there. I can literally watch my food being grown, my electricity being produced (wind turbines), etc. just by looking out the window. I only need a vehicle like once a month. My feet get me to anything else I would need on a day-to-day basis.
Meanwhile, all I ever hear from city dwellers is how their whole world is coming to and end because they don't have the best transit known to man. And, based on my time living in a city, I get it. You can't hardly live a day without needing access to some kind of vehicle in the city. There is nothing in your backyard except more people. Granted, some cities have better planning – putting jobs, and services, etc. in your backyard – but, especially in North America, that is rare.
As such, it is counterintuitive to hear that rural living is the more carbon emitting option.
I don't have anything beyond anecdata here, but this is wildly out of sync with my perception of how most people who live in rural areas live. That is, what you're describing, I think, goes beyond what most people consider "rural". Yes, it's possible to live a relatively low-carbon rural existence if you're in a nearly entirely self-sustaining compound, but lots of (most?) people who aren't "urbanites" don't do that - they instead, routinely, drive vast distances on a near-daily basis to go to the store, secure healthcare, visit friends, head to the bar, go hiking/hunting/fishing, just for fun, etc.
Practically speaking, you will have go to the store at some point, but near-daily seems unusual. What could you possibly need that frequently that you wouldn't stock up on?
> visit friends
Traditionally, your neighbours become your 'regular' friends. You likely visit other friends from time to time, but when they are at a distance it isn't going to be a daily thing. It is actually quite challenging to stay in close contact with friends when they are not immediately nearby. In fact, there was an article posted here recently about exactly that.
> go hiking/hunting/fishing
Are those not the pastimes that rural backyards are best suited for? I know some who like to travel to other parts of the world to hunt/fish different species not found locally, but that's an infrequent vacation, not something done on the regular.
> this is wildly out of sync with my perception of how most people who live in rural areas live.
Is your perception based on living rurally? I get the impression from your comment that you see rural residents living exactly like city residents do, only differing by having to drive to the city each day. There may be someone who does that, but generally I find it is a different lifestyle.
Anyway, anecdata aside: Google shows that the states with the highest per capita carbon emissions do tend to be states with lower urbanization rates. Montana, for instance, is the fifth least urbanized state and the sixth highest polluter per capita.
https://solarpower.guide/solar-energy-insights/states-ranked...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/mapping-us-urbanization-...
But that's due to industry, no? Agriculture and forestry alone count for ~20% of all carbon emissions. And getting those goods into the urban areas means shipping, which is another major contributor.
Even in more populace states, power generation typically happens in rural areas. Landfills are located in rural areas. Even large factories, even when they employ city-based workers, are quite often located in rural areas.
On balance, there isn't much that happens in large urban areas other than a whole lot of moving people around with machines (which seems completely ridiculous) and commercial business operations, which is not insignificant with respect to carbon emissions, but only about 6% of total emissions.
Basic household living probably isn't much different either way.
It's just a way of re-framing the carbon problem away from those actually responsible for it and turn it into to a battle between folks arguing who is more virtuous.
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Thought experiment:
What if we removed the "people" from the problem and just looked at the geographic area?
Does a rural 10 square mile produce as much GHG as an urban 10 square mile?
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When you analyze it based on personal carbon footprint you are ignoring business and industry and focusing on residential.
This is by design, so those responsible aren't even included in the equation.
That said green belts are great for stopping urban sprawl. They don't extend indefinitely though and they certainly don't uproot existing small towns/villages.