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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

For a lot of people, "45 minutes by car to get to a city of any real size" is very much in the middle of nowhere.

Branford is within 15 minutes of Piqua and Greensville which are both mid-sized towns that have everything you need for everyday life, and a lot of what you'd want. To me that is much more relevant than how far it is to a large city, which you would be visiting much less frequently. 15 minutes is a normal commuting time within a city, so not really the middle of nowhere.

Those people very badly need some perspective, then. That is not remotely the middle of nowhere.

It just depends on your perspective.

Honestly, Americans are probably more tolerant and accepting of long distances compared to most peer countries. 45 minutes of driving to hit some kind of city is very far most of the time in Japan or most of Europe, where the population density is higher than the states.

Growing up in the UK, 45 minutes was about the ‘if we’re going there in the evening we’re going to need to get a hotel’ boundary. Now I live in the US it’s a short drive.

It’s amazing how perspective changes. If you haven’t experienced it I suspect it’s impossible to understand, because this feels crazy to write. It’s true though.

that again depends on where you are in Europe... in most of Germany you're right. large parts of Norway Sweden Finland? not so much...

It is probably true that in a majority of those land areas (Finland, Sweden, Norway) you are more than 45 minutes of driving from the next proper city.

However, the proportion of people who live like that is not very high. People mostly live where other people live.

Northern canada on the other hand is a very different story.

and yet plenty of people have a commute _within_ the city that is longer than that

Oh for sure, but they're still 'somewhere' while commuting.

I would so much prefer an hour on a rural highway over an hour stuck in city traffic!

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