Rural development

[Carrie12345]

Ever thought about running for local government? :D

 

Lol. Yes, actually!  I could have made a fair go of it in this year's primaries, but decided I need to learn more first.  Unfortunately, my time has been eaten up by other unexpected things, so I may hold out longer than I planned. Maybe once the youngest two kids are 10 and 14ish and the rest are adults.

[wendy not in HI]

We live in a fairly small town, though it is the big city for much smaller towns all around us.  Recently my son and I drove to a big city about 6 hours from home.  There were only a few teeny tiny towns to stop in on the way.  We were excited to find a little bakery to stop in for a snack and bathroom break.  It was adorable.  All of the tables were different and cute with funky colored chairs.  One table had been a cute old door (with a big piece of glass over the whole thing to make the top smooth) it was painted a fun blue color.  I was so glad we stopped.  We bought a cinnamon roll for the road.

 

And it was terrible!  Awful!  dry and uncooked, but also doughy.  I mean, how do you mess that up??  And especially disappointing since it was the only little town for hours, so it's not like we had the opportunity to stop somewhere else for a snack...

 

So, having a nice place to stop in the middle of no-where is a good thing.  Having terrible baked goods at a bakery means I will never stop there again.  Which is too bad!!  If I lived in that little town I would open a bakery across the street and bake the most amazing cinnamon rolls...

 

 

[Rosie_0801]

Lol. Yes, actually!  I could have made a fair go of it in this year's primaries, but decided I need to learn more first.  Unfortunately, my time has been eaten up by other unexpected things, so I may hold out longer than I planned. Maybe once the youngest two kids are 10 and 14ish and the rest are adults.

 

Nah, if you can speak persuasively, you jump in and learn after. 

 

Go for it. :D

[Rosie_0801]

We live in a fairly small town, though it is the big city for much smaller towns all around us.  Recently my son and I drove to a big city about 6 hours from home.  There were only a few teeny tiny towns to stop in on the way.  We were excited to find a little bakery to stop in for a snack and bathroom break.  It was adorable.  All of the tables were different and cute with funky colored chairs.  One table had been a cute old door (with a big piece of glass over the whole thing to make the top smooth) it was painted a fun blue color.  I was so glad we stopped.  We bought a cinnamon roll for the road.

 

And it was terrible!  Awful!  dry and uncooked, but also doughy.  I mean, how do you mess that up??  And especially disappointing since it was the only little town for hours, so it's not like we had the opportunity to stop somewhere else for a snack...

 

So, having a nice place to stop in the middle of no-where is a good thing.  Having terrible baked goods at a bakery means I will never stop there again.  Which is too bad!!  If I lived in that little town I would open a bakery across the street and bake the most amazing cinnamon rolls...

 

Aww. Give them the benefit of the doubt and write them a letter praising them for their cuteness, expressing sadness over the roll and tell them if they promise to work on their cinnamon roll technique you'll try them again next time you're going through instead of passing them by in pursuit of cinnamon roll heaven.

[Carol in Cal.]

Hospital deserts are getting bigger in the US:  http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/health/hospital-deserts/index.html

[Rosie_0801]

Thanks for the book recs. The Janesville story was a bit of a tear jerker.  :crying:

[luuknam]

Other reasons for traveling to/through rural areas: solar eclipses.  :coolgleamA:

[Frances]

Hospital deserts are getting bigger in the US: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/health/hospital-deserts/index.html

The ACA was a huge boon for rural hospitals in my state. They went from bleeding money to being profitable, as there was a huge increase in the number of insuranced patients when the state expanded Medicaid coverage. They are also an important source of good paying jobs with benefits. Ironically, the representative from the very rural eastern part of the state and the only R serving at the national level, was one of the chief architects of the plan to undo the ACA.

[TravelingChris]

We were on vacation for the last 10 days and we spent one day in a town that a local was telling us is dying because too many older people don't want to let any industries in. All his children left the small town and he says that almost all the kids do after they graduate since there really aren't any jobs for them there.  In my state, there are a number of small towns that are doing fine- often because they have access to a natural resource like the Tennessee River.  One town near me is getting a Google server site (it needed water) and another town has many manufacturers that also need water including rocket manufacturing, Now in a further away area, a town that had a paper mill that closed is dying.  No other industry wanted to move in and the town is about to declare bankruptcy and probably stop being a town.  Some other areas in my state have done well with attracting auto manufacturers since my state is a Right to Work state (meaning no one can be forced to be in a union).  Towns that don;t have industry that are doing well have something going on tourist wise.  Not necessarily tourism in general.  One town that we visited on our vacation proudly announces that they are home to a bird sanctuary and apparently they get a lot of birders who come there.  Other towns have other interests.  As someone said up thread, outlet malls are popular with a segment of the population.  As we found out by getting into a traffic jam, sports events like NASCAR (a type of car racing) attract lots of people.  As do music festivals, balloon festivals, fishing contests, etc, etc.  Lots of people we know travel to various festivals and events. 

One thing that has my state and many others are doing is making brochures with trails (we have birding ones, golf ones, civil war ones, 100 best dishes in our state one, gardens one, scenic trails, etc).  Getting information out about your town's offerings is very important especially if you have something others are interested in.  It can be anything from a great place to do some sport or activity to a place with dark skies to a town full of X plant.  And some little things just make a place so much more appealing.  Like the airport in Nashville TN is so much nicer than the airports in LV and Salt Lake City-----not only does it look better but it has plugs available by almost every seat so you can recharge your phone while you are waiting.  Or the towns that have a nice walking trail by a river or creek or lake.

 

[MommyLiberty5013]

Why are the towns so far apart? The area is still farmland? Or wasteland no one could live on?

 

Here, an hour and a half commute is fairly normal, but 100 miles is more than that.

 

 

The US doesn't seem to have much public transport either. We have a reasonable regional train network. Not perfect, by any stretch, but it provides options.

The towns sprung up in the 1700s on the east coast and pressed westward through the 1800s. I think if we dug back into history and geography, people settled where there was water (mostly) as the US at one time was primarily an agricultural nation (it still very much is). People also settled and built towns wherever the US Army set up posts (forts) out west. They serviced the forts with business and were generally protected too.

 

As for uninhabitable land in the US, our Rocky Mountains are very tough for large cities, which is why all the towns in them are tourist/ski towns. Some places are just arid desert. Other places are swamps or too low lying to build upon.

 

But a sizeable portion of the US (which people on the coasts call 'fly over territory') is mostly agricultural (corn, soybeans, livestock, wheat, etc.).

 

Our big cities have public transport. Plus things like Uber are hugely popular. Many big cities on the coasts are connected by passenger trains. There is a national rail line called Amtrak, but it's just honestly faster and easier to fly. The country being so big...planes make sense.

[Carol in Cal.]

Thanks for the book recs. The Janesville story was a bit of a tear jerker.  :crying:

What IS it about that one?

I have read so many harrowing political books lately but for some reason that particular one had me actually sobbing, which is not true of any of the others.  I think maybe it was the evocative, understated, devastating style.

[MommyLiberty5013]

I live in a small township of only 280 residences in rural MN. We have bylaws against any development other than Ag or residential. And the residential can only be one home per a certain number of acres.

 

We also permit schools or churches (or other religious buildings). But that's it.

 

And we love it. I don't want mini malls, subdivisions, or anything obstructing our view of the rolling hills and corn fields across our dirt road.

 

Other townships in the US have those same options too. Many Americans enjoy the non-city life.

[Rosie_0801]

What IS it about that one?

I have read so many harrowing political books lately but for some reason that particular one had me actually sobbing, which is not true of any of the others.  I think maybe it was the evocative, understated, devastating style.

 

Abandoned teenagers ranks pretty high on my list of things worth sobbing about.

 

 

Strange book though, I feel like I was led just to the edge of how the neo-cons acquire space, but then the record skipped, leaving me feeling like the key was left out. (Thinking about my own national context more than yours.)

[Rosie_0801]

I live in a small township of only 280 residences in rural MN. We have bylaws against any development other than Ag or residential. And the residential can only be one home per a certain number of acres.

 

We also permit schools or churches (or other religious buildings). But that's it.

 

And we love it. I don't want mini malls, subdivisions, or anything obstructing our view of the rolling hills and corn fields across our dirt road.

 

Other townships in the US have those same options too. Many Americans enjoy the non-city life.

 

So it is work in agriculture, the school, medical centre, grocery shop or pub, or move away? 

 

How does such a town avoid dying out as the kids move away? Or do you retain enough children to maintain the population and services?

[Frances]

So it is work in agriculture, the school, medical centre, grocery shop or pub, or move away?

 

How does such a town avoid dying out as the kids move away? Or do you retain enough children to maintain the population and services?

I grew up in rural IA and the key there seems to be keeping at least one school in order to attract young families. Even when small districts merge, each town will fight to have at least one school. My home state is quite different than my current state, as the former has many, many small towns spread quite evenly throughout the very agricultural state. While the latter also is very ag dependent in places, population is very concentrated in the west and very sparse in the east, where much of the land is owned by the federal government.

[MommyLiberty5013]

So it is work in agriculture, the school, medical centre, grocery shop or pub, or move away?

 

How does such a town avoid dying out as the kids move away? Or do you retain enough children to maintain the population and services?

We're rural but connected via state highways to bigger cities (35 miles from St Paul the state's capital). So aside from the farmers here, people work elsewhere. We pay taxes to our township, but they pay a local town for fire and ambulance services. Our county sheriff's department handles our law enforcement. We pay taxes in a local other town too for school district use.

 

The town won't "die" out. As long as farmers farm or the land owners rent their farms to be farmed, there will be people here.

 

Many towns here share stuff like fire, ambulance, LE, schools, road maintenance, snow removal.

Edited August 28, 2017 by MommyLiberty5013

[Carrie12345]

I grew up in rural IA and the key there seems to be keeping at least one school in order to attract young families. Even when small districts merge, each town will fight to have at least one school. My home state is quite different than my current state, as the former has many, many small towns spread quite evenly throughout the very agricultural state. While the latter also is very ag dependent in places, population is very concentrated in the west and very sparse in the east, where much of the land is owned by the federal government.

 

I kind of wish my area had done the "town" school thing.  I've learned a little history about our area 1-room school houses. Some of them were operating into the 1940s.  There was lots of consolidating, moving, and shifting through the 50s, 60s, and 70s.  We eventually wound up with one district pulling from over 300 square miles.  They added more buildings, but not in the less densely populated townships like mine.

 

In a way, I suppose it's a good thing.  My township's kids/families are solidly connected to the surrounding townships, which is obviously necessary.  "Natives" are just as likely to relocate around the general region as "transplants" are.  Founding family names are scattered all over the place.  I think they've been doing that forever, based on the tombstones I've seen across lots of townships.

 

Like I've mentioned before, the boom here wasn't really a positive thing for the area. While I am a part of the tail end of that boom, I think it probably would have been better, for the most part, without it.