It turns out that you can do rural spaces bad too. Rural sprawl!
https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Settlement-patterns
In reality, the industrial revolution and especially the Green Revolution have ended the rural economy and, with that, the rural society. These places will remain unsustainable, nonviable, slowly dying as people try to move away for better lives or as they remain stuck, dependent on some corrupt local politicians and leaders.
It’s a simple matter: once a couple of people with lots of cool machines and work vast tracts of land, the rest of the people in the area become useless.
Rural spaces are, currently, in a transient situation.
If the industrial economy collapses, then, yes, rural spaces will be great again.
I’m not trying to promote some false dichotomy, this is the economy and the people stuck in rural places are usually worse off - and that’s for a reason. They will never be better off in this context, it is not happening.
So, instead of trying to prop up a dying place, help the people migrate. End the subsidized fantasy and end the sunk cost loop.
You’re not wrong at all.
But this is basically as radical of a suggestion as banning cars lol. We’d have to have affordable housing, jobs, social services, food and resources, etc. available for those trying to migrate into cities. Most US cities don’t even have those things for the people that already live there - almost always due to NIMBY regulations with some good old fashion bigotry mixed in.
We would basically have to first see a massive change in governance trends before this could be doable.
Of course, this is entirely ignoring the cultural challenges.
We would basically have to first see a massive change in governance trends before this could be doable.
I guess you can wait until the economic ponzi game ends for those places and people abandon it:
- infrastructure decay, no repairs
- cars break down more, good luck paying for repairs
- speed drops necessarily
- no chance that fuel is decreasing in price, whether it’s fossil juice or whatever the electricity is coming from
As people give in* and leave, this decay accelerates as the measly taxes cover even less of the required maintenance.
The politics people are avoiding now will be orders of magnitude worse when it comes time to do bailouts.
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