modern city life is bullshit. It's not organic. It's controlled by developers and politicians that hoard land and use their city's real estate as a store of value for oligarchs that don't live there.
Your local underground art & organizing space is part of a developer's plan to artwash a neighbourhood as part of their plan for gentrification.
Spend all day commuting and working and competing with consoomers that will do whatever it takes, compromise anything, just to stay in the city. All for what? Access to better bars + clubs for 2 hours of fun oblivion at the weekend? Access to theaters and galleries you don't have time to go to? Access to interesting people? Cafe life at the weekend or something?
fwiw, living rural is difficult if you've lived in a city for a long time. pay is much shittier, it's difficult to integrate, it's conservative. People are less open, imo. But the massive increase in time and agency must count for something. Please tell me it means something lol.
City life, as it's developed, is a tourist facade, and buying into it is supporting the ghouls that control the markets. The same ghouls that keep an apartment in the city, but would never live there.
I’m entirely convinced every perceived problem with cities is really just a problem with cars.
Also uniform building codes that make every new construction look exactly the same.
A good book on this is Capital City by Samuel Stein
Also, if you have property, suddenly property maintenance takes a chunk out of your extremely limited free time.
Live in a city and barely get by while working to death.
Live in the country and slowly die in poverty for lack of work and money.
Fucked either way. At least in the city i don’t need to use a car to get everywhere. But on the other hand at least in the country i can touch grass and have a room for a yard/garden/pets/animals/workspace/garage.
at least in the country i can touch grass and have a room for a yard/garden/pets/animals/workspace/garage.
That's basically it. Usually a lot more time and control over your life too. Or a feeling of more control.
Or a feeling of more control.
I'm coming in swinging because no, absolutely not, unless you go like full homestead off the grid soiar pannel subsistence farming.
As rural life currently is, you're dependent on the roads being kept intact, or you're fucked. You're dependant on Gas being cheap and available at all times, or you're fucked. If you're not off the grid, you're dependant on someone keeping miles and miles of expensive supply lines running for comparatively few people.
And sure, this works out okay currently, but putting trust that it will always be kept this way against all economical arguments in a capitalist society is more faith than trust.
Depends on if you have any money or not though right?
But yeah i see that. Autonomy.
Generally, you can live week to week easier in the country than the city, if you're motivated imo. There are people around here that have bought a small piece of land and live in temporary structures on it. Some of them are definitely realistic. Compared to the cost of years of city renting, or a mortgage, it's nothing. These are not bougie or educated people in any way. It's a different lifestyle, way less time working for someone else, much more free time. The free time will be occupied with chores and work though.
This isn't meant to be the hippie cult commune post tbh. I have urban fantasies every day lol.
Lol it's not. Everywhere is a husk and dying, your local arts scene is non-existent or incredibly insular, and everyone who is staying already has the next 5 years of their life planned out, and if they don't they are trying to move to the city.
If you live in the city you might not need a car. This makes it better than living anywhere else
Rural life means drunk driving every Saturday night because there’s no alternative transit infrastructure and your town is too small and shitty to have any ubers let alone a taxi service. The streets are scary after a certain hour out in the sticks. So yea the ability to walk home really sold me on city life
Of course, if you live in a city with bad or nonexistent transit services, you still have this problem, but worse.
In San Antonio, drunk drivers frequently got onto highways going the wrong direction. This happened so frequently that the city installed radar-activated flashing red lights onto the big, red, reflective "wrong way" signs that already existed. That seems worse than anything that happened back home, at least in terms of a policy response. But anecdotes aren't data. :shrug-outta-hecks:
I will fight this take on this site every single goddamn time it comes up. I dont own a car, and I dont need one. Beat that.
Americans don’t realize that not having a 2 ton hunk of metal chained to your leg is a genuine improvement on the quality of your life
its more financially reasonable to live in a city considered very expensive and not have a car than to live in a podunk shit hole and have a car.
even without gas its always something. Maintenance, I used to get speeding tickets a lot and those can really add up.
Dont delete your comment there was nothing wrong with it why
So this is just me and if you're in a rural area deliberately, I won't harsh your vibes. Some people dig nature and that's cool. I live in an urban area now after growing up in a rural area. I hate it but I hated my hometown even more, so there's gotta be some balance there. I only have to drive 30 minutes to work rather than driving over an hour to another town completely. Also 20% of my rural hometown died of covid both because of vaccine brainworms and poor access to healthcare (the nearest hospital is an hour's drive away and there are literally no ambulances). I'm glad I don't have a yard because I refuse to mow a lawn or do any sort of land maintenance for as long as I live.
Also I prefer the daily, dull overbearing threat here more than the more immediate panic threat I felt out there. In my hometown, there are just so many proud, overt, and visibly armed bigots. Confederate flags everywhere. People with bumper stickers on their giant stupid pickup trucks that say "Muslim hunting license". It's a horrifying atmosphere and I'm always on edge when I visit.
At least in the city I get a more honest overbearing threat, it's that of capitalism. "Work and consume or die you tiny disgusting insect" That's something I can at least make an attempt to confront. The most dangerous armed bigots here have the courtesy to wear a uniform and a badge with their name on it. Also there's a bus here...and sidewalks.
Western leftists on the internet, especially on this site and the lefty reddits, really romanticize rural life. Talking to my leftist nonbinary lesbian friend who literally grew up on a farm, it's way more hard work than any urbanites are prepared for. And the environment can be actively hostile to people who are different.
what job exactly am i going to get in the country that affords me time and agency? farm labor? or i'm going to move to a small town where i'm a complete alien but it's fine for some reason because there's nothing there worth gentrifying yet?
Woah, humanity? Disgusting. Get those unwashed masses away from me. I’m a socialist btw.
I moved to the city this year and it's the happiest I've been tbh. I think it's more to each their own
we love our ahistorical myth of independent rural rugged self-reliance don't we, folks? we love our idiocy of rural life
What the hell are you talking about commute time. People in rural areas spend way more time commuting to the nearest city they refuse to live in than urban residents.
Disagree. It’s one thing to commute from the suburbs or across neighborhoods to a city center. Another to walk to work within your arrondissement.
It’s one thing for FIRE industries to gentrify and displace, another for public agencies to invest and develop the neighborhood alongside its residents.
Cities and socialist urban planning centered around micro districts represent a promise of consolidating the living space and activities efficiently and holistically. It sounds like you don’t hate cities, but the car-centered, neoliberal conception of cities in the US and elsewhere.
