I know the majority live in urban areas. But when I read a post about something like electric bikes or walkable cities, I can’t find a single comment supporting a rural lifestyle. I’m not complaining, just shocked that there aren’t even a few.
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I grew up in the Kimberley on cattle stations, went to high school in the Pilbarra , and travelled 1,000 km to university (1980s).
I did a lot of STEM courses, built robots, remote signal aquisition instrumentation, pre Google Maps global mapping software (and data processing) travelled the world (two thirds or so of the 190+ countries) zeroing in WGS84 against old mapping systems and doing a bit of exploration geophysics.
I currently mostly live in the wheatbelt district, large farms you can shoot 5,000+ yards across (*), and live a fairly rural lifestyle - with drones, GPS controlled two storey machines, multi spectral crop imaging, etc.
(*) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE
We like walking and do a bit of track maintenance (**) and prefer motorbikes over cars (***)
(**) https://www.bibbulmuntrack.org.au/
(***) https://youtu.be/mdx5xttosxY?t=124
I have no LinkedIn, Facebook, Github profile .. just a backlog of people and companies I've worked with since the late 1970s.
There's a Radio Quiet Zone here for the SKA Square Kilometre Array which has ongoing odd jobs, there and on the super computer farm. Some kid I used to joke about with on the School of the Air when we were in short pants is now some kind of multi billionaire with agriculture, aquaculture, mining, green hydrogen, etc stuff going on.
We (circle of scaly mates) started a few companies when short of things to do, back whenever .. these are still about in various forms - one got picked up by the US Standard & Poor for their intelligence desk.
This week I'm making the cage over the peach tree parrot proof, pitchforking sawdust and shit underneath the fig tree, and waiting for a call to come and be a chase bin driver (pulling up behind and parallel to a moving combine harvester to take the offload back to the bins .. rinse, repeat).
Mining companies like data driven solutions, there's a lot of mapping | survey work, Rio Tinto is automating the Feck of everything, Trains, Trucks, and so on.
There's lab work, lawyers up the whazoo, accounting firms, parts and tradespeople warehousing yards - so a lot of that type of web | office support stuff happening.
Other than that, it’s a dilemma. I have a spectacular view, living on a ridge, but except for the gas station/quicky mart, everything “a.k.a. Downtown” is 12 miles away and all the stores not named hardware stores are 50 miles away. So are colleges
DSL internet is the best you can get here. There’s one hospital in town, whose board is just short of fistfights at meetings.
Just have a toolkit handy for when something lets loose in a winter storm, and an evacuation kit ready at all times in case of wildfire. And don’t try to grow roses, because they are candy to deer. You need a 7 foot high fence to keep them out.
Civilization has its advantages.
It's a 50ft tower powered by PoE Ethernet.
100-250 mbit/s down, 50-80 mbit/s up
Nearest megacity Kolkata (Calcutta) is ~140 km away. ~3.5h by car or train. We visit the city for any serious enough health issues or big shopping events or to catch flights.
My town is historical and extremely old (mentions in literature go back 600 years or more). It is very walkable. Everything is some minutes away. Fresh organic vegetables, fish, and meat available in the market 5 minutes away. The High School I went to was 15 minutes away (using bicycles).
We have a ~100 cc motorbike (50 kmpl or 117 mi/gallon) and bicycles that we ride. For family, we hire fully electric tuktuks [0]. Very cheap and environment friendly.
Very calm town with non-existent crime. Can get reliable broadband up to 250 MBPS. Amazon does 1 and 2 day deliveries. (I cannot imagine living here without ecommerce and internet)
Big fan of this lifestyle. Can comfortably afford a car but we don't own one because we don't need one.
Lived in Kolkata before. Everything was so far away. Had to spend money to get anywhere. Spent too much time in commute to everywhere. And the amount of money you save by living here adds up. My father also lived in the same house, as did my grandfather.
[0]: https://assets.telegraphindia.com/telegraph/02metanup4.jpg
BUT: Even though this sounds big: I do not have access to Greenwheels (car ride sharing service) this is only available in big cities. Specialty shop that promote more green, no plastic and healthy stuff: big cities not in my town.
Miss carding my own wool and spinning my own yarn though. That was nice and meditative.
I think the major reason why you don't see support for rural living as often (or, as you noted, at all) is, well, the people who want walkable cities and bicycle infrastructure are the folks for whom economic opportunity is predicated on being close to the city. As it turns out, that's where the majority of industry happens to be.
It also turns out that cars are annoying when going slow and steady to get someplace (and enjoy the moment all the while) is just as fine.
(Is that truly why I used to abuse my old Case that way? Maybe!)
The majority of certain kinds of industry. Finance, software, fashion, marketing, sure. I grew up surrounded by people working at chemical plants, rotating shifts at off-site drilling platforms, dock workers, etc. The other side of town, ranchers. Another side of town, sugar processing and sugar farms. Other than the dock workers and offside drillers (on their off-times) potentially being more urban-adjacent, neither of these two industries are really dense urban area kinds of industry.
Then, up the highway a bit, was Houston.
I don't see many car manufacturing plants deep in dense urban areas in the US. Loads of large manufacturing in the US happens well outside those dense urban areas. Living in most dense US cities is expensive. Real estate is way more expensive. Imagine trying to build commercial airliners in Manhattan or San Francisco.
If Everett, WA; Renton, WA; and North Charleston, SC, are not urbanized areas, what are they?
If a factory with a ZIP code in San Antonio, TX, isn't in a city, where is it?
Going closer to home for me: is Red Bud, IL, not a city? Hecker? Freeburg? Mascoutah? Belleville?
That city job I wrote about was not in St. Louis.
The rurals are here but you have to be quiet to notice them.
(The majority of the rurals are considered urban by the US census, btw.)
I wonder if there's some administrative reason the census considers huge cities and little villages both 'urban'?
Also remember when the Census was begun, the divide was much more stark between rural and urban as you couldn't travel quickly.
If you are young, cities can be great for social life. I used to live right outside of DC after college and it was great when the important things in life were enjoying social gatherings and meeting girls.
Now that Im much older, I prefer seclusion because I don't really care that much for making new friends, and on the flipside I don't have to deal with idiots who inconvenience people around them because of careless, negligence, or stupidity.
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And at this moment at the airport waiting for takeoff for a business meeting.