The astonishing story of how a movement’s quest for rural simplicity drifted into a formula for mass death By George Monbiot, published on monbiot.com, 4th October 2023 Tourism sells to you the story of what it has taken away. It markets the “traditional” and “unchanging” and, in doing so, changes it. As the old joke…
Lots to unpack in this somewhat ranty article, but also some food for thought.
Gonna have to disagree with you here. I live in a very rural community (1500 person town), and this just isn’t how people work. People who grow food still need hospitals, grocery stores, mechanics, schools (including colleges–many farmers have degrees in farming), hardware stores, tractor parts stores, plumbers, and so on, but most importantly, all people need and deserve community.
I think this deserved a separate reply. First of all how many of these people actually work inside the community as opposed to just live there and drive to work somewhere else (or work remotely)? As least in densely populated Europe that is the majority of the people living in these small towns.
Furthermore, most if not all the examples you mentioned do not require them to be present in that small town and in fact rarely they are. They are usually only available in the nearest bigger city. This can be inconvenient at times for these villagers, but it is much more efficient and its is rather the transport of those goods and people that should be improved, so that those city services become easily available to the people that need them.
Wait, so on what scale of population do we peasants deserve a hospital and a college then? I’m really not sure I like this. Cities are fine for the folk who like them, but forcing all humans to live in them (even just in your mind) is inhumane. Some people want to live in cities, some people want to live in rural areas.
Right now, there are a series of insufferable folk who live in rural areas and do remote work. And small scale farming. And worse, ponies. Will I be re-urbanized in your utopia? How would you try to sell that to me? Am I supposed to like my new utopian city bullshit job? I have a remote one already and I don’t like it, I wish it didn’t exist, and that the poor PMs sending it to me from New York or Hong Kong could dedicate themselves to gardening or working in a (digital or physical) commons library and playing with their kids instead, thank you very much.
I think this deserved a separate reply. First of all how many of these people actually work inside the community as opposed to just live there and drive to work somewhere else (or work remotely)? As least in densely populated Europe that is the majority of the people living in these small towns.
Furthermore, most if not all the examples you mentioned do not require them to be present in that small town and in fact rarely they are. They are usually only available in the nearest bigger city. This can be inconvenient at times for these villagers, but it is much more efficient and its is rather the transport of those goods and people that should be improved, so that those city services become easily available to the people that need them.
Wait, so on what scale of population do we peasants deserve a hospital and a college then? I’m really not sure I like this. Cities are fine for the folk who like them, but forcing all humans to live in them (even just in your mind) is inhumane. Some people want to live in cities, some people want to live in rural areas.
Right now, there are a series of insufferable folk who live in rural areas and do remote work. And small scale farming. And worse, ponies. Will I be re-urbanized in your utopia? How would you try to sell that to me? Am I supposed to like my new utopian city bullshit job? I have a remote one already and I don’t like it, I wish it didn’t exist, and that the poor PMs sending it to me from New York or Hong Kong could dedicate themselves to gardening or working in a (digital or physical) commons library and playing with their kids instead, thank you very much.