121–130 of 180 posts
Wow, that is HUGE. Especially considering the population shift out of rural areas and into cities. We'd better get some social psych types working on this.
Every time I visit my relatives in their rural area, I feel a sense of liberation. The air is cleaner, there is less noise, you can hear the breeze, and even the sky seems bigger. You can see the Milky Way at night. Coming from a city, it's a relief. However I also know the dark side of rural areas, mainly substance abuse triggered by boredom and lack of opportunity. There is always a trade-off.
That's not my experience with rural areas at all. Instead, it's usually pretty noisy because of all the neighbors with barking dogs (yes, there are neighbors in rural areas; most people can't afford 40 acres all to themselves, so they live in little clusters), and it stinks because of the cow and horse manure. Just hope you're not located close to a pig farm. And of course there's all the noisy trucks everyone drives…
That's plenty. There aren't any stinky farms or noisy trucks around. There is a lot of grass to mow, though.
All things considered, I like it.
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Thank you so much for making the counterpoint. I grew up in a rural setting and would give just about anything to take back that loss of years of my life. A few extras: * You can't exercise, because dogs don't just bark but also chase you, and no one cares or thinks you're the asshole for complaining because you're in the country. * Daily life is /very/ stressful. Forgot milk? Well, fuck you, buddy, because you're ei…
> Daily life is /very/ stressful. [...] Want a pizza delivered? Nope. Chinese? Hahah. uh. if that constitutes stressful, how do you survive receiving bad personal news?
>In fact, the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health estimates that city dwellers face a nearly 40 percent higher risk of depression, 20 percent higher chance of anxiety, and double the risk of schizophrenia than people living in rural areas. >In their review, Meyer-Lindenberg and van den Bosch found that some potential threats had been examined more thoroughly than others. For some, including pollen, there wasn’t…
I found this piece on "Sabbath as alarm" [0] through Slate Star Codex, and it resonated for me:
>One more useful attribute of the Jewish Sabbath is the extent to which its rigid rules generate friction in emergency situations. If your community center is not within walking distance, if there is not enough slack in your schedule to prep things a day in advance, or you are too poor to go a day without work, or too locally isolated to last a day without broadcast entertainment, then things are not okay.
[0] http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/sabbath-hard-and-go-home/#Sab...
>In fact, the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health estimates that city dwellers face a nearly 40 percent higher risk of depression, 20 percent higher chance of anxiety, and double the risk of schizophrenia than people living in rural areas. >In their review, Meyer-Lindenberg and van den Bosch found that some potential threats had been examined more thoroughly than others. For some, including pollen, there wasn’t…
Consider: for pretty much any animal I'm aware of, there's a notion of the minimum amount of space it needs to live normally. Somehow for people we've convinced ourselves that there is no such minimum (or it's so small as to be absurd).
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Quick search indicates nowhere in the US is close to 30% car ownership, with NY coming at the lowest at 45% car ownership. New York, NY 45.6% Newark, NJ 59.7% Washington, DC 62.9% Jersey City, NJ 62.9% Cambridge, MA 63.2% Boston, MA 66.2% Paterson, NJ 67.0% Hartford, CT 67.4% San Francisco, CA 70.1%
NYC is a very large city, that really would make more sense being separated from NY state and turned into a separate city-state. Manhattan alone is larger than many other cities, and it's only one "borough" in the city. If you look at Manhattan by itself, I'm sure you'll see very different numbers on car ownership. It's the people in Bronx, Queens, etc. that skew the numbers.
>In fact, the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health estimates that city dwellers face a nearly 40 percent higher risk of depression, 20 percent higher chance of anxiety, and double the risk of schizophrenia than people living in rural areas. >In their review, Meyer-Lindenberg and van den Bosch found that some potential threats had been examined more thoroughly than others. For some, including pollen, there wasn’t…
Consider: for pretty much any animal I'm aware of, there's a notion of the minimum amount of space it needs to live normally. Somehow for people we've convinced ourselves that there is no such minimum (or it's so small as to be absurd).
If you're interested in the historical/humanistic perspective on urban planning more generally, check out the New Urbanists. Understanding pre-car settlements, how and why they worked, long-term norms, etc. is kind of their thing. It's also worthwhile to visit some old (500+ year) built environments in person.
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In terms of body count, more people have been killed in the name of science than in the name of religion.
We kill with science, do we kill in the name of science? But even so, that doesn’t make all the killing in the name of religion less bad.