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Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

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31–40 of 106 posts

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#31
post #23

Yet still a lot of houses is expensive as h...rent/buy - doesn't really matter.

Houses are expensive in places where everybody wants to be.

It’s supply and demand. Unless the supply significantly outnumbers demand then land owners can increase the cost to extract all consumer/producer surplus.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#32
post #6

Not enough software engineers converting to farming? Shocking. If anything else, for me the main issue in France is the dearth of doctors in rural areas. So even the romantic idea of retiring in quaint village is predicated on not getting sick.

> So even the romantic idea of retiring in quaint village is predicated on not getting sick.

Grew up in a village. What you do is... drive to another village / town. There are always doctors to be found - and less queues than in big cities.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#33

Some countries have really high housing prices and housing scarcity right on a border with another country where this isn't the case. You can get 30-40% differences just by moving a few km on the borders of the Netherlands. The reason this isn't that popular is that by moving like that you get to deal with different jurisdictions and tax systems. Particularly the social systems different countries have are very diffe…

> There's plenty of housing available if you can tolerate the inconvenience of a shitty commute.

I would rather pay for the better location than pay for the larger house. The physical size of my home isn't a large factor in my quality of life. The length of my commute is. Now I was going to write "It's really weird to me this isn't a more mainstream view", but given the data we're looking at, seems this view is absolutely the mainstream.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#34
post #22

Meanwhile The Netherlands is bright green due to its suburbanization policies of the 1970s. Let’s spread people out instead of building out our cities…

I don't think what works in a small and flat country with a famously productive agricultural sector can work equally well in the mountains of Spain and Italy.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#36
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houses are expensive in places where everybody wants to be.

You didn't understand, I was referring to those "depopulated" places as well. So even thought a population of an area decreased prices don't show that.

I take it you've never heard of the 1 euro houses in rural Italy then...?

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#38
Same in Greece, the countryside and even the islands are dying or declining. Everyone is moving to Athens or nearby big cities. Even most greek islands have become huge only-summer resorts and a large airbnb, most of their villages are almost empty during the winter. There are various reasons but the most important ones are that a big majority of properties has been bought by foreigners as vacation homes and there is no incentive for locals or other greeks to go there and create businesses for noone mid-winter without schools, doctors, etc. Add to that younger generations don't want to stay and work as farmers, bakers, builders despite the fact that in most of these professions are in real need and can make great money there. People prefer the easy money from airbnb and property selling to foreigners.

Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#39
post #26

Europe has been ruined, since USA interfered militarily in Europe. Since 1900, major U.S. military interventions in Europe have included full-scale combat operations during World War I (1917–1918) and World War II (1941–1945), as well as targeted Allied troop deployments in Archangel and Siberia during the Russian Civil War (1918–1920). Throughout the Cold War, U.S. forces executed non-combat and advisory operations,…

I would to like to know which of its interventions you're talking about. People don't normally complain about the help on WW2

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Re: Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

#40
post #22

Meanwhile The Netherlands is bright green due to its suburbanization policies of the 1970s. Let’s spread people out instead of building out our cities…

If you look economically how that works (ie. tax haven + oil + "buying the population", ie. the extremely rich pay for that for not great reasons) you will see that, first, it's not sustainable and, second, it can't be replicated elsewhere (for one thing, it requires the country to be small). I mean there are places it can be replicated, say Norway, but for the vast majority of countries this is not possible.
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