What does urban/suburban/rural look like to you?

[HandsUpThumbsDown]

Originally Posted by nei

WV (and rural/interior PA) is an area I'd like to visit. I'm familiar with a lot of the hilly areas of upstate & rural NY as well as in the hilly interior of New England. Curious how they compare. A friend from rural PA thought the people in rural Northern New England didn't sound "rural" because of their accent.

Don't forget the two mountain counties of MD, Garrett and Alleghany. Cumberland MD is a great-looking small city, I think, as is Oakland. Neither of these places feel anything like the rest of MD.

A lot of old mining or other industrial towns that are very small on maps actually have pretty nice-looking downtowns, often with surprising 6 and 7 story buildings, especially in WV. Whether or not they are thriving, suriving, or dead is a different story.

grafton wv - Google Maps

Neat B&O station in Grafton WV.

38.409751,-82.431793 - Google Maps

Downtown Huntington WV

Alot of these places had already faded in significance by the 1970s, and are surrouned by mountains and hills, making large-scale suburbanization less likely than in many other places.

It's kind of like happening upon an old mill town in northern New England and finding - surprise - dense urban form.

[munchitup]

Originally Posted by nei

Quote I found in an article that might interest LA residents, which looks like it's missing a city center park.

Peggy Richie, 81, and Katherine Nelson, 84, have lived in the city their entire lives and have seen the downtown morph from a place people want to be to a place people avoid. And in recent years, they have seen it morph back again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/us....html?src=recg

LOL I love reading NYT articles about LA.

Good read though, haven't actually visited that park yet, meant to do it last weekend but my wife got too tired and we just went home.