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Colorado has plenty of rural areas where the average American could never survive.I live in one. One gas station.two bars,one grocery store.No ski area nearby,no movie theater,no clubs.There are plenty of areas like mine in CO but we don't have daddy employers to hand people jobs we are mostly skilled and self employed and do well.The front range is not Colorado it is Kansas with a CO zip code that happens to be our state capitol.Everyone wanting the CO dream has a college degree and no rural skills and winds up on the front range prarie. unless they have too much money and buy a ranchete complete with a state of the art security system so they can sleep at night.
Wow! Inferiority complex much? Why the hostility?
The fact that you live somewhere (I've been to Mancos) that nobody else wants to live doesn't make you better than anyone else. It just means you live somewhere nobody else wants to live. I can't imagine needing to belittle others because they live somewhere I don't.
Colorado is a big state. I don't think you get a stranglehold on the definition of the "true Colorado".
If you really need to feel special though...... You're a unique and beautiful flower. There are none like you. You're stronger, smarter, and better than them all. Will you sleep better tonight?
The front range is not Colorado it is Kansas with a CO zip code that happens to be our state capitol.Everyone wanting the CO dream has a college degree and no rural skills and winds up on the front range prarie. unless they have too much money and buy a ranchete complete with a state of the art security system so they can sleep at night.
Bull. Just because it's plains doesn't mean it's not Colorado. Many of the mountain states have areas of high plains (Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico) along with Colorado. Some desert mixed in there too, in the case of CO, NM and WY.
Colorado has plenty of rural areas where the average American could never survive.I live in one. One gas station.two bars,one grocery store.No ski area nearby,no movie theater,no clubs.There are plenty of areas like mine in CO but we don't have daddy employers to hand people jobs we are mostly skilled and self employed and do well.The front range is not Colorado it is Kansas with a CO zip code that happens to be our state capitol.Everyone wanting the CO dream has a college degree and no rural skills and winds up on the front range prarie. unless they have too much money and buy a ranchete complete with a state of the art security system so they can sleep at night.
I enjoyed this post. This forum needs other voices and other opinions. I do not have to agree with what you have totally said but sometimes we need to be challenged and annoyed with perhaps taking another view of ourselves and others. Being an ex New Yorker, I accept blunt language without being easily offended. I am tired of the politically correct speak of those who can think only in a group mind who always look over their shoulder for approval of others before they venture to speak.
I have often driven out to the Great Plains to remind myself that there are other worlds and other people and other challenges and other ideas.
Thanks,
Livecontent
Last edited by livecontent; 11-06-2015 at 09:25 PM..
Furthermore, the notion that the aggregate quality of life of the idle and underemployed (the white elephant of American metro areas) in the urban centers being better off than in an alternate economic model that's more geographically de-centralized, assumes facts not in evidence imo.
Don't get me wrong, being currently stuck in a remotely marginalized mexican border town has negatively affected my family's QOL and we cannot wait to get the heck out of this situation, but I'm not convinced the hyper-centralization of services, as a result of hyper-centralization of income sources for the proletariat, is in effect the most beneficial outcome for our society, never mind the extra strain it places on the already pitied and dismissed rural dwellers who equally need said access to services.
Up and telling everyone to move to Denver is just as disconnected as telling everyone to up and turn on a dime and magically re-train with abandon for a job skill that's in the demand for the next oh say 15 minutes, before it becomes saturated. We need less socioeconomic flippancy in our Country, desperately....
Furthermore, the notion that the aggregate quality of life of the idle and underemployed (the white elephant of American metro areas) in the urban centers being better off than in an alternate economic model that's more geographically de-centralized, assumes facts not in evidence imo.
Don't get me wrong, being currently stuck in a remotely marginalized mexican border town has negatively affected my family's QOL and we cannot wait to get the heck out of this situation, but I'm not convinced the hyper-centralization of services, as a result of hyper-centralization of income sources for the proletariat, is in effect the most beneficial outcome for our society, never mind the extra strain it places on the already pitied and dismissed rural dwellers who equally need said access to services.
Up and telling everyone to move to Denver is just as disconnected as telling everyone to up and turn on a dime and magically re-train with abandon for a job skill that's in the demand for the next oh say 15 minutes, before it becomes saturated. We need less socioeconomic flippancy in our Country, desperately....
I agree with what you are saying based in the fact that cost of living in many metropolitan areas makes quality of life difficult for the under employed. With that said, I don't recall seeing anyone telling everybody to move to Denver.
I am actually a little surprised and amused by the course this thread has taken. I simply found the article interesting, but did not intend it to mean that I thought urban areas were better. They're just where the jobs and the people are.
There is definitely a pervasive sentiment among those from the more rural areas who post on this forum that people in Denver look down at the rural folk. In my experience the reality is they don't think they're better than you. It just that they rarely ever think about you.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
34,714 posts, read 58,054,000 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by livecontent
I enjoyed this post. This forum needs other voices and other opinions. I do not have to agree with what you have totally said but sometimes we need to be challenged and annoyed with perhaps taking another view of ourselves and others. ...
Thanks,
Livecontent
thx indeed,,, BUT you are under censor and some posters just HAVE to have it THEIR way (including this thread)..
Step one,
post a subject with solicitation for comment (some folks thinking their may be some variety of answers)
OP and often others 'die-on-the-sword' protecting their threads to go THEIR WAY!
Life is not fair... (please don't try to tell some authors that!)
Imagine what this map would have been like in the 1960's when HP, Kodak, IBM, Ball Industries, many others all built mega facilities that brought GOOD jobs (and free college...) to 'rural' towns in CO.
There was some 'community' foresight 50 yrs ago that does not exist in today's business relocation / employment / community contributions, decisions. (win at all costs (including the demise of communities and your business) vs, win for the community)
My post indicating I liked the OP post was not meant as critical of other posters which I have learned to respect. I just want to see other posters from different parts of the state which we do not often hear. I do not have to agree with their opinions; I just want to see others than the homogeneity of the more prevalent posters.
Since most people live in the more urban area of the front range and the rest of the state is sparsely settled does not mean those from the less populated should not have a voice. I have heard many deride rural populace on this forum just as I have heard many deride the urban populace as the OP has done--but I still want to see a variety of voices, no matter how much I disagree.
The vast majority of us live in a capitalist economic model that strives for profit, is thus driven to efficiencies of scale, which forces investment to areas of population density to find the needed employee skill sets that results in maximizing income and net profit. Google cannot find hundreds of skilled I-T workforce types in any rural town in the nation so they expanded their Boulder complex; otherwise they'd have to build an entire new mini-city.
This singular fact of economic life has driven most people to dense urban clusters where businesses need employees to staff their enterprises and where people find the businesses they need for a job. That's why most of us are here; the need for income to pay our bills and allow us the best standard of living we can afford. As Ross Perot used to say, it's just that simple.
Our governments exert some control over zoning and development but IMO it's still largely a laissez-faire world where developers seem free to plop their stuff here there or anywhere they choose, another developer or business plops stuff over there and pretty soon we have a disjointed hodgepodge looking as random as a child sliding cheerios around mom's table top. Trying to retrofit roads and transit after the fact onto capricious development and growth schemes probably doubles the cost and at best only partially satisfies us.
Like Wall Street, much of our country has a short term outlook and approach, the next 90 days seem all that matter. Real long-term deliberate planning to make and enforce hard choices is sure to tick off some people. The in-toto planning for the structure and content of entire urban/metro areas or entire states will never happen; big land-owning syndicates, hedge funds and others with their billions of dollars doom us to what we have and what we're going to get more of. It was "game over" a hundred years ago when we got the automobile and lost the chance to enforce a vision. What we got is what we'll get more of.
We're social animals; we evolved from tribes that were able to survive due to strength in numbers, so we formed villages. So here we are, stuck in tract-home margaritaville, many of us wishing for the utopia of our own design. Those who can make their living without thought to location are most fortunate, the rest of us can keep on dreaming. We are on our own to fend for ourselves to seek the best dream we can get for the money we have; the big bucks for the better dreams are found in large urban areas and the shrinking rural areas are for those whose love of the land and skill sets provide a viable existence.
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 11-07-2015 at 01:25 PM..
thx indeed,,, BUT you are under censor and some posters just HAVE to have it THEIR way (including this thread)..
Step one,
post a subject with solicitation for comment (some folks thinking their may be some variety of answers)
OP and often others 'die-on-the-sword' protecting their threads to go THEIR WAY!
Life is not fair... (please don't try to tell some authors that!)
Imagine what this map would have been like in the 1960's when HP, Kodak, IBM, Ball Industries, many others all built mega facilities that brought GOOD jobs (and free college...) to 'rural' towns in CO.
There was some 'community' foresight 50 yrs ago that does not exist in today's business relocation / employment / community contributions, decisions. (win at all costs (including the demise of communities and your business) vs, win for the community)
You seem to have a very "us vs. them" mentality. I challenge you to look back at our interactions on this forum. My comments to you are nearly always in response to a comment you have made belittling the place I live or the people I live near. I don't share the same loathing toward rural dwellers that you have towards urbanites. You want to think I do because it helps your false narrative, but I don't.
This article never said urban places are better than rural places. It simply stated employment and habitation statistics. I found it interesting because we get so many posters asking for a small town near an employment center in Colorado. This data shows how few places like that actually exist in the state.
How it turned in to a "which place to live is better" discussion rests solely in the hands of you and your ilk.
For the record, I don't believe that urban living is better for everyone. If being rural makes you happy, go be happy. I don't think any more or less of you. What I can't seem to figure out, and perhaps you can help me here, is why so many rural posters on this forum spew such vitriol towards people who live in cities.
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