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MontanaGuy, its sad that a lot of young people from small towns are forced to move to cities and suburbs for work especially since rural life and areas are much more preferrable. Here in Maryland there's not much about dying towns....the threat to rural areas comes from suburban expansion. Hence the thing I wrote about the Census saying a county is suburban or metropolitan when its character is still mostly rural.
I've always dreamed of moving to a middle American Mayberry type place but the problem definitely is finding a well paying, skilled job. I've always found inner-city areas to be depressing and soulless. I don't want to look out my window everyday and see concrete, people and cars everywhere. People have said that the Internet boom could have revitalized some small towns allowing people to telecommute and work from home.
There's a lot of rural and small town life thats to be desired, like how people could slow down and remember whats most important in life, and how there was a sense of community and people looked out for one another.
There are large land areas in a city's Metro that are rural and small towns - but when you look at the populations, they're normally very small.
Look at Grundy County in Illinois. It's 430 square miles, and is included in the Chicago Metro area. The land area is large, and it's mostly a place of small towns and rural settings (except on the northern fringe, which is growing like weeds).
If you look though, Grundy County only has 0.4% of the metro's population. For every person in the metro living in a rural or small town area, there are dozens and dozens living in very urban or suburban areas.
The majority of Americans do live in metropolitan areas of over a million, but the majority of Americans don't specifically live in cities of over 200,000. If you added suburbs, even large ones, and small towns together you might get a majority.
I'm in an odd place. I live in a small town I don't like and would still like to live in a bigger city. However to me 20,000 people is "a bigger city" and I probably wouldn't want to go larger than a city of 100,000. Also I think smaller towns often do preserve more of what's unique about any nation. Teens playing basketball or neurotic intellectuals on a subway might be iconic images of America, but the same kind of thing can/does happen in Bilbao, Manilla, Sydney, and others. (As a teen we had an exchange student from Bilbao who played basketball before he ever came here)
Going to a Hopi pueblo, an Amish village, a chautauqua, or a rattlesnake hunt are pretty uniquely American and rural. (Granted Chautaquas are pretty rare now and I think Canada has some Amish)
Not that cities are totally lacking in uniquely American things. There's NFL teams, Mohawk Indian construction crews, Deep dish pizza, etc.
Last edited by Thomas R.; 07-17-2009 at 05:33 PM..
about 75% of the people in the state live in urbanized areas.
That's for Ohio.. so most people here certainly don't live in the country. I actually don't really know ANYONE from the country. Just because the vast majority of the US isn't urban, doesn't mean MORE people live there.
The county I live in is over 99% urban, according to City-Data.
A nice place where people watch out for each other, where neighbors wave as you go by.
As long as everyone is white and Christian, sure, that exists... bring outsiders into your lovely neighborhood circle and I don't think it's so inviting.
1 in 30 Americans lives in Chicagoland. 1 in 20 lives in greater Los Angeles. 1 in 15 lives in greater New York City. Together these three metros make up 15% the total U.S. population. These places can't help but leave an heavy imprint on what it means to be "American".
That's for Ohio.. so most people here certainly don't live in the country. I actually don't really know ANYONE from the country. Just because the vast majority of the US isn't urban, doesn't mean MORE people live there.
Well yes, but that doesn't make rural America some rare or strange thing either. It's 17-21% of America going by the census. That's one of every six people at least. The lowest-end estimate places rural America at just 7%. (This seems to be places that are outside of both metropolitan and micropolitan areas) That's small, but if it were a minority group 7% would be about as large as gays and East-Asians combined.
Defining the “Rural” in Rural America - Amber Waves June 2008 (http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/June08/Features/RuralAmerica.htm - broken link)
The newest I can find on rural population by state seems to be 1990 or 2000. (I'm a bit unclear how to read it)
Urban and Rural Population by State (http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:k_FDYJemjEcJ:www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0028.xls+rural+population+by+state&cd=5&hl=en&c t=clnk&gl=us - broken link)
Going by it four states have a non-urban majority.
Maine
Mississippi
Vermont
West Virginia
Nine other states are 39-49.9% non-urban
Alabama
Arkansas
Kentucky
Montana
New Hampshire
North Carolina
North Dakota
South Carolina
South Dakota
Talking about Americana, i personally feel i have about as much in common culturally with someone from the Deep South or East Coast as with someone from Ireland *shrugs* .. Slightly more with a Midwesterner, but not much
Growing up in LA and later travelling and living around North America, I can't help but notice that each region has its own unique culture with varying degrees of internal variation (usually only noticeable to locals)
To me, cities like Chicago, Milwaukee & Minneapolis represent a greater Midwestern culture.. each with its own unique pecularities, of course. But from an outsider's perspective (say a Southerner) there's relatively little if any perceived difference in terms of culture between these cities.. Just like Atlanta vs Dallas to a Californian. Since the South is so far removed geographically from the West, it's relatively foreign culturally to people here, vs say Arizona or even Utah, so it isn't really seen with internal variation in mind.. but rather based on the external differences from one's own culture/dialect that are immediately obvious to people from outside the area, since there are more differences than similarities overall between cultures
The East Coast obviously has more internal variation than other regions due to its early colonial history, giving dialects more time to develop & diverge from each other
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