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LA is urban hillbilly central. Democrats. Liberal unwashed barbarian hillbillies.
And then you have rural hillbillies that think every city in the US looks like LA, just a sprawling mass of concrete vomit. With nothing to do but nightclubs, nothing family oriented at all. Not entirely true.
Christmas lights in Cathedral Park and down Wisconsin Avenue as well:
this thread was started with the statement that there's no reason for small town to exist (see OP's post below). Really?
Hate to break it to you, but OP isn't trying to be condescending. That's the truth. Many, though not all, small towns have little to no economic reason to exist. You can get offended by reality all you want but it's just how it works.
But what about all the urban professionals from Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, etc. that actually drive the economy? You can brag about the "real men" all you want, but the smart ones are the ones who really get things done-and they live in the cities.
Read about that, it should clear things up for you.
Not all, but according to the latest demographic estimates, definitely most.
How does portland drive the economy compared with some small town in texas with natural resources and oil and aerospace or the west with mining? Most engineers I know dont like big cities and dont want to move there after school, thats certainly true with aerospace.
I am not just talking about aerospace , petroleum, electrical or nuclear but even computer engineers. Even silicon valley is basically little small towns like mountain view, palo alto, cupertino etc. The idea that wealthy or middle class people love and all want to live in traffic and crammed in our nations dysfunctional cities isn't true at all.
Certainly there are huge differences with military involvement and masculinity between the alot of small town and rural america and more effete left wing cities, and military spending is a huge part of what drives american research. Go look at how rich all the small towns are around DC are, the wealthiest counties in the country by far and its filled with small towns in northern virginia and maryland. I lived most of my life in one
Location: Live:Downtown Phoenix, AZ/Work:Greater Los Angeles, CA
27,606 posts, read 14,601,062 times
Reputation: 9169
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frogburn
The OP is not from LA or Chicago as evident by his narrow conception of a "suburb." I'm well aware what the image conjures up in most Americans minds, which is some of the big houses on large lots one finds in well-to-do areas of Brookfield in Wisconsin.
But suburbs predate those more recent 1950ish suburban sprawls meant only for automotive drivers.
One of the most dangerous towns in the US during the 1990's was the Chicago suburb of Maywood. A town I've briefly been in. It is as human packed as Milwaukee and looks no different than a Milwaukee or a West Allis. Maywood had/has lots of black people though and during the 1990's had a homicide rate Hoover around 80 per 100,000 people. Basically exceeding Rio de Janeiro and being on par with some towns in El Salvador.
Then LA County produced one of the most notorious suburbs in the country: Compton.
A movie called Straight Out of Compton has been made. About the gangsta rapper group NWA.
But racial violence is far more deadly and frequent, like antebellum Mississippi, in LA and its working class (Democrats) suburb of Compton than it is in the safe, peaceful, small town of Wisconsin Dells.
In contrast you have a small town of about 2,000 people called the Wisconsin Dells. It makes money by being a tourist town. A small, mostly white town. During summertime lots of tourist flood into the area. The whole town is basically a tourist/bars/theme park thing.
If I were poor I would much rather live in Wisconsin Dells than in the LA suburb of Compton or the Chicago suburb of Maywood.
If not every city (say like Portland) is like Detroit then what makes urban hillbillies think every small town is like some stinking, trailer park, IV heroin addict tiny town in the Ozarks or in Indiana?
Not only do some of you people not read very much but you haven't been around outside of your bubble much.
I suspect the OP is from some Southern city like Atlanta and totally oblivious to the fact tight, urban, industrial town like Compton is a suburb of LA.
I'm plenty familiar with Greater Los Angeles as I'm there 3 days a week for work, and I have to go to the grittier areas like Compton, Vernon, Maywood, Carson, because that's where a lot of warehouses are and especially Carson is close to the Port Of Los Angeles and the Port Of Long Beach. Granted these areas are more urban than suburban in nature (they are incorporated cities after all), they aren't the urban warzones of the 60's&70's any more. Heck, certain neighborhoods in South Central LA (mainly near USC) are starting to gentrify and revitalize
You know all of these sad, economically depressed, former mill/mining towns? There's no reason for them to exist. Once upon a time, Americans moved for economic opportunity. They didn't demand that jobs come to them. If the only reason your town existed or group was the presence of some factory or mine, then in the absence of said factory or mine, your town has no reason to exist. We have let people who feel that they are entitled to an unsustainable, small-town lifestyle dictate the political and economic fate of our nation. They'd rather gamble on someone who promises to reopen the factories then re-train or go to the major population centers where the work is.
Yea, but America's big cities are becoming expensive and unlivable. Not only the cities themselves, but their suburbs as well. More importantly, if you're able to make enough money to live in or around one of these cities, that means you have to be employed at one of the top-tier companies that rejects 99.9% of job applicants. So I don't buy this idea that we could solve any problem by everyone in economically depressed areas flooding to the cities.
Location: Live:Downtown Phoenix, AZ/Work:Greater Los Angeles, CA
27,606 posts, read 14,601,062 times
Reputation: 9169
Quote:
Originally Posted by KonaldDuth
Yea, but America's big cities are becoming expensive and unlivable. Not only the cities themselves, but their suburbs as well. More importantly, if you're able to make enough money to live in or around one of these cities, that means you have to be employed at one of the top-tier companies that rejects 99.9% of job applicants. So I don't buy this idea that we could solve any problem by everyone in economically depressed areas flooding to the cities.
So you think that all the folks in economically depressed areas of the United States can just learn how to write HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL and then move to San Francisco, where a 1-bdrm apt costs $4,000+/month and will cost more if more people move there, and will be hired by the companies who require 10+ years of experience and tend to hire H1B Visa workers or hip-looking males in their 20s?
Sounds like "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" nonsense.
Hungry horse, Montana, tripled in size while Hungry Horse Dam was being built. When the dam was completed (1953), lots of workers left. tourism took over, and the town is still there. Oh, yes, it used to have 12 (or more) bars, and one night club; now there is only one bar. It used to have three major brand service stations, now there is one gas station/convenience store. The town is still there, though.
Martin City, Montana was the same, a thriving little town with several bars, a grocery store, a sporting goods store, and a clothing store. It was supported by dam workers and timber. The town withered when the enviros killed the lumbering, but it is still there.
Coram, Montana, same thing. Supported mostly by lumber mills. The mills are gone, but the town is still there.
Columbia Falls, MT had an aluminum plant and lumber mills. The plant is closed, and the last lumber mill is in its death throes. The town is still there.
There will always be agriculture and tourism...
Location: Live:Downtown Phoenix, AZ/Work:Greater Los Angeles, CA
27,606 posts, read 14,601,062 times
Reputation: 9169
Quote:
Originally Posted by KonaldDuth
So you think that all the folks in economically depressed areas of the United States can just learn how to write HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL and then move to San Francisco, where a 1-bdrm apt costs $4,000+/month and will cost more if more people move there, and will be hired by the companies who require 10+ years of experience and tend to hire H1B Visa workers or hip-looking males in their 20s?
Sounds like "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" nonsense.
I'm a good example, I'm moving up in my LA Area based company so I can make the move to California in a couple years, there is so much work in SoCal, more than here in Phoenix. I'm not wallowing about why there isn't more work in Phoenix, I'm working my way up, gaining experience and going where the work is. (I'm a truck driver, no longer OTR thank god)
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