urban vs rural

[consuming negativity]

what is the demographic makeup of revleft?

population numbers would be awesome

did they ever do this in a poll?

[Os Cangaceiros]

I was born in a town of 5,000 or so people. Lived a large part of my life in a village of around 50-70 people. Currently live in a city of 30,000.

I've also lived on the outskirts of New York City (1st biggest city in the USA) and Austin (11th biggest city in the USA), though, so I have some urban experience.

[Futility Personified]

Small, over 12000. Beautiful though rurality is, a stagnant boring pool is a stagnant boring pool.

[Rosa Partizan]

When I wrote that I live in a very small town with 150k inhabitants, especially Americans here were like "that's absolutely not tiny", which I found really surprising. Of course I know that the US is not only NY and LA, but still, in my mind, everything is bigger there than in Germany.

[Palmares]

The primary difference is though, in a place like Germany, there are few places where there is nobody. There is literally, town after town after town. However, how big is the biggest city in Germany? Berlin is only like 3 million right? Though, that mish-mash of urbanity around Dusseldorf/Koln/etc is pretty crazy.

But yeah, in alot of new world countries for example, the differentiation between the urban and rural is more stark. The cities tend to be much more dense, and the countryside much more sparse. That's my experience anyway.

But to me... I grew up in a small town. 10,000 give or take, depending on current job/housing etc trends. And at this time, due to my health, I'm back here again. To give some perspective, in this state, it only requires a population of 20,000+ in order to be granted "city" status.

In between however, I've lived all over the place (was a bit of a vagabond in my time). Many years in Melbourne (3+ million). Lived in London for a little while (fucking big...). Lived in Montreal for a little well too (3 mil?). And briefly in Barcelona (3 mil?). So I think it's been like... 9 years or so living in big cities. Lived in a small city for 2ish years aswell. So after all that, it's weird being somewhere so small.

I plan on living in a small city in the near future, which will be nice after the current ultra remoteness. But all in all, personally, am kinda happy to not be living in a huge city anymore.

[pax et aequalitas]

When I wrote that I live in a very small town with 150k inhabitants, especially Americans here were like "that's absolutely not tiny", which I found really surprising. Of course I know that the US is not only NY and LA, but still, in my mind, everything is bigger there than in Germany.

I'd consider that a middle-sized city as someone from the Netherlands. Certainly not very tiny though.

I myself was born in a city with 70 000 inhabitants, but since I've been three years old I've been living in the same town with 40 000 inhabitants. However one must keep in mind that my country is very urbanized and instead of having a single city with millions of inhabitants, everything just is very close. I go to uni in Rotterdam (1 hour with public transport despite a bad connection) which has 600 000 people and is part of the conurbation Randstad which has 7 million people living in it and from Rotterdam a train can get you to most other places in that area including Amsterdam.

So in short: I live in a small 40k town but partially 'live' in a much bigger and more populated metropolitan area where I go to uni, do a lot of not-daily shopping, concerts etc.

[RedKobra]

Born & raised in London so yeh lots of people. I live in a quiet village these days though, maybe 2,500 people. Living in London is just too damn expensive and unrealistic for normal people these days.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

i was born in a town of about 25,000-ish and i've lived in Hull since I was 7 which has a population of ~230,000. I'm definitely not a country boy, rural places are nice from afar but far from nice imo.

[Creative Destruction]

spent most of my life in small towns or in the countryside in Texas. usually around 35 to ~1,200 people living in the areas. i lived in Austin for about a year, went back to the country for a bit and now i'm living in some awful suburb near the awful city of Portland, OR.

i really can't wait to move into a small town again. i like being in the city as a tourist, sometimes, but i really hate suburbs. i feel most comfortable in a small town.

[motion denied]

...and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life

;)

[bricolage]

Urban to the core; I've only ever lived in cities.
Personally I get freaked out if I'm in the countryside for more than a week or so. I find it incredibly comforting to be walk past people on a daily basis that I'll probably never speak to in my life. Maybe that says something about alienation...

[Bala Perdida]

I've been around the bay area most of my life and in the part I live in moving through towns is a daily occurrence. But to keep it simple, I was born in a city of about 77k. Then I almost immediately moved to Mexico and lived in Morelia, city of about 729k. Before I started school I moved back into the US spent many years in a city of 140k. Now Im in San Jose, city of about 1 million. 10th largest in the country.

[Tim Cornelis]

Utrecht. 300,000 (municipal area) - 500,000 (urban area).

[motion denied]

Born in São Paulo 11.895.000 (fuck yeah) - living in Vinhedo 63.600 (:/)

[Rosa Partizan]

I just read that my birth town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostar)is twinned with the town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberg) I live in, but I never noticed the practical usefulness of this twinning.

[RedKobra]

I just read that my birth town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostar)is twinned with the town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberg) I live in, but I never noticed the practical usefulness of this twinning.

I don't know if everyone feels like this but whenever I see someone else's country I always think its so much more beautiful than mine. Germany, for example always looks gorgeous.

[Devrim]

I think that a population of less than a million counts as rural.

Devrim

[Rosa Partizan]

I don't know if everyone feels like this but whenever I see someone else's country I always think its so much more beautiful than mine. Germany, for example always looks gorgeous.

oh no dude, no need to think like that. Heidelberg is really exceptionally beautiful by most standards, but on the other side, it's boring and conservative as hell. I never understood why so many non-German students were struggling to get to Heidelberg. Yeah, of course, the university has an outstanding international reputation, but so do other universities in far more exciting towns. And by German standards, it's expensive as fuck here. With the money I pay for my really small apartment, I could get apartments at least as twice as big, in the city centres of far bigger towns.

[Redistribute the Rep]

Just looked it up, my town is 80,000, but only 30,000 when I was born. So it was 30-80,000 when I was growing up. Is this small?

[Lily Briscoe]

I'd associate the word 'rural' more with farming/agriculture than simply small population size (it wouldn't make sense to me to describe a lot of bohemian/hipster college towns as 'rural' for example, even ones w/ like 20,000 people).

Anyway, I was born in the fifth most populous city in the US, and definitely, definitely prefer living in a big city, but I also like to be able to get away from it fairly easily. I live on the opposite side of the country now (Seattle), and while I don't speak highly of the place very often, one thing I will say is that there's a good balance here between being in a relatively urban environment and being really close to relatively-secluded natural spaces (beaches, mountains, etc.). Just on a psychological level, that's pretty important to me.

[Creative Destruction]

http://ric.nal.usda.gov/what-is-rural

[Devrim]

Just looked it up, my town is 80,000, but only 30,000 when I was born. So it was 30-80,000 when I was growing up. Is this small?

Yes, it's tiny. I live in a city of five million.

Devrim

[Devrim]

http://ric.nal.usda.gov/what-is-rural

I don't see why we should take the U.S. government's word on it.

Devrim

[Creative Destruction]

I don't see why we should take the U.S. government's word on it.

Devrim

No one is saying you should. The U.S. government is basically saying you can't take their word for it because it's an incredibly pliable word. It depends on what the goal of policy is as to what constitutes "rural."

For me, "rural" always denoted any remote area outside of metro areas (urban cores + suburbs.) Even then it's a little blurry, because you've got so-called "bedroom towns" which can be remote, but might offer some sort of commuter option to work in the city. The town I grew up in, I would have considered rural because it was at least 20 or so miles away from any urban or suburban accommodations -- supermarkets, anything you'd call a respectable public transportation system and what not. It was about 1,200 people and we had a restaurant, a couple gas stations, a small bank and a small library/town hall. Nowadays, I'd consider it more of a bedroom town because there is a commuter train that runs about 5 miles from town into downtown Austin, which has enabled rich people to come in, buy up foreclosed land and build ridiculous sized houses.

[Bala Perdida]

I just read that my birth town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostar)is twinned with the town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberg) I live in, but I never noticed the practical usefulness of this twinning.
My birth town is also a sister city with my mom's village, but I've never seen what that does. I just know heeeellla peeps from my mons village live there and around where I live. But over in my birth city, there's a strip you walk down and it feels like you're back in the village.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I was born and live in Macon, Georgia....which has a population of about 80,000 something people.

So yeah, I'm actually rural.

[Rosa Partizan]

I was born and live in Macon, Georgia....which has a population of about 80,000 something people.

So yeah, I'm actually rural.

no you aren't :D it's not big, but far away from what was described as rural in this thread.

[DOOM]

When I wrote that I live in a very small town with 150k inhabitants, especially Americans here were like "that's absolutely not tiny", which I found really surprising. Of course I know that the US is not only NY and LA, but still, in my mind, everything is bigger there than in Germany.

oh shut up, you don't even know the feels we small-town people feel

[Rosa Partizan]

I don't care about your petit-ruraleois feels man.

[consuming negativity]

technically, the town i live in has just over 3,000 people in it, but i'm a five minute walk away from another town that has over 15,000 people in it, so the designation of 3,000 is really just a legal one because of the way that counties in the US work

originally from a town with just under 20,000 people in it

>rosa lives in a place with over 100,000 people in it and she thinks it's a small town

lol, no

>devrim thinks any place with under 1 million people is rural

the city of baltimore only has like 600,000 people in it - your number here is way too high

>everybody

thanks for contribootin'

[Palmares]

I have to agree with the comments that a town isn't rural. Rural really designates "in, relating to, or characteristic of the countryside rather than the town." Where I'm from, the areas outside of major cities is referred to as "regional". This can include some small cities, but usually not. And indeed, the definition of a city, as opposed to a town, really depends on the population densities that exist in a given area. Like I said before, where I am, 20,000 is all that is required for thus. Infact, there is a suburb of the capital that, exploiting this law, applied and was granted the status of a city, despite being a suburb. And one of the small cities here, has shrunken in size to below 20,000, but I think the remaining of the city status is more related to not wanting to embarrass the city (town!) in question.


A city is a relatively large and permanent human settlement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_settlement).[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City#cite_note-Goodall-1)[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City#cite_note-Kuper_and_Kuper-2) Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town) within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_administration), legal, or historical status based on local law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City

[Lily Briscoe]

^"where I'm from"... Where are you from? Just the country if you don't want to be specific.

[The Disillusionist]

I was born in Rupert, Idaho, population almost 6,000.... Now I live in another town in Idaho, population almost 50,000. The biggest city in Idaho, Boise, has a population of like 220,000 people, so I don't see many "urban" environments, at least not since I moved here from the coast. I miss the coast...

[Slavic]

Lived most of my life in a township of 6000 people in a town that was prob 1/3 of the township. The town I'm from is odd because it is in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, and is very wooded and remote, but it is only a short drive from Atlantic City and Philadelphia.

I've been living in Philadelphia 1.5mil for over a year now, but I often go back to my small town.

[Devrim]

>rosa lives in a place with over 100,000 people in it and she thinks it's a small town

lol, no

>devrim thinks any place with under 1 million people is rural

the city of baltimore only has like 600,000 people in it - your number here is way too high


A couple of years ago a friend of mine had to live in a small town with a population of 212,500. When I visited him there and asked him how it was, he replied "I fucking hate living in the countryside".

Devrim

[Os Cangaceiros]

It's obviously just a matter of perspective. Who cares.

[BIXX]

Huh. I live in Portland. I don't really know if I should be giving the population of the msa or the population of the city itself.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I usually include the greater metro area when describing how large a city is...LA for example is only about 3,000,000 people according to Wiki, which doesn't really do justice to quite the extent of urban sprawl emanating out of southern California. But some people may choose differently.

[Blake's Baby]

I'm not sure what sort of spatial scale we're using here.

Devrim's idea that cities of less than 1 million should be counted as 'rural' is a start. But what constitutes a city? London, let's say? But 'London' is actually two cities (London and Westminster) and around 20 towns and about 1,000 villages all mushed together. The greater London conurbation has a population of about 8 million. But 'London'? Probably about 80,000.

The UK population is about 60 million (nearly twice that of California, in a state only a little more than half the size). But there are probably only 2 defined conurbations (London and Birmingham) that top 1 million. Manchester (ie the Greater Manchester Conurbation of Manchester, Salford & Stockport and friends and relations...) and Sheffield might get close, I'm not sure.

I live in a town of 300,000 or so. But in about an hour I can be in London or Birmingham or Sheffield. Everywhere in the UK is really close; around 12 million people live within an hour or so's travel-time radius of me.

I suspect the comrades in the Netherlands have a similar dilemma. Sure, the municipal government covers an area with 20,000 or 300,000 people or whatever, but the actual areas of settlement tend to straggle into each other or are only a few minutes away. So in that case, how rural is rural?

You could have a 10,000-squarekm area that entirely urbanised, organised under one city government, that would be a city of 10 million people or whatever. Or you could have the same area, organised under 80 city governments, that would be 'rural' under the '1 million plus' definition. Or the Randstad, with its mix of rural and urban housing 7 million people - at what scale do you count where the 'city' is and where the 'country' is?

But population density doesn't help either. The world average (excluding the uninhabited Antarctic landmass) is 54 people per sqkm. That's about the same as Yemen, Tadjikistan and Eritrea (153, 4 & 5 in the world population density list). Turkey has a population density of 101 (number 107 on the list); the UK has a population density of around 262, Germany 226, and Jamaica smack in between them at 247. Belgium, the Netherlands, India and Israel are all more densely-settled.

Hey, demographics, it's a difficult business. That's why geographers get research grants.

[Creative Destruction]

Huh. I live in Portland. I don't really know if I should be giving the population of the msa or the population of the city itself.

This is one thing that surprised us... there really is no difference or transition between the city itself and the surrounding suburbs.

[Quail]

I grew up in a town of about 25k people, now I live in Sheffield. According to wikipedia:

The population of the City of Sheffield is 551,800 (2011 est.)[2] and it is one of the eight largest regional English cities that make up the Core Cities Group. Sheffield is the third largest English district by population. The metropolitan population of Sheffield is 1,569,000
I think Sheffield is kind of made up of lots of little towns though, or that's how it feels. That's why I like it here. It feels like a town, but has the convenience of the facilities of a city.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Born in a place with ~200 kiloinhabitants, live in a place with ~800-1000 kiloinhabitants. Horrible and stifling.


I think that a population of less than a million counts as rural.

Check your Third World privilege.

Seriously, though, I think the urban/rural distinction has more to do with economy and the functionality of an inhabited place than the number of people. Darmstadt is urban, for example, although it has less people than the backwater I'm living in, because it serves as a concentration of workers (mostly in the chemical industry and various service branches), and because it has the sort of things a city has - cultural life, public transportation, easy access to public discussion etc.

[newdayrising]

I've always thought rural had something to do with an economy based on agriculture. Was I wrong?
I live in the same city Pilantra was born in. He mentioned 11 million, but the urban area is around 20 million. It's too big and makes people neurotic, anxious and depressed, especially if they use public transport for over 2 hours a day, as many people do.
Now, on top of that, we're having a water crisis. Many areas are already completely dry many hours a day. I smell disaster.
I think a couple of million is a good size for a city.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

What do the dry areas do for water? That does sound like disaster waiting to happen

[Palmares]

^"where I'm from"... Where are you from? Just the country if you don't want to be specific.

XfR9iY5y94s

[newdayrising]

What do the dry areas do for water? That does sound like disaster waiting to happen

They wait until the water comes back. Sometimes it doesn't, and there's been a few riots, people storing bottled water and so on. The state water company has mentioned the possibility of a rationing system of 5 days without whater and 2 days with water each week.

If it happens, I'm sure poor areas will be more affected and they will definitely riot. Middle class and rich areas up on the hills are also suffering due to lack of water pressure. But in their case it's probably going to turn into angry letters to newspapers, lower real-estate values and a lot of people moving to other cities.

My mother lives in a completely rural area about 3 hours away and they have their own water sources there. Urban life is more connected, both in good and bad ways.

[Connolly1916]

Born and raised is a small rural parish with a population of a few hundred.The nearest town is a 10-15 minute drive and has a population of 5-6,000. Currently living just outside a city with a population of 75,000.

[Blake's Baby]

I think in a lot of places the words 'town' and 'city' in your post would be replaced with the words 'village' and 'small town'.

The place I live has around 300,000 people and I'd hesitate to call it a proper city (officially it is, it has a bishop and everything, but it feels like a town, you can walk from fields across the urban area to the fields on the other side in about an hour).

[Tim Cornelis]

BB, you live in Utrecht too?

---

The 'Randstad' concept feels forced to me. If it's not physically jointed, it's not an urban or metropolitan area. Randstad is just some concept for Dutch people to feel big 'we have a millions metropolitan area too!'.

[Blake's Baby]

But that's kind of my point. Where does the 'edge' of the metropolitan area come in?

Manchester is a city; and Salford is a ... something, let's call it another city, and Stockport is a town; but they all run into each other. So do you count that as one mass or three (plus all the smaller towns like Oldham)? If it's one block, the 'greater Manchester conurbation' or something, a city that happens to be administratively dived up into inconsequential units, then it has a population of 2.5 million. If however it's a multiplicity of units, then the largest, Manchester proper, only has 1/2 million people. Under Devrim's definition, the conurbation would count, but neither Manchester nor Salford (nor Stockport not Oldham nor Burnley...) would count individually. So how do you make that distinction?

How many areas of green space/how much width of green space separates one urban area from another before you call them as different settlements? Alternatively, if you just divide the land up into a grid and say 'this block has a density of >1,000 people/sqkm, it's urban, that block has a density <1,000 people/sqkm, it's rural', then how big do you make the blocks? At one scale, the Randstadt is real - there's a particular, not-very-large area that has 7 million people in it. But the problem is almost the opposite of greater Manchster - all the units are separate; but in the area, there are more people than in most areas of the UK; it compares to the Chicago or Atlanta conurbations in terms of population against area. But it's not 'real' to the people who live there... it is, perhaps, a statistical artifact, that can be discovered at a particular scale.

So, again, the idea that population size can be use as a criterion depends on clarity about what is isn't included in the 'city', and at what scale.

[Ele'ill]

Early life grew up rural although the type of rural that seemed to always be right on the cusp of development. Kind of gradually was force-assimilated into the cities and everything beautiful was swallowed up into the vapid technic nightmare as my dreams of becoming a professional bird watcher crumbled into ash. (I prefer rural)

[Ro Laren]

The town I live in has a population of around 7,000. Lots of farms and space and nothing. But I live about 30 minutes away from a city with a population of 250,000. I wouldn't want to live there, but maybe some other city someday.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I live in the fallout of what I assume was the site of horrific nuclear explosion. Bodies and mutated animals everywhere. Some call it Pittsburgh, I call it Hell.

[Palmares]

I live in the fallout of what I assume was the site of horrific nuclear explosion. Bodies and mutated animals everywhere. Some call it Pittsburgh, I call it Hell.

Good beers dumpsters there. :lol:

Were the Fallout games based on Pittsburgh?

[La Guaneña]

Urban capital of a rural state

[A Revolutionary Tool]

I was born in Hayward which has a population of about 145,000 so it's pretty big. Plus take into account this is in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is a metropolitan area of about 7.5 million people. There's Oakland, San Jose, San Francisco, etc, etc, right around here. I've lived in very small towns too though with no more than 200 people in Nevada. Currently I'm technically living within the boundaries of a city with about 70,000 but it's on a almond farm on the outskirts of town and I'm actually closer to Stockton which has about 300,000 people.

[human strike]

I grew up in a semi-rural town with a population of 50,000. I now live in a city of at least 430,000, though it's a million if you include the larger metro area - it's difficult to accurately say what is and isn't Bristol since the boundaries have been moved so often. Probably about 600,000 live in what most people think of as Bristol.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Good beers dumpsters there. :lol:

Were the Fallout games based on Pittsburgh?

Originally Fallout 3 was supposed to be based off Detroit and then Fallout New Shittsburgh but it was to similar to the actual thing and it offens people so they changed it.

[Slavic]

Originally Fallout 3 was supposed to be based off Detroit and then Fallout New Shittsburgh but it was to similar to the actual thing and it offens people so they changed it.

I hear there are a lot of mole people out in Pittsburgh. Good thing they are on the other side of Penntucky.