I've always been under the impression that small towns aren't accessible from an aging and disabled perspective. Even the smallest tasks require a car and there's little to no public transportation. Whereas in cities, you might only have to go to the corner to grab necessities or get medication from your pharmacy.
I've worked with Meals on Wheels in suburban areas. Often, if the elderly didn't live in a senior community/nursing home or didn't have family nearby, they barely left home because they physically, or legally, couldn't drive. That means they don't see doctors when they need to, and lacked food, medication and basic necessities. Taxis exist, but they're relatively expensive if you're retired and living off of Social Security.
Yeah, I moved to a relatively small town. Almost everything is within walking distance. Two pharmacies, two banks, and a grocery store and some other stores and a couple restaurants about a block away. Urgent care, doctor, veterinarian and hospital a couple of blocks further. Downtown, with its theater and restaurants and bars etc. is about a nice leisurely 20 minute walk.
People in suburbia could have this too if they just zoned for it. Take out the stupid strip malls and stroads and put the businesses where the people are and vice-versa. Get some actual neighborhoods and communities again.
Well out in rural areas is a bit of a different matter. Some people will need cars.
But with proper town development and decent public transit, something like 80% of people who aren't way out in rural areas wouldn't need cars except for vacation/road trips. That's not some far-fetched sci-fi idea. It just needs politics to properly utilize what we've had for a long time.
"Smaller towns" are one thing, but there are a lot of people who live outside any city limits. You're not going to link up every rural farmhouse with busses and light rail.
Even those who do live in town are likely to have friends and relatives who don't, and they're unlikely to want to rent a vehicle every time they leave town to visit them.
The problem I'm thinking of is that a town that small is probably missing lots of things many people consider important, so they'd have to drive to a neighbouring town. My sister lives in such a place, and does more driving than I could stand.
On the contrary, most small towns (I have lived in) have much finer grained community support networks, many ad-hoc, that can provide better quality of life. This is however highly dependent on your local community. However it is never too late to start something. I find if there is a need, there is a huge untapped well of hands-on support you just don't find in urban environments. The fact that people still know their neighbors is a huge enabler and stimulus of compassion and support.
Not at all. A small town has a town center, a residential area clustered around it, and nature or farmland surrounding that.
Suburbs sometimes have a town center but often it's much more amorphous with different strip malls and such. Everything is spread out. There is no place where you're at the heart of the town, in the center of activity. And even if there is such a place, it's probably driving distance, just like everything else. You need a car because everything is spread out because all the areas of activity are surrounded by parking lots.
The town in which I grew up was 30 minutes from the nearest Wal-Mart by car, and 15 minutes from the nearest real grocery store by car. Hell, "town" was three minutes by car from my house and we lived "close" compared to several of my friends. We had no police department. We had a volunteer only fire department and first responder unit. We partnered with a town 5 miles away for our school district. We were 13 miles from the nearest 4 lane highway. Most of our county roads were gravel. We had few problems with safety, food access, or economic access to plentiful jobs.
Living in a tiny, remote, rural town presents one with a ton of low level, low overhead, low skill, and valuable entrepreneurial opportunities. Property and office space are cheap. Housing, which would go for well into the $300k range in cities within commuting distance of an hour or less, costs between $50,000 and $200,000 (for a pretty luxurious place). Agriculture, inevitably the bedrock of most rural communities, provides needs for mechanics, scrap management, custom application, fuel, carpentry, veterinary medicine, real estate, law, education, commodities trading, banking, environmental protection, equipment dealerships, various parts suppliers, hairdressers, food and entertainment, communications, rental property management, accounting, coaching, and pretty much every other economical human endeavor. The opportunity is that most of these needs are met by people in the community - people who you know well and trust - and are insulated from competition by distance and the small market size. Many people were self-employed; as doctors, vets, concrete masons, farmers, restaurateurs, gas station franchise owners, specialty parts wholesalers, junkyard operators, etc. Sure, there was only one store where you could get plumbing supplies, but that family lived very comfortably in that niche, and had for two generations. You either chose to stay and start your own business that could meet a need in the local community, usually some specialized unskilled construction or mechanical labor, or got a degree and commuted to the nearby cities. Food was procured once a week from the far away grocery stores; but other than commuters and the weekly grocery errand, you often didn't need to leave the vicinity of the town for weeks or even months at a time.
In cities, even with suburban life, not needing to leave your community for extended days at a time is exceedingly rare, even for suburbs with approximately the same population as my old small town. I drive thirty minutes across town to my clients' offices, for example. New Yorkers take the subway across burroughs to get to their jobs.
The authors overstate the problems people in small towns face.
To get a better idea of that sort of context, look at Texas or Montana in Google Maps and zoom in on one of the low-population areas. You'll see plenty of little towns with no public transit that would be literally days away from each other if walking.
There used to be these things called small towns. [1]
One wasn't forced to choose between "20 minutes from anything" and "New York City".
Most people talking about the density issue are lamenting the lack of these middle choices. The places where a family would probably still need a car, but it would be conceivable to have a functional bus system to get you from one small town to the next, or into the city. Where you can still own a house with a yard, but walking to corner store wasn't a circuitous two mile hike with intermittent sidewalks.
etc.
[1] Before they were largely converted to glorified open-air-malls for the cul-de-sac dwellers to drive to on the weekends.
Not a "younger person" here, but I don't want a life of car dependency and social isolation either.
But small town life (ours has pop. around 5000-ish) is pretty good! We have the high street (and a modest-sized supermarket) within 10 minutes walk, a variety of community activities to be involved in, and nature (including protected reserves) pretty much on our doorstep.
And most days, the car doesn't leave the driveway. The area isn't "depopulating rapidly", like many more remote rural areas; the challenge, rather, is to manage growth such that the community is not overwhelmed by it.
No one is forcing small towns to stop existing. Young people just don't want to live in them. And yes, I do think they should get fewer facilities because they can't afford them. I'm sure every geriatric town would love a world class cancer treatment center, but they're gonna have to suck it up.
Small towns generally do not have as wide a variety of shops as bigger cities, so residents in small town and rural environments have to drive several times a month to a bigger city, sometimes 100 miles or more round trip.
Unless you look back 70 years and realize that many small towns only existed because they had rail (passenger and goods). (and/or private bus service). Turns out, getting your goods to market before every person had a car was a requirement.
That's certainly interesting, and the place sounds nice. I think most people (certainly me) will admit that cars are almost necessary in your situation. Just curious though, would it not be better to live near a larger place assuming larger towns/cities may have better schools (on average)?
They're not small towns. Suburban homes very often have no commercial activity in close proximity. You have to drive somewhere else to do just about anything.
Small towns haven't historically been built like that.
I've worked with Meals on Wheels in suburban areas. Often, if the elderly didn't live in a senior community/nursing home or didn't have family nearby, they barely left home because they physically, or legally, couldn't drive. That means they don't see doctors when they need to, and lacked food, medication and basic necessities. Taxis exist, but they're relatively expensive if you're retired and living off of Social Security.
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