I don't think that's a sufficient condition. I too am from a New England town that was incorporated more than 200 years ago. But it doesn't have the density or the amenities that you're describing. (I wish that it did!)
Even smaller towns are viable, too. My New England town has around 5,000 people in it. Aside from the early closing times for restaurants and breweries, (8 or 9!?!?!?!), I have access to exactly the same amenities I had in cities before. And lots more outdoor-oriented things as well. Plus... no traffic.
Same. Given our requirements and price range we would not be living within walking distance of the city museums or cultural amenities anyway, and we would be about as far a walk from the closest supermarket or cafe as we are now.
I think there is something to be said for New England towns where the design of the town center predates the automobile and is therefore pleasantly dense and walkable. They just don't seem to make towns like that any more.
If you can be 100% remote and don't need the transit options to the big city then just a little further out you can find charming towns for even less.
My wife and I are seriously considering our options in smaller towns in New England. Many of them predate the automobile and have the sorts of qualities that are being talked about in this thread.
Consider the New England states, where there are a lot of organically-developed small towns that are low-density and low-population but still reliably avoid most of the problems in the article.
I also live in a small town of around 2000 in rural Massachusetts. Within the same walking distance I have: full elementary school (kindergarten through 6th grade), public tennis and basketball courts, a public indoor gym, a grocery store, several restaurants, several bookstores, several banks, a pharmacy, a bowling alley and a few more misc stores. We also have public transport to the nearest big town but it is only a few times a day.
The only reason my town is dense and walkable is due to geography. It was settled 250 years ago and it is nestled on a river between two "mountains" (really just big hills) so once all the available space filled up 100 years ago it just stopped growing (my house is on the outskirts of town and was built 115 years ago).
In comparison I grew up in a sprawling small town in the US midwest which has embraced even more sprawl since I moved 30+ years ago and I hate going back. Its just souless and unwalkable as it has endless land to expand into and no plan to keep it human scale.
Yeah. My town has a population of 7,000 and is within an hour of Boston. I also have a Christmas tree farm on one side and an apple orchard and horse farm on the other. 75 acres in all and probably over 100 acres when you add some conservation land. Not what most people consider urban.
But we don’t have a meaningful commercial area at all in the town.
And I’m not walking anywhere except recreationally in the woods.
Here's the thing. We already have towns spread everywhere--just like in pretty much every country in the world. The US is a large country. I live in an exurban town that's adjacent to a couple of older/smaller manufacturing cities within an hour of a major tech metropolis (though my office is actually much closer). I have septic, pay for water, pay for trash pickup, etc. And, not that I object (as I go into the city a fair bit), but a lot of my taxes seem to go into urban infrastructure projects.
It's not black and white. It's not central Manhattan and the middle of Montana.
[ADDED: And, by the way, my town was founded in 1653. It's not some recent suburban sprawl addition.]
The area of the town is around 43 square miles. The houses are not near the grocery stores.
New England towns used to be very neighborhood centric. Our town used to have 14 schools because everyone had to walk to school. Our schools have been centralized and now require busing.
Walkability used to be a thing but no longer. Off street parking is convenient during snow removal.
I live in an old New England farm town in a house from the early 1800s. (The town was founded in 1653.)
Looking at maps from the 1800s, it was always pretty spread out. There is a small town green with a couple old churches, library, cemetery, and town hall. And there used to be some mills along the river. But it was mostly fairly spread out farming.
As you suggest, in England and I assume other areas of Europe there would be a more distinct village with a place dating to that time.
In order for people to be in a town permanently the town must provide sufficient and affordable living opportunities for all its citizens. The town must also have a robust vision for young professionals, family life, and senior care, otherwise it's a town which cannot handle the full path of life.
What kind of resources do you mean? They still have to heat and power their homes, so it still “consumes resources”. Unless you are talking about buying local groceries or something.
Propery taxes are the same in NH whether someone lives there full time or not, so it doesn’t matter that they aren’t there and would be equally valuable if they did live full time. The traffic argument is the only one I can see being true, except that traffic in the seacoast is awful already anyway with tourists driving back and forth to Maine.
Personally, I think having permanent residents is far better for a town than a graveyard of empty soulless homes, but I’m just a regular human being and I’m sure its just a matter of opinion at that point.
I grew up in a small town in the Berkshires and recently went back there to see family. It is interesting to see the shift from where it was 100 years ago to where it was when I was a kid, to where it is today (and where it's heading).
100 years ago there was a ton of industry: paper mills, textile mills, marble and limestone quarries. These were supported by a train that ran through town to transports goods to and from Boston, and the town sprouted up organically around these industries.
One by one, they all faded away but when I was little the town still had much of the residual glory: a downtown full of shops, a mahogany-lined library and school, plus a big new mall 15 minutes away. Then as I grew up all the things started to go away. The two drive-in theaters, the entire downtown shopping area, the malls. All of it bottomed out when the Walmart came to town (familiar story...)
But now there is a bit of a revival around art, nature and tourism, which they have been pushing my entire life. The old train tracks are now a walking/bicycle path. The old textile mill is a modern art museum. The shell of its former existence gives the town a very unique character now. But there is a big disconnect between people who grew up there and the tourist mindset, and it's interesting to be able to see and understand both sides of it. The people that are moving there or want to visit there have a COMPLETELY different mindset than the people who do live there, even most the people trying to drum up the tourism.
Most small towns aren't going to revive via tourism, of course, but I think the bigger problem is every small town is trying to find some big "thing" to come save them. A new plant, a new business hub of some sort. Instead they should be focusing on their strengths, such as they exist: cheap housing, open spaces, access to nature, no commuting traffic. Cut out red tape and let people redefine these town husks like hermit crabs changing shells. I think the best approach is to focus on local community elements that are attractive to people who can work remotely. It's got to be success by a thousand cuts, because most of these communities have no chance at a real influx of business.
You bring up a very good point. Towns with more long term residents are going to have a lot more people who feel the need/desire/interest to get involved. I live in New Jersey, and a lot of towns are filled with more transient folk. Partly because everything is on top of each other - if I move 5 miles away I might be 2 towns over.
The result is that I never planned on living in my current town for more than a few years and we just passed our 10th anniversary. Maybe it's time to get involved!
I'd observe that living in any small area whether it's a "fake town" like Santana Row or a real town like gentrified areas of many old small New England cities can get old. I worked in downtown Nashua NH--not the strip mall, the old downtown--for quite a few years. It was nice. But you maybe had a dozen square blocks of nice restaurants and interesting shops and that was it. Fine to commute to a few days a week. Less interesting IMO to live in.
Well, it's a typical more rural New England town. There is zero public transit of any sort. Essentially no businesses in town except barely when they merge with an adjacent small old mill city. So even in the town center where there are some sidewalks basically nowhere to walk to other than the library or post office. About 7K population total.
About an hour drive from a major city.
Though not that different really from small English countryside towns I've walked through.
Everything is in walking distance and most of the houses and buildings are 100+ years old (the town is on a river in a bowl of a valley so most of the buildable land ran out 100 years ago). We have a drug store with a soda fountain counter, a nice grocery store and a few nice restaurants and bookstores.
I moved here around 20 years ago after stints of living in Boston and Chicago after college. It has been a great place to raise kids but now that they are in their teens the main downside I'm seeing is the public high school options are sub-par compared to "magnet" schools available in cities. I don't think my kids are as ready for college as they would have been if we would have stayed in Boston. However, if we did want to drop the money there are a lot of world class private schools in the area.
We have been lucky enough to make sure to travel as the kids have grown so they don't become "townies". They have been on trips to England, Spain, France and Italy and many places in the US. We have also hosted two year-long exchange students so they realize there is a wider world out there. In my mind the biggest risk of raising kids in a small town is that they become provincial.
This sounds great to me, but could you give an example of the sort of town you mean?
I am only really experienced with NYC, which due to geographic and traffic constraints, just seems difficult to dip into more than once a month.
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