It's not just Western societies, it's an issue across the globe.
But then it does not begin with rural flight, that's only the consequence of.. I don't know, there is not enough opportunity/resources for people on the land. And that's happenning since the start of industrialisation, as Marx noticed, and then he wrote Communist Manifesto when he wanted to build industry outside of the cities but that was tried and didn't work, some communist leaders even sent people from cities into the countryside to 'reeducate', that didn't work either. So everyone is moving into the cities (or to the nearby suburbia) and there is no remedy, even WFH doesn't really solve this.
Anyway just wanted to note there is no known policy that would stop rural flight.
> even WFH doesn't really solve this
I'm convinced that it could help, but at least here in France this is half-assed, and many companies are even looking to end it altogether. I would definitely move to a smaller town if I didn't have to come in to the city a set number of days a week. But there's no way I'll endure a multiple-hour commute, so I'll just keep bidding on the limited amount of housing and take up space in the metro, just so I can sit on a worse chair to take my video calls.
Of course you won't just up and leave your city apartment if you're not sure how long you'll be able to WFH.
Now I don't think it will actually fully solve all our housing woes, but even if it helped a bit it would still be better.
I'm 100% WFH. But I still live in the centre of our capital, partly by accident (bought the flat shortly before Covid hit to shorten the commute), partly because the infrastructure in other parts is quite lacking. And as you note, nobody knows when the WFH ends. But the infra part is why I think WFH does not solve rural flight. Yeah enabled consequently it would help a bit, but not that much I think.
> the infrastructure in other parts is quite lacking.
Meaning, passenger trains? I can't think of anything else that might be lacking in any rural area you'd reasonably consider living in.
While that did go out of fashion in rural areas some 100 years ago, even that infrastructure is still more or less there and could be resurrected if people really wanted to use it. The old train station around here became the clubhouse for the lawn bowling club, but I'm sure you could turn it back into the train station if the will was there.
But if you are working from home, how much do you really need a train anyway?
> I can't think of anything else that might be lacking in any rural area you'd reasonably consider living in.
Also reasonable bus service to anywhere "intersting".
I was actually thinking about that, and I think it comes down to what you do outside of work.
If you only hang around the house or similar, yeah, it doesn't matter much. My mom loves gardening, so she doesn't need "infrastructure" to "travel" to the back of her house.
But I do like going out, having a drink or two with friends, go dancing. Activities that can end late at night, possibly with some amount of alcohol in the blood. If alcohol's involved, I can't drive, so it's either an expensive taxi to the suburbs or some form of transit, hence infrastructure. Driving is a pain, because these activities happen in the city, and the mayor's policy is to make it as painful as possible to drive - and she's good at it.
However, I figured I didn't do those things that often, so with the difference in housing price, I could pay for a taxi fare now and then if I lived in the 'burbs. I also ride a motorbike, which somewhat mitigates the driving issue if I'm not intoxicated - but that's a separate hassle of its own when going out.
Depending on the activities, these may very well also exist in smaller, more affordable cities, which also helps with the infrastructure issue since you don't have to travel as far and are more likely to be able to bike or similar. I don't have kids, so I don't need a big house. Which means that, aside from my work, which holds me in the big city, I could move to one of those smaller, cheaper ones and not live in the boonies.
> But I do like going out, having a drink or two with friends, go dancing.
I'll point out that the original comment said "small town". The followup comment introduced "rural", but, given the context, we can infer that the same thing was meant.
With that said, why can't you do that in a small town? The small town (population ~1,000) I grew up in has eight bars, some of which cater to the dancing crowd. You can walk the whole town over in like 15 minutes, so there is no need to drive home after a late night drinking session. While not a train, there are buses that run to the nearest large city if you really need something you can't find locally, but I'm not sure what that would be.
It is fair to say that you can't spin a globe, randomly place your finger down, and move to where it lands and expect a good result. Infrastructure absolutely is lacking in the expansive forest, desert wasteland, and across the frozen tundra. But if you carefully select the small town, I wonder what infrastructure one actually finds missing?
> suburbs
That sounds like city living. Small towns or rural areas don't have suburbs. It's an interesting perspective, to be sure, but might have missed the mark around where the original question was asked. That is a very different environment.
> Meaning, passenger trains? I can't think of anything else that might be lacking in any rural area you'd reasonably consider living in.
Good quality healthcare providers, or sometimes even any healthcare providers that will schedule an appointment before you die, for one. Further down you mention "The small town (population ~1,000) I grew up in has eight bars", well the small town I grew up (pop. around 8000 currently) has no good quality restaurant when I don't want to cook, as another thing we could consider being infrastructure. And so on. Worth noting I live in Slovakia.
> Good quality healthcare providers, or sometimes even any healthcare providers that will schedule an appointment before you die, for one.
Yeah, specialists aren't commonly found in small towns. But it is not like cities are walled off. What's the practical difference between driving for 30 minutes across town to get to hospital vs. driving 30 minutes into the city? From anything I've ever observed, the specialist hospitals are generally located on the arterial entranceways into the city, no doubt for good reason.
If you need urgent specialist care, they have helicopters that can fly astonishingly fast. I'd love to see actual numbers, but I'd venture to guess in an average scenario you could actually get to the hospital faster if you were in the rural area as the helicopter can land more or less right beside you instead of you having to navigate city obstacles to either go to somewhere where the helicopter can land or go directly to the hospital.
> ...has no good quality restaurant when I don't want to cook, as another thing we could consider being infrastructure. And so on.
The original comment was about moving to "a small town", not moving to "a specific small town". Absolutely there are small towns that lack infrastructure, but there is no reason you have to choose those specific ones. If you decided you were going to move to a small town, you'd pick the one that you like.
> Worth noting I live in Slovakia.
And, sure, it is possible that every small town in Slovakia lacks infrastructure, but is staying in Slovakia a hard constraint?
30 minutes? In what place is this 30 minute drive from a rural area to the urban center an actual thing? I live in a small metro and it takes 20 minutes driving to get to these things and that is good time compared to a lot of other places. There's not some abundance of rural areas that are somehow within about the same distance.
> In what place is this 30 minute drive from a rural area to the urban center an actual thing?
Where is it not a thing around any major centre? Every city is ultimately going to have rural area outside of it. I suppose you can find some city that has poor geography or ridiculous suburban sprawl that impede access. There are always outliers. But in general?
Of course there are also rural areas further away, and maybe if you were trying to work in some kind of local industry (mining, agriculture, etc.) you'd need to be further away, but since we're just talking about WFH...
> There's not some abundance of rural areas
How many do you need, exactly?
Something I've noticed from living most of my life in rural areas but part of it in cities is that urbanites have very strange ideas of what rural life is like (at least in the US). Rural people usually have some idea of city life because they lived in a city for some time, perhaps while at college or pursuing a career in their youth before moving back to the country. But urbanites often have no personal experience of rural life at all, so their notions come from entertainment media created by other urbanites. They end up with a weird caricature that has more in common with Deliverance than it does reality.
I used to try to educate them, but then I realized that would just encourage them to move to the country, so I stopped.
> But it is not like cities are walled off.
Sadly it is, once you live in another district they can and will refuse to treat you.
> If you need urgent specialist care, they have helicopters that can fly astonishingly fast.
Oh no, my comment was not about urgent care, it's just often people get appointments with specialists a year or more in the future. Or you pay out of pocket and get it much faster but again those specialists are only in big cities.
> The original comment was about moving to "a small town", not moving to "a specific small town".
Sure, and my comment is representative about small towns in Slovakia.
> but is staying in Slovakia a hard constraint?
For me currently it is, but many people are moving away.
> Anyway just wanted to note there is no known policy that would stop rural flight.
High prices will do the trick, though. In Canada — which is said to have the most out of control housing market in the world — the urban population between the latest and previous census only increased by 4.8%, while the rural population grew by 6.5%. Due to periods of data collection, there could some COVID influence in there[1], but a similar trend was also seen in earlier censuses.
[1] If there is, that would be policy-driven, which you suggested isn't a factor, so...
> the urban population between the latest and previous census only increased by 4.8%, while the rural population grew by 6.5%.
One immediate question would be, how are the suburbs classified, urban or rural?
Canada defines urban as: A population center with at least 1,000 people and a population density of at least 400 people per square kilometer. Anything falling short of that is considered rural.
> Anyway just wanted to note there is no known policy that would stop rural flight.
Actually, there is. Industry steering politics...
Look at Eastern Germany for example. After the 90s people fled in droves (and neo-Nazis moved in to pursue their dreams of "national befreite Zonen" settlements that they couldn't have in Western Germany), but "Silicon Saxony" is a lighthouse that attracts industries and talent from all over the world, even if Intel's fab plans shattered due to Intel's often-described internal issues.
The thing is, for this to work, governments and especially their politicians have to be willing to think decades in the future - and they have to put money where their mouth is, and build the surrounding infrastructure as well: roads, rail, high speed internet, schools and universities.
That, however, is where many Western governments utterly and completely failed ever since Thatcher and the emergence of rabid unchecked capitalism, tax races to the bottom, "trickle down" and "small state" ideology. When the government doesn't have funds to invest into developing the industries of the future, you'll get the issues that almost all Western societies have.
China in contrast has used the shitload of money they got from the Western countries over the last quarter century (when they joined the WTO) to do exactly this. For all that I hate the CCP for various reasons, their way of thinking in five-year plans plus even longer macroeconomic planning has proven to be incredibly successful.
> Actually, there is.
You can build new cities. But it will be a city, not countryside. Maybe it will be just suburbs without a clear central zone, but it will still be a city. Anyway, Silicon Saxony is centered in Dresden, which is a city.
> China in contrast has used the shitload of money they got from the Western countries over the last quarter century (when they joined the WTO) to do exactly this.
What exactly do you mean by 'this'? They certainly didn't in any way stop rural flight, quite the opposite.
> What exactly do you mean by 'this'?
Building up strategically vital industries. The fact that no place in any Western country can offer anything close to what bunnie described in Shenzhen many years ago is damning in itself, and that's what keeps holding our industries back massively.
[1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2019/essential-guide-to-s...