The main problem is that as a whole, we tend to romanticize and privilege rural living. It's generally bad for the environment and economy, and really the latter is why people have already been urbanizing for, well, centuries now.
That as many people are able to live in rural areas now with a modern-ish standard of living is largely because of subsidies from more productive urban areas: just look at state government tax revenues vs spending by county and this is obvious.
I don't hate rural areas, but there's really no reason we should be subsidizing a lifestyle choice that's bad for the environment. At the very least, zoning rules at city and county levels that prevent densification even from landowners who want it on their property should be illegal, there's no good reason for those to exist. Some regional housing and transportation authorities with teeth would also go a long way.
There are all sorts of ramifications to the inefficiency of rural living that developed societies struggle to cope with. That providing, say, high speed internet out there may be too expensive for its own residents to afford may seem like an ignorable problem, until you remember there are kids out there too, and what if the local school wants the students to do things at home that depend on that internet access, which is a reasonable expectation in most of the country these days?
The main problem is that as a whole, we tend to romanticize and privilege rural living. It's generally bad for the environment and economy, and really the latter is why people have already been urbanizing for, well, centuries now.
That as many people are able to live in rural areas now with a modern-ish standard of living is largely because of subsidies from more productive urban areas: just look at state government tax revenues vs spending by county and this is obvious.
I don't hate rural areas, but there's really no reason we should be subsidizing a lifestyle choice that's bad for the environment. At the very least, zoning rules at city and county levels that prevent densification even from landowners who want it on their property should be illegal, there's no good reason for those to exist. Some regional housing and transportation authorities with teeth would also go a long way.
There are all sorts of ramifications to the inefficiency of rural living that developed societies struggle to cope with. That providing, say, high speed internet out there may be too expensive for its own residents to afford may seem like an ignorable problem, until you remember there are kids out there too, and what if the local school wants the students to do things at home that depend on that internet access, which is a reasonable expectation in most of the country these days?