Could small towns disappear from the American way of life?

[10023]

I'm not sure I'd call anything along the I-95 corridor a "small town".

Delaware and eastern Maryland have small towns. How are those hanging on, generally? That area would be more similar, though not quite as densely populated, to what you see all over Europe. It's a fairly nice area, there are reasons for people to go there, and despite being rural it's still within a reasonable distance of some cities.

[duffey]

we don't need to have this debate, everyone just watch What's Eating Gilbert Grape

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

But nobody in those towns (or very few) are commuting to Manhattan. Most work in the area in office parks. Plus, landscape surrounding those towns is mostly farmland, 80s and 2000s sprawl, and forests.

Yeah, but it's part of a metropolitan economy. These towns aren't off in the middle of nowhere. Whether they work in Manhattan or Manalapan doesn't really matter; the point is that they owe their prosperity to the larger linkages.

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by 10023

I'm not sure I'd call anything along the I-95 corridor a "small town".

Delaware and eastern Maryland have small towns. How are those hanging on, generally? That area would be more similar, though not quite as densely populated, to what you see all over Europe. It's a fairly nice area, there are reasons for people to go there, and despite being rural it's still within a reasonable distance of some cities.

Dunno, this is the area we're talking about. See all the forests/hills/farms/sprawl?

Horrific sprawl + farms/forests

Mostly rural charming towns and farms/forests with some sprawl

Delaware/eastern shore Md was one of the least developed areas on the east coast for centuries, so the small towns are not as plentiful as in western and central Maryland.

Salisbury is a nice small city and you have Ocean City/Dewey/Lewes/Rehoboth, but otherwise it's a lot of boring flat fields and chicken farms. Good crab though.

[10023]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Dunno, this is the area we're talking about. See all the forests/hills/farms/sprawl?

Horrific sprawl + farms/forests

Mostly rural charming towns and farms/forests with some sprawl

Delaware/eastern shore Md was one of the least developed areas on the east coast for centuries, so the small towns are not as plentiful as in western and central Maryland.

Salisbury is a nice small city and you have Ocean City/Dewey/Lewes/Rehoboth, but otherwise it's a lot of boring flat fields and chicken farms. Good crab though.

But even in the second area, you've got houses up and down every road. And even some subdivisions (just to the north, east and south of Rt 202, and to the east along Rt 206, etc). On the spectrum between rural and low-density sprawl it's toward the former, but it's still kind of "farm-burbia".

I'm talking more about places like this, where you have a couple of towns, and a bunch of villages, and it's entirely rural in between:

https://goo.gl/maps/qyz8x


But you're still close enough to some cities, and there are enough small towns and villages near to each other, that it's definitely not "remote" or isolated from jobs and culture and everything else.

[MolsonExport]

.