Americans ditched big cities during the pandemic. Now many are regretting it

[DCReid]

Susan, a 30-something artist, lived in New York City when the pandemic struck. Eager to flee the claustrophobia of a too-small apartment, she and her husband decamped upstate to stay with friends in an up-and-coming town in the Catskills (population: 1,000) where they could hike local trails and fish for trout...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/americans...104201632.html

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by DCReid

Susan, a 30-something artist, lived in New York City when the pandemic struck. Eager to flee the claustrophobia of a too-small apartment, she and her husband decamped upstate to stay with friends in an up-and-coming town in the Catskills (population: 1,000) where they could hike local trails and fish for trout...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/americans...104201632.html

File this under no one anywhere is surprised in the slightest.

[sopas ej]

[Minato Ku]

During lockdowns or with almost everything closed and with restriction of social life, the life in isolated big houses is much better. There is no advantage to live in a big city during those times.
But they made a mistake thinking that this life mode will be almost permanent and that internet could replace real social life.

[Crawford]

I'm shocked that urbanites would eventually tire of living fulltime in the woods. Who would have guessed??

[Steely Dan]

"There's a mall 3 towns over that has a Panda Express. That's pretty ethnic. And there's also a Taco Bell out on route 45 on the way up to Ogdenville"

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'm shocked that urbanites would eventually tire of living fulltime in the woods. Who would have guessed??

The story is about statistical outliers like Susan and her husband. I think most people actually do not regret the move.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Gantz

The story is about statistical outliers like Susan and her husband. I think most people actually do not regret the move.

I think most would regret the move. Anecdotal, but the people I knew who made such a move have all moved back, or are planning on doing so. The one exception is a guy who bought a sunflower farm in Delaware County, but he is extremely bohemian.

Unless you want to live like a hermit, or have a very unconventional lifestyle, living in the woods is pretty niche, especially for people with money and options in life. Most people want reliable power, paved roads, water/sewer, police, schools, etc.

[aufbau]

Originally Posted by Gantz

The story is about statistical outliers like Susan and her husband. I think most people actually do not regret the move.

yeah speaking only anecdotally (like this article does), from my circle who ditched the city, the experience is more like "...and few looked back"

Heck, even continuing to live in a tight urban space, I have a latent fantasy of life in some rural corner all the time. Especially in such gentrified rural spaces like Catskills or the Hudson River valley. This lady didn't try too hard if she couldn't find an artistic community up there.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by aufbau

yeah speaking only anecdotally (like this article does), from my circle who ditched the city, the experience is more like "...and few looked back"

There's a world of difference between decamping to an established suburb and decamping to a cabin in the woods.

The former may involve a big change in lifestyle when it comes to car usage, but you'll still likely be able to find, like, Thai restaurants within 30 minutes of you. Or a movie theater, if you're still into that sort of thing.

In the case of the latter, you're not just giving up on the walkable convenience of a city, you're also basically giving up on most commercial and civic amenities. It's not that you have to drive to them rather than take the train, it's that they don't exist, period.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by aufbau

Heck, even continuing to live in a tight urban space, I have a latent fantasy of life in some rural corner all the time.

May I ask why? What would be the appeal of paying insane property taxes to be snowed in, without power, to live an hour from civilization?

I've stayed with my buddy on his sunflower farm, and you might as well be on the moon. Unless you dislike other humans, I have no idea why anyone would want to permanently live like this. It's pretty for a weekend, but the living there is hard, even brutal. The only humans he encounters are the occasional poacher.

Some cutesy town on a rail line, like Cold Spring, or Beacon, would be fine, but those towns are expensive and pretty urban. Once you get out into the Catskills, it's wilderness.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I think most would regret the move. Anecdotal, but the people I knew who made such a move have all moved back, or are planning on doing so. The one exception is a guy who bought a sunflower farm in Delaware County, but he is extremely bohemian.

Unless you want to live like a hermit, or have a very unconventional lifestyle, living in the woods is pretty niche, especially for people with money and options in life. Most people want reliable power, paved roads, water/sewer, police, schools, etc.

Yeah, I only know one person that has moved upstate from NYC permanently with no plans to return. I know a few people who bought weekend houses in the Hudson Valley and are happy splitting their time between there and the city.

[strongbad635]

It's interesting how a lot of the folks who did this recently would bring up romanticized notions of country living as it existed in some imagined past. They speak of having fewer interpersonal ties but deeper ones, because you see other people more infrequently and the time spent with them is more precious as a result. They speak of the quiet as allowing them to clear their heads and do more with their lives.

In reality, this kind of existence wasn't reality even for most rural people a century ago. It's hard to clear your head when you lacked so many of the conveniences that made life easier in urban areas. When you spend more time just to get your daily tasks done, from laundry to cooking to using the restroom. Technology brought most of these conveniences to the countryside (almost entirely paid for by those who live in cities BTW), but with that technology came other distractions. First the radio, then television, then computers and social media. The vaunted "quiet" of the countryside isn't so tranquil with your smartphone at arm's length, your Roku sitting across the living room, and your work day being a flurry of Zoom meetings with other hermits in their new rural carapaces.

What many people ignore is how social media and instant communication changed those supposedly deep ties that rural people would form with a small number of people they would see far less often. When you only saw your neighbor once or twice a week because she lives in his farmhouse 6 miles away, that could certainly incentivize quality of interpersonal time over quantity. But nowadays, you're friends with that gal on Facebook. You see her status updates every day, photos of her kids, her political musings, the quirky way she randomly vague-posts song lyrics. So the depth can't be maintained as easily anymore. Your virtual friendships render things just as shallow and saccharine as they would be in Brooklyn or Frisco, TX.

A lot of the focus on the downside of these rural moves has been on people discovering that they can't live the same kind of vibrant, creative, and fulfilling life without the magic of literal proximity to other real humans. And rightfully so, that's probably the biggest problem with the low density lifestyle. But it's also valuable to realize that most of what we see as the appeal of "country living" in our heads is really a Flintsonization of what it actually was before technology made it bearable for modern people.

[sentinel]

Originally Posted by Gantz

The story is about statistical outliers like Susan and her husband. I think most people actually do not regret the move.

Susan's story is really not an outlier, as the article has links (polls, social media threads and other article links) that back up the primary point. Unless you can point to other sources that refute that, then what you're claiming is just anecdotal.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by strongbad635

In reality, this kind of existence wasn't reality even for most rural people a century ago. It's hard to clear your head when you lacked so many of the conveniences that made life easier in urban areas. When you spend more time just to get your daily tasks done, from laundry to cooking to using the restroom. Technology brought most of these conveniences to the countryside (almost entirely paid for by those who live in cities BTW), but with that technology came other distractions. First the radio, then television, then computers and social media. The vaunted "quiet" of the countryside isn't so tranquil with your smartphone at arm's length, your Roku sitting across the living room, and your work day being a flurry of Zoom meetings with other hermits in their new rural carapaces.

It's also worth noting if you go back a bit more than a century, the populations of rural areas had been steadily collapsing for a different region - transportation.

Once the rail network interlinked cities (and even larger towns) in the mid/late 19th century, there was a huge penalty in terms of economic vitality to any location which was "off the grid," as you literally still relied on the horse to get from place to place. Thus these areas emptied of people quickly, who poured into urban areas, even if that simply meant the nearest mill town with more opportunity.

Personal automobiles were a real lifeline for these areas, which in many cases would have petered away to nothing without their invention (indeed, rural decline in picturesque, touristy areas only began stabilizing in the 1920s, in large parts of the country).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by eschaton

It's also worth noting if you go back a bit more than a century, the populations of rural areas had been steadily collapsing for a different region - transportation.

Once the rail network interlinked cities (and even larger towns) in the mid/late 19th century, there was a huge penalty in terms of economic vitality to any location which was "off the grid," as you literally still relied on the horse to get from place to place. Thus these areas emptied of people quickly, who poured into urban areas, even if that simply meant the nearest mill town with more opportunity.

Personal automobiles were a real lifeline for these areas, which in many cases would have petered away to nothing without their invention (indeed, rural decline in picturesque, touristy areas only began stabilizing in the 1920s, in large parts of the country).

Do you know of any examples of towns that survived until automobiles without railroad access? I feel like they all died out.

[mhays]

I'm not moving to the woods but the idea has its charm.

Imagine being just far enough out that you feel secluded but can still walk or bike to civilization when needed.

With a few convenient purchases (food, systems, tech) to make life dramatically easier than in 1823.

Maybe fire up a generator for a couple hours a day and leave it off otherwise, for just enough taste of the modern world.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by Gantz

The story is about statistical outliers like Susan and her husband. I think most people actually do not regret the move.

The husband who wanted a country house and had tired of the City who brought along his artist wife. I wonder if they brought their teenage stepdaughter and had problems with ghosts in the rural home?

[ChiSoxRox]

As someone who moved from literal Alaskan woods to central Boston, I am not surprised. Thinking of cabin life as a Bob Ross painting come to life is a romanticization; my quality of life took a major step up with the move into a city.

[EastSideHBG]

"Susan, a 30-something artist..." + NYC and, "I left Boston for rural Kansas," are not going to be the best examples. Look for the people that left the smaller cities [in comparison to NYC] and went more rural but not that far away and I think you'll get a different perspective. Anecdotally not one person I know who left Philly plans on returning and is enjoying their lives in rural/exurbs/smaller cities (but I could see not wanting to count smaller cities because it is still urban). But yeah when you go from Boston to Kansas there's going to be a desire to go back, especially if if you are a city person, as that is quite the culture shock.