People are convinced that if they recycle and compost they are doing more than enough to make a difference but they are so wrong.
In the days before every home had a car (let alone 2 or 3!)people lived near their place of work.
So if you worked in the city you lived in the city, if you worked ona farm you lived in the country...easy peasy.
But then some of the richer city dwellers decided it would be nice to live in the country and "commute" in his nice shiny car.
In the past the very rich of course had kept a city and a country home, catching the train at the weekend to visit the wife and kids. But in the days when the rich had household help I should imagine the onset of WWII trying to keep two houses running was significantly more expensive than running a car to work everyday.
Where the Rich lead the middle class will follow, and soon the city and town workers started flocking to the country for a "better life".
Now no-one can deny that back then life in the city was hard, but then it was also hard in the country.
It seems to be the norm with most people now...leave home, get a job and a flat, get married, get a house, hae kids and MOVE TO THE COUNTRY!
The trouble is though that all the city and town dwellers wanted to bring their urban life with them.
They continued to commute to work by car (in fact so many did that the UK has lost most of its train and bus routes as so few people used them), and in doing so rejected using the facilities in the villages in favour of shopping in the town on the way home, so the rural post offices and shops died out one by one until what we are left with a a series of ghost villages.
My village has doubled in size through new builds in the last 3 years and is set to get even bigger by 2012.
But it seems the more new houses go up the less facilities outr village has.
The shop closed 4 years ago, leaving a huge gap in the community, the pub has no more patrons, although there are twice as many people living in the village now, and is struggling to stay open.
Every morning the occupants of these new houses get into their cars and drive away to work between 15 and 40 miles away from here.
All you need is a tumble weed hopping down the street.
Every evening they come home and sit in their new houses. They don't walk in the countryside or visit the country pub or take bike rides around the lane....they sit in their houses and watch TV.
And living in the country is better than the town because????
Why do I live in the country?
I have had the fortune to have lived in all ways, city, town, suburbs and rurally. I am a country girl at heart, I love to grow our own food and walk on the mountain, we have the horses and need to live here to keep them.
I loved living in the town when I did. I loved being close to facilities and never having to worry about having a car, I could walk or bus or cycle where ever I wanted.
I sometimes feel people move to the country because they feel its "what you do".
By moving indiscriminately though they turn the country into a suburb miles away from anywhere.
Towns now, for the most part, are green places now. They are no longer the factory chimney spewing, grim places they where 50 years ago.
What can be done to encourage people to stay close to their place of work again?
How can you change the mindset that you've "made it" if you live in the country, even though you are moving to what is essentially a tiny house ona new estate which is only in the "country" because it is miles from town and shops.
I have no objection to people moving into the country, after all I am an incomer myself...the objection is the urbanising of villages.
This brings up one the fundamental flaws that is happening all over the world since after the industrial revolution, and that is something along the lines of "the American dream" where everyone can have everything. But our planet cannot sustain over 6 billion people having cars and eating fish and steak every dinners every night.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that there are those wanting the best of both worlds - convenience of city life with a quiet country life. But rather alarmingly many people are flocking to live in cities these days (and many not by choice but by necessity for survival) which at the end of the day increases the demand for oil.
Unfortunately, as you are already witness to, this leads to less people living and independently sustaining a village or county, turning them into suburbia type living for the rich.
We have two distinct problems with the new houses (30 atm another 70 up for planning!).
ReplyDeleteThe first is that they are only brought by richer people, high end market retirees (I have never understood why people move AWAY from friends and facilities when they get older!!)who contribute nothing to the village.
The other problem is that although we need to keep numbers stead in our school (22 this term) IF the extra houses brought in more children the council will NOT make the school bigger. It will close the school and bus the kids to the larger town school which WILL be extended. So there is another threat to village life.
Rather than working to improve a town school well off people decide that a small village school is ideal, not realising that they become part of a larger problem.
Ways to live happily and sustainably need to be worked out for everyone regardless of where they live IMO :P
I'm one of those commuters who lives in the country and works in the city, however, I don't shop in the city. All my business goes to the local little town. I know the people there, I take my business there, but there are no JOBS there for me, so I have to commute.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't I just live closer to town? Well, because around here, closer to town means I pay 4X the real estate taxes I am paying now and I'd pay nearly 6X as much as I did to get the same amount of land as I have now. It's cheaper further out in the country...I can have my horses and my livestock and my gardens and my peace and quiet. I have no neighbors and I love it that way. If I didn't have to work to pay the note on the house, I'd probably never wander very far away from home at all!
I love our little school. I love our little town. I love living in the country: Walking, gardening, raising my kids, riding my horses and waving at the neighbors. If the little town we live near had jobs available, I'd take one. But they don't.
Ah Jenn..but you are a COUNTRY person...you live in the country for all the right reasons. My gripe is with the people who buy suburban style houses at inflated prices ( so that local people are priced out). A person who genuinely wants to live in the country, keep animals, grow veg, take WALKS even is always welcome, they add so much, but if all they are going to do is sit in their house and watch TV (really they do!)then what is the point!
ReplyDeleteFortunately, we haven't had the pleasure of experiencing that yet! I hope NEVER to experience the misplaced suburbanites, especially after all the stories I've heard from country friends dealing with new suburbanite neighbors. I have to agree...why live in the country if you aren't going to go outside and ENJOY the country? Move back to the city!
ReplyDeleteI have country friends who are dealing with complaints about farm and animal smells (from the new city folks that moved in to the new subdivision) and noise. Yes, the country can be noisy, especially during planting and harvesting seasons. Sometimes, those tractors and combines run all night long if the crop needs to get in, or out, of the fields. And trust me, it does NOT smell like fresh spring flowers and honeysuckle after a summer rain, not when you have livestock and a dairy down the road!