• SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    Four out of five Americans (80%) live in an urbanized area according to the Census Bureau. Only 20% of us live in rural areas. That shifted slightly toward rural in the 2020 census (it was 80.7% urban in 2010), because the Bureau revised the cutoff for urban area upward from 2,500 to 5,000 people. A large proportion of that “rural” 20% live in towns of up to 5,000 residents. The number of people who truly live miles from anybody else is quite small.

    • wsweg@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You guys are acting like urban is the same thing as metro. Things in urban areas are still far apart a lot of the time. Urban sprawl needs to be fixed (which involves relocating millions of people) before the banning of cars would even be even somewhat reasonable.

      • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        I believe that I said in an earlier comment that I’m not a fan of bans. This is just a funny meme, which serves as a good jumping off point for discussion. Rather, the policies that I am suggesting here (user pays, essentially) are one mechanism by which urban sprawl could be fixed, without government bans or mandates, respecting individual choice. There’s one heck of a lot of land devoted to driving and storing cars that people could easily and quickly convert to housing, food production, and other necessities of life.