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by jonathankoren 2493 days ago
To reinforce this idea, my city has 3x the population of Wyoming.

I grew up rural, but I long ago moved to an urban life. Politicians — and to be honest rural folk themselves — often try to enforce the idea that rural life is somehow more genuine. You’ll hear this as “Real America”, or how city folks don’t understand how “the Real World works”, or are some how “out of touch”. Which is fundamentally a completely bizarre idea when the majority of Americans (and I believe the world in general now) live an urban life. While there are unique and legitimate concerns that may need to be addressed for rural life, they are not mainstream concerns. Similarly, allowing rural politics and social mores to dominate national politics is as absurd as saying the Sentinelese[0] should dominate world culture because they’re more in touch with the land or something.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese
1 comments
input_sh 2493 days ago
> when the majority of Americans (and I believe the world in general now) live an urban life.

I think you're underestimating the figures. 80.7% of Americans lived in urban areas according to the 2010 census. Estimates for the entire world are over 50% for over a decade now (since 2007, to be more accurate). It increases slowly but steadily, so we were at about 55.27% in 2018. It's going to be about 68% by 2050 and about 85% by 2100.

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jdminhbg 2493 days ago
The Census's definition of "urban area" doesn't quite match what most people think of, I don't think. It's any area of over 50k people. If you reverse sort the list provided on Wikipedia[0], you'll find a lot of places that aren't top of mind when people think about "urban life:" Grand Island, NE; Hazleton, PA; Albany, OR.

Edit: I'm not disputing the larger point. I just think the number is probably a little lower than that if you adjusted for being "truly" urban.

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input_sh 2493 days ago
Yeah, I was thinking about adding that there's some talk about what constitutes as "urban area", but thought it wasn't relevant enough for the context of my comment.
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MadWombat 2493 days ago
"It's going to be about 68% by 2050 and about 85% by 2100"

If the trend doesn't change for the next 80 years. Which is a big if.

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