[UtopiaPunk]

I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to protecting rural areas.

I was sitting in a coffee shop in a small town and I overheard a conversation next to me. Two elderly men were talking, and one of them made a comment to the effect of, "I like a rural town, so I try to vote to keep it that way." Two or three decades ago, this town really was a small farming town, but the population is growing and the town is changing. It's not becoming a city, though, not by any means! As the city (somewhat) nearby is becoming more expensive, the suburban sprawl is, well sprawling. The small rural town is transforming into a suburb of the city.

I would agree that this is a negative change for the small town, and I would argue that the solution is to urbanize the nearby city. There should be much more housing, and it should be much more affordable to live in the city. As it stands, many people want to live in that city, but find the housing prices unaffordable. So these people make a compromise between how much they are willing to pay on housing vs how long they are willing to travel (almost always by car) into the city. I count myself in this group.

Urban areas and rural areas complement one another, and there's pros and cons to living in either kind of place. However, post-WWII styled suburbs are, in my opinion, a net negative.

[CuriousCosmic]

> I think urbanizing core metro areas is actually key to protecting rural areas.

It really is. Some subruban and rual places are starting to get this as well. A common theme among the ones that get it is to provide density bonuses (i.e. if you allocate large blocks of conservation space, you can build more densely). The result is that you get the same overall density in an area but the people are living much closer together and not sprawling out and building over the natural environment.

I personally think most of them are too conservative with their approaches (often setting upper limits on density even with the bonuses) but the general approach of "build dense to limit the impact on rural spaces" is progress.

[UtopiaPunk]

There are some silly culture-war politics which makes reasonable discussions difficult. But also some of the politics problem is that a lot of these decisions are being made at the local town/city level. Small rural towns may try to dig in their heels and and resist urbanization (and the specific tactics involved are usually kind of bad, imo). Meanwhile, big cities often don't have strong incentives to not sprawl, at least in the US. Sprawl moves the costs of housing and transporation onto someone else (either the surrounding towns or the individuals), while the city maintains some portion of a tax base (sales tax and local businesses). Some cities have some political will to fight for these anyway, but even at the best of times, these policies have to make some harmful compromises.

I think the most promising solutions to this problem are policies from state-level governments.

[ethanbond]

Absolutely. The enemy of rural is suburbia, not urban development. Build moderate density city centers, ideally in the form of several small self-contained villages that happen to abut each other, and leave the surrounding area as legitimately rural as possible.