people aren't created out of a vacuum and randomly choose a place to live. What if your 70 year old mother is simply too frail to move to a city? What if you desperately need the monthly paycheck and cannot just go months without pay looking for a job because you care for your child? What if you simply do not want your community to rot away because every abled bodied person runs off to the city?
People aren't just amoeba in a lab experiment.
"too frail" to move doesn't make sense - not having enough money does make sense. Look for a job while you have your current one - it is far easier and more successful that way anyway. Country living with a decent lifestyle is for those that have figured out a way to afford it, not for anyone that feels like it.
There are options: just because it isn't what you dream of doing doesn't mean it isn't an option.
There was an interesting thread on reddit about coal towns in (I think) Virginia, and the mindset of people there and the situation they were in. It was stated that there was a large pool of money in the state available to people for retraining (coal to trucking or solar development, etc) and something like less than 25% of the money was even used.
A woman I know got a simple laser cutter and designed a site around doing craft projects with it. In under a year she has thousands of followers and is making thousands a month doing it. I mean, hell, just get you and your friends together and say, "ok, we need to get out of here, lets all live together as cheaply as possible, until we have enough money, then rent some place in a better location, and live there, pooling resources, until we all get better jobs."
There are options, now more than ever with the Internet existing and the mind numbing amount of resources it brings.
Those who are born and raised in rural areas can't just uproot their lives the moment they turn 18 and start to afford, or even enjoy city life.
Because the commute is closer? It's still at least as slow in many places, because of traffic problems generated by tighter clusters of people.
The idea that cities are the most optimal is an idea, not a proven fact. Your experience may support the idea, but mine certainly does not.
The point here is that there are more people living in cities than in rural areas, simply because that has been true for a few generations, and people don't tend to change lifestyles.
People who grow up with one lifestyle realize the advantages it provides, and grow up with a bias toward that lifestyle. That bias coupled with the population difference is the real reason the majority of people don't care about rural areas. Personally, I think we should fight that bias.
Rural areas typically don't modify the local drainage (you're not likely connected to a sewer, you have a septic system). They don't become heat islands are there's relatively little pave or concreted. The noxious gasses aren't usually a problem due to lower traffic, usage and density, except in some mountain valleys where you get temperature inversions over winter that trap some of that.
The problems are technological/economical. Getting power is a pain in the ass, yet we've mostly solved that, likewise with traditional phone land-lines. Internet access is abysmal. I get better internet connectivity on my cell phone than my parents can get in their house because local providers won't run cable/fiber because it's too expensive for too few subscribers, but the federal government mandated access to both power & phone and we have those.
I think you've bought a bill of goods that a certain group of people are selling, without actually having lived it.
I think this is an almost uniquely American phenomenon. In most places in the world, the suburbs are where you grudgingly live when you can't afford housing in the city.
Anyway I was just offering a basic justification for why society would focus on improving lives in cities as opposed to rural areas.
You're assuming a centralized distribution model and that the overhead of centralization is more than made up for with economics of scale.
edit: is that not the implied assumption?
Sure, I suppose it is.. do you mean to suggest that the assumption is false?
Yes. Society should always be doing more than what is cost optimal.
Cities are only being focused on right now naturally because that's where the rich people are. It wasn't that long ago that inner cities were quite poor and there were people making excuses like you for not investing in them.
If it's the 90% figure you doubt, I encourage you to look into some road projects. In Virginia, we have a particularly problematic system where the local contribution is pegged at 2% (see page 52)(though it can vary by project.) You are welcome to read the VA urban (misnomer) maintenance code, though I encourage you to find the one applicable to you, so you can be familiar with the perverse incentives provided in your own area. [http://www.virginiadot.org/business/resources/local_assistan...]
Reality is that more people now live in urban areas[1]. Democracy being what it is, most funding goes to the majority - which are in the city. Add to that that setting up this infrastructure is often not cost effective for a private business (due to a lack of customers) and that most rural communities prefer less government intervention (ie less taxes), we have a situation where there is little impetus to invest in rural communities by private companies and governments (at least local) don't have funding to pay for service.
[1] https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/acs-...
Democracy has to be more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
It's true that the majority can just vote to line their own pockets and leave the minority in squalor, but that leaves a pretty shitty country leftover. Many of these rural areas look like third-world countries and that's not something us urbanites should be proud of.
Scholarship money disproportionately goes to lower income students, but that doesn't mean we should stop giving them scholarship money.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_S...