Everyone should move away from the cities

[FastQuoter]

Hey everyone. Posting here for more discussion. I want to start a conversation that needs to be had. I've read a number of posts regarding families escaping the big cities for elsewhere and it's been an interesting read. I've used it for my own research too because honestly whilst living in a city has its perks, there is a big trade off regarding one's health, stress levels and community, amongst other things.

I read where village/rural communities across the UK are hostile to Londoners moving in - but it's going to be more of a thing and should be encouraged!

Essentially, I myself, and many other of my friends I've talked to, believe that living in a more village/rural setting is ideal, but we fear the unknown. We fear the reception from others and if we'll fit in here in the UK, which is fair enough but hear me out! I believe more people need to live in rural settings, go back to our roots, the way our ancestors lived.

Grow your own food! I'm telling you they'll be a time soon when such a skill will be vital. Sustain yourself and do not rely on the government to feed you. Please!

Learn to work with your hands! Whether that's sewing (like our mothers and grandmothers did), cooking from scratch, embroidery, hair making, etc etc there is something wonderful about seeing the fruits of your labour. 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 "And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; 12 That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing."

Beneficial for you and your children If you have young children, I can't see anywhere better for them to grow up. To be surrounded by nature as God intended (God put Adam and Even in the garden of Eden). The learn life skills from young.

Please be kind in the comments, this is my view and I certainly welcome rebuttals and counter-arguments but do be respectful.

Think what you like but I live in a small village and I’m bored to god damn death.

The minute the kids move out I’ll be right in the centre of a city, and no I won’t be growing my own food.

Anyone who thinks they're going to move to some idyllic, sleepy little village is living in la la land. You'd have more peace and quiet in central London. I live in rural Essex. In the last ten years, my local woods have been hacked down to make way for two giant new estates. A second massive estate has also been built at the other end of the village. Now we've been told the fields in the centre of the village are going to be built on as well. The little country lanes, which were meant to take the odd tractor and a handful of cars, now have the sort of traffic jams you'd find on the M25 at rush hour. Even the main road into town is going to have 500 houses built along it. That road is choked with traffic now, so god knows what will happen when 500 extra cars are added. The sort of village you read about in The Darling Buds of May or see in Dad's Army is dead and gone.

Some people like country living and the quieter.and slower pace. Others like city living. You shouldn't put one down over the other. Each to their own.

@zeddybrek

I agree, I do think it's good to challenge our thinking because sometimes we don't give certain matters thought. But for you you've lived both lifestyles and had a preference to the city life. It has its many perks - it can be difficult for some to move away from that unless you change your mindset.

I am three generations deep in atheists, and I have produced a fourth. My forebears weren’t Christian and we all know how to sew because of atheist granny.

Please do not conflate Christianity with morals. It is profoundly insulting to the rest of us. My grandparents were some of the most wonderful people in the world, both to their communities, and their family. And they did this without any promise of heavenly reward.

The other day a woman with benefits came to church, befriended me and I looked on her FB profile. It was all about the English flags, these types of topics on YouTube videos and Tommy Robinson ....these people are a type.

Nah, I like Deliveroo too much.

No thanks
I lived in the countryside for 20 years. And had a vegetable garden. The pigeons, deer, rabbits etc ate most of it.
Plus you only meet the same small group of people. Month in, month out. And they all know all about you.
Bristol might drive me nuts sometimes but I know where I would rather be.

No, she is simply a conspiracy theorist. Jesus loves cities, the Bible says: pray for the peace of the City.

I’m packing my bags now. Me and the other 8.9 million people who live in London. Oh hang on, what do you mean there are no villages or countryside left now 8.9 million of us are moving there?!

Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool…..you’ll need to wait for a vacancy. Thessalonians 5:2 said Londoners first. Apparently our souls are most in need of saving.

Hey, there's been a lot of responses :)

As mentioned before, there's so many perks of living in the city - I understand that as I was born and raised in the city and clearly you're living the life!

I just don't like how London is becoming more a concrete jungle, although there are parks, there's a lot more new builds that are taking over the sky. I think it's sad.

I'm I the only one getting visions of an Iron age village?
Op vision and theories are bonkers.

Well no because there are countless villages dotted around the country. You don't have to create more buildings necessarily, people just need to spread out.

Also here's still vast amount of land where new communities can be built and build beautifully.

Oh it’s a religious zealot! I hadn’t anticipated that angle. “Traditional ways of living”. Do women have basic human rights in this scenario?

Or to put it more bluntly, fucking #BeKind cunts and your desire to have us all giving birth on a kitchen table with a stick between our teeth. Shove the Bible where the sun doesn’t shine.

There's still a lot of land to build new communities.

Agriculture is intensive because many people are no longer growing their own food, raising chicken etc and sharing it with their community. And they want to say global food shortage - such a lie.

"However I do think that this great converge to the big cities only causes more spread out/rural areas to be deprived. People within the villages should see it as an opportunity to provide what the people need - that's strengthens community!"

You're doing a grand job of entertaining the masses this evening, OP.

The great "converge" to cities happened nearly two centuries ago. By 1851 over half the UK population lived in urban areas; by 1900, 77% did.

What "causes" rural areas to be "deprived" is socio-economic-political-demographic changes and priorities. I live in a village. We don't have buses because the county council won't fund services that "lose" money because relatively few people use them. We don't have a school because there are no school-age children. We don't have a shop because no one would be able to make a living running one. We don't have jobs for all in the village because farming employs a tiny number and there is no other industry.

But, say you do move to the country to grow your own food and make "everything" you need. Have you worked out how much land you'll need to support your family through your own produce? How will you buy it? Will you have livestock or be vegetarian? Your full time job will be growing the food, and preserving the food for use during the winter months. What will you do in a bad season (like 2024) when harvests and crops were disastrous? Where will you get the cash from to pay the bills and buy the incidentals (farming tools etc) you can't make yourself? Will your partner have a regular job? How will they get to it, because it won't be local? When will you inform your children that they can't become engineers, or doctors or work for London Underground because they have to stay with you to grow the food?

It's almost as if you haven't thought this through. And incidentally, church attendance may have been far higher in previous centuries - particularly in rural communities where community pressure enforced it - but that doesn't automatically equate, and never did, to religious belief.

Problem - people in quaint villages don’t tend to like new builds popping up on the land nearby.

I don’t actually live in a village, but I do live near some fairly snobby Cheshire villages and in our area there is absolute uproar when permission is approved for new houses.

Oh I'm sorry about that, unfortunately urban planning has gone down the pits in recent decades and I doubt it'll get much better.

Can you say ‘I, myself’ if there are others ? I thought the ‘myself’ was to emphasis it was just ‘I’. Genuinely asking

I agree with their sentiment, because almost 90% new build estates are horrendous and they all look like they've been collectively modelled from the same textbook.

If they modelled new areas like Poundbury, I doubt they'd complain.

I would never live in a village, I absolutely hate it. Quiet, small, everyone in each other's pockets, nothing around for miles, one pub, have to drive everywhere. Cliques, gossip, don't like foreigners, dont like outsiders.

I grew up in a big European city and I love London. And yes, I lived in a lovely picturesque village in the Midlands for about a year - never again!!! One thing I remember is how sorry I felt for teenagers living there. They just sat on a wall all day, poor things.

There’s a little village we go to on holiday every year, and I’d love to live there. We plan to retire there. But it just isn’t financially feasible to do at the present. DH couldn’t commute to London (he couldn’t find any job elsewhere that pays anywhere near) and the cost of train tickets are astronomical anyway. The local schools aren't great so it’s a no-go with children. And they’d be bored in the winter, having been brought up in the city. It’s a dream for the future.

If your god had wanted me to use my hands, why did he make me a dyspraxic klutz?

What "causes" rural areas to be "deprived" is socio-economic-political-demographic changes and priorities. I live in a village. We don't have buses because the county council won't fund services that "lose" money because relatively few people use them. We don't have a school because there are no school-age children. We don't have a shop because no one would be able to make a living running one. We don't have jobs for all in the village because farming employs a tiny number and there is no other industry.

@SuffolkSun But you've just given examples of things your village doesn't need or do you think they are needed? Are you happy with your village?

But, say you do move to the country to grow your own food and make "everything" you need. Have you worked out how much land you'll need to support your family through your own produce? How will you buy it? Will you have livestock or be vegetarian? Your full time job will be growing the food, and preserving the food for use during the winter months. What will you do in a bad season (like 2024) when harvests and crops were disastrous? Where will you get the cash from to pay the bills and buy the incidentals (farming tools etc) you can't make yourself? Will your partner have a regular job? How will they get to it, because it won't be local? When will you inform your children that they can't become engineers, or doctors or work for London Underground because they have to stay with you to grow the food?

Life is not all about doing "white collar" jobs, that doing a great disservice to people who worked the farm for generations, whose descendants happily took over the business. The great shame was the rise of the big corporation and attracting young people away from vocations that fueled their community and kept it going. Textile industry died down, so many artisan skills died down because people wanted more, which not always a bad things but we can see the effect it's caused.

You're talking about a small holding not a village setting if you want to grow your own food. It is very difficult to make any sort of living on a small holding, are you intending to work as well? If so possibly a long commute.

We have a fairly big garden and grow a lot of veg, but it is very difficult to be self sufficient all of the time, at the minute we're not buying much veg at all, but in a month or so it will be different, things are seasonal and there is the 'hungry gap' from late Autumn till spring where there is little to harvest. You would need acres and greenhouses to extend the seasons, and it's hard work.

In that vein you really need a commune, a big house with lots of land and several couples (or more) with different skills with some working in the real world for money and the rest working very hard on the land. And hope you don't all fall out!

My grandparents were subsistence farmers and my mother always thought people wanting to do as the OP suggests were hilarious and deluded. It was an incredibly hard life which none of them wanted (a long story but my GF had lived in New York for a long time and always missed it).