The housing shortage and public lands

Our city is population stagnant (circa 100k) due to the steady exodus of young families moving to smaller nearby school districts. We recently passed a 300 plus mil$ school bond to replace 3 high schools with 2 new ones, but I'd bet the bids come in 20-25% over budget.
When are you guys going to roundup your AWOL politicians?
 
I’ve never lived in a city but if there is one with leopards roaming free it might be wild enough to entice me. #holdthecougarjokes. I know all cities have those roaming free 😂
Mumbai... 20.7 million in the metro lol

The videos of them hunting pigs in the metro and/or taking dogs in peoples entry ways is nuts.
 
I think we're also seeing an bit of an exodus from urban centers because of a changing America & economy. We had the mass movement of people to urban areas during the industrial revolution, as that's where the work was, and supposedly better wages. Then we had the great migration north of folks who moved to the rust belt for heavy manufacturing (auto, etc). Now that those industries have moved overseas, there's no economic incentive to stay in regions that are lacking in quality jobs. That, coupled with the digital revolution which allows for work anywhere, I think you see people make choices to enjoy areas that are not quite as populated as major metropolitan centers, and given the cost of living in those centers (which happens when places are popular and people want to live there, ala MT real estate prices).

Helena has over 25K people, sir. And they all drive really slow. Then you have all the valley trash & bedroom communities that makes the Helena area something like 100K.

We moved to where we did because I'm devolving. We've covered this. But also, I'm 20 minutes from downtown Traverse City. It's not like I'm living in Ingomar. We're rural, sure, but it's bedroom community rural. I wouldn't say I've given up anything in terms of having town amenities, except for about 10 more minutes of drive time. Rural in the east is vastly different than rural in the west.

But this isn't evolution on a grand scale. And simply using the economic freedom provided by the digital revolution in one nation as evidence that humans haven't evolved as a species to seek security in numbers is silly.
My gross apologies on Helena, I clearly missed a decimal place, I knew when I typed it something was wrong but as is often the case I didn't pause long enough to correct it.

I will stand by "security in numbers" is not that same as our current large cities. A town of 2,500 is plenty of security yet can also provide quiet and access to nature two things that have been proven to bolster the quality of life.

While you may not be MT rural, you're certainly not anywhere near NYC (or any other large city). I hope you're enjoying it.
 
Is this a good time to introduce the idea of exploring the option of introducing White Spikes in very specific areas of the US?

Some important questions about how to keep them contained and how to keep them from reproducing too rapidly need to be addressed. @wllm1313 and @MTGomer can you please look into this and prepare a concept of idea report for the Committee?

It could be a real boost to the firearms industry…
 
I think we're also seeing an bit of an exodus from urban centers because of a changing America & economy. We had the mass movement of people to urban areas during the industrial revolution, as that's where the work was, and supposedly better wages. Then we had the great migration north of folks who moved to the rust belt for heavy manufacturing (auto, etc). Now that those industries have moved overseas, there's no economic incentive to stay in regions that are lacking in quality jobs. That, coupled with the digital revolution which allows for work anywhere, I think you see people make choices to enjoy areas that are not quite as populated as major metropolitan centers, and given the cost of living in those centers (which happens when places are popular and people want to live there, ala MT real estate prices).

Helena has over 25K people, sir. And they all drive really slow. Then you have all the valley trash & bedroom communities that makes the Helena area something like 100K.

We moved to where we did because I'm devolving. We've covered this. But also, I'm 20 minutes from downtown Traverse City. It's not like I'm living in Ingomar. We're rural, sure, but it's bedroom community rural. I wouldn't say I've given up anything in terms of having town amenities, except for about 10 more minutes of drive time. Rural in the east is vastly different than rural in the west.

But this isn't evolution on a grand scale. And simply using the economic freedom provided by the digital revolution in one nation as evidence that humans haven't evolved as a species to seek security in numbers is silly.


There was an economist that wrote a book in like 1990 predicting that real estate would boom in most small western towns especially those surrounded by mountains, lakes etc. His exact point was technology would allow people to work from home or remote office locations and the need to cluster into huge cities for high paying jobs would be eliminated. COVID out of necessity accelerated that trend which was already happening. It’s interesting but obviously he was right and it’s just like you what you were saying. I don’t agree that we evolved to live in huge cities packed in little boxes and it actually seems unhealthy to me. It reminds me of some of my new neighbors that built as close to our property lines as possible so they could at least “see” another house. I was selling a large peice of land and no new comers wanted it because it was last parcel surrounded by mountains and public land. Number one problem was they felt too isolated 😂 All the residents (including me) loved it because you couldn’t see another house from any part of the property. I wanted to build on it but my 3 kids would have all changed schools and it was just too far of a drive for my work. I think by clustering into cities we did devolve or go backwards by losing most of our self reliance. A friend I went to high school in Montana with sent a picture of store shelves completely empty in Seattle after they received 2? Inches of snow. If we are really have a crisis most of that city will die in a week 😂 that’s devolving not evolving
 
nobody is dismissing the concept humans evolved to seek security in numbers. that is very much a fact central to this discussion.

but the equally if not more silly thing is to use economics and modern industrial advances as evidence that large, dense, loud, bright, cities are the natural healthy thing for the human brain and body and is something we evolved to live in

to me that's like saying we evolved to drive cars. no, we evolved to walk, run, jump, and climb things.
In 1 ad, Rome had 1 million people.
 
In 1 ad, Rome had 1 million people.

irrelevant.

2000 years, or even 15,000, is hardly even a fraction of a second on the evolutionary timescale.

this city stuff will have to play out for another 500,000 years to see if we actually evolve to live in them.

i'm guessing our modern inventions will wipe us extinct before we can find out though.
 
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