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City Question 2: Leaving the City
What did you think of the idea of advanced technology eventually leading to people leaving the City and going out into more rural communities?
Did you find this plausible? Would a lack of scarcity mean that people would begin to scatter away from the City and from each other?
Comments
It's a theme that a number of authors have explored before, notably Asimov when describing the Space societies in Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire (and probably a couple of others) - I'm particularly thinking of the planet Solaria here which was the extreme case. I'm not sure that more recent authors have done anything similar, as we tend to think now that advanced tech needs substantial human and material support rather than fostering isolation.
Maybe Dying Earth is another similar theme, though more fantasy than SF?
Now, we have seen since covid a trend for remote working which maybe fosters something of this trend? But the perspective from my own rural area is that wealthy city folk want to have a second home away from built up areas, rather than moving their primary home here.
It's bollocks. I think this move to the country was all a simple extension of the retreat to suburbia in postwar USA. It's straight up bull because the reason there is lots of land for cheap in the country is that the vast majority of people live in the metropolitan areas.
It's pretty questionable, but still fun to explore. Here in Ontario, we had a mass move away from Toronto and into the surrounding towns (not so much the countryside, but some did that, too). Many who did flee to the countryside during the pandemic later came back. So as a prediction of the future, it's no so good. But as an idea to explore in a novel, I'm fine with it.
I landed around there as well. I felt like people would move to the country to get away, but then if they moved in such mass numbers then wouldn't the country just become urbanized anyways? It didn't quite compute for me. Also, it seems to suggest that the social side of humans would lose it's appeal in a post-scaricty society, but I'm not certain I understand why. I do agree with @Apocryphal that as a story it worked fine though.
That's a great point - I just did a quick look at census data and the UK average is 287 people / sq km, with a maximum in parts of London of around 12000 / sq km. Here in South Lakeland we're about 46, and the lowest I could find in England and Wales is 26 (parts of the Pennines and mid-Wales). So I guess it's hard to have a real grasp of a properly empty countryside, despite the impression one gets walking out in the more remote parts of Cumbria.
Pretty much what @clash_bowley said, but I do think that misanthropy is a more powerful element in US cultural thought than most people want to admit. Often disguised as "the lure of the open road.: So I think scattering could easily happen in that culture. Of course in the actual world there are other cultures whose people will make other choices, but the audience SImak is writing for is not aware of that.
That said, there are a lot of problems that come from living in cities, which the story also glosses over. They rise and fall for reasons, and its not lack of scarcity. I suspect that Simak is not aware of these.