The math behind everyone moving to rural places to get away from everyone else does not check out.
Discussion
#inflation and #homesteading, maybe? 
We always move to quiet places, as did our parents, and everywhere we moved got much bigger very fast. Probably because we couldn't move out to someplace 5 hours helicopter flight out from the next town, as we needed to be within 2 hours commute to work.
Can see the same thing out here, on the Eastern Shore. Used to be nothing but fields and forests and the occasional farm or village, but now it's like
house
house
house
strip mall
house
house
industrial center
house
house
prison
house
house
shopping center
house
house
... the whole way. Three hours of nonstop development.
Everyone left the city and the city came with them. Now, it's the city looking empty.
Once they put in enough developments people will start to wonder where to work. Not everyone can work at a fishing supply place or Food Lion.
Luckily walmarts and warehouses will be there to answer that call. Because THAT’S where everyone really wants to work, so long as their will to live is properly sapped.
We actually also get factories and stuff because we have lots of water and electricity (solar and hydro) and lots of housewives and retirees looking to work someplace close to their home and willing to take lower pay.
This area is like how Dresden was, after the Wall came down. Everyone moved there, including businesses, because the land was cheap, the workers were cheap, and the schools were good.
And now Dresden is a booming, industrial, high-tech metropolis and has consumed the countryside.
One reason I don't want to leave here, in fact, is because the high-paying jobs are increasingly coming to us and we already own a nice apartment our son can have for free.
Madness to leave the place everyone else is going to.
I remember when Central Texas was a backwater. I used to tell people I lived in the boonies. 😂 Our idea of a good time was shooting cans. And now everyone works at Tesla and goes to shopping malls. The whole drive to Austin is built up, now.
Niederbayern and the Oberpfalz used to just be potato farmers, miners, and breweries, and now it feels like the center of the world. Absolutely exploded. Gridlock on the streets crawling behind cows and chickens and tractors.
Same with Franken and even Oberbayern. Oberbayern used to be the middle of fucking nowhere and now you pay a million bucks for a collapsing shack.
And Eastern and Western Maryland were solid hillbilly country. Same outside of Columbia, South Carolina. Every place has exploded.
your describing everything near DC/government work. Fed work is the fastest expanding market
They're building the new train line, too.
All of our cities in Canada are full of indians.
The country (at least the part we live in) is undeveloped enough that my Canon R6 is the most advanced personal camera in the area.
Oh and we live four hours from the nearest big city and five from the next closest.
Two from the nearest trash town.
Half hour from the closest drug-scape.
Indians as in from India?
Yes. There is literally a plan to sell out Canada for cheaper labor. Tim Hortons, McDonalds among others want cheap labor and to avoid raising their prices.
So far it's working! We have cheap coffee and shitfood but also all the gas stations and pizza places are Indian-owned and they're super racist so they only hire other Indians.
It's awesome.
Oh, ha ha. Like Dunkin Donuts and 7 Elevens in the States.
We live in a city that is an amalgamation of over 20 rural areas. It's amazing how much the urban tax base subsidizes the 'rural' infrastructure of roads, sewer, emergency services, etc. I grew up in the country (dairy farm) and have no romantic allusions of living in the country. Now with return to downtown office in full swing, these 'ruralites' are now asking for accommodation to avoid the commute, or for cheap parking downtown.
Yeah, we live in an area where a bunch of villages and towns are starting to merge together. It's been bizarre to watch it happen in real-time.
For us, we live in a region that is considered the backwaters by two provinces. One of my long term interests is to see whether we can carve out these backwaters into an autonomous region.
housing density aside, -the usual scale to differentiate city and rural-, what may has truly set the nowadays boundaries of "stay away from everyone" is the internet...
the less communicated, the less inhabited a place might be
put a tesla antenna at the mountain cabin, next day you'll have couriers hanging to the signal awaiting orders
Yeah, we used to have no real Internet or mobile in our village and nobody wanted to live there. Now, we have both and people are getting fiberglass or starlink and we're booming. One new housing development or business building after another. It's nuts.
I don't think the independent homesteaders mindset is viable for a significant portion of society. Smaller communities are, however. Trading with neighbors with whom one also communes on Sundays, visit on Saturdays, and work with and for on Mondays through Fridays is the normal way of life.
The hundreds of thousands and greater population cities are not only highly anomalous in human history but actually bad for human flourishing.
They need to split up into different urban neighborhoods, again, with stable populations, but that seems to be happening.
Very few people actually want to live far away from everyone. Most want to live in a tightknit community. It doesn't matter if it is a country hamlet or an multi-tenent building in the middle of a huge city. It just has to be tranquil, have a sense of community, and have the freedom to make it beautiful.
But today's cities are loud, lonely, dangerous, and restrictive. Fix that and people will stop running away.
Yeah, lots of people dream about being hermits because they don't like their neighbors, but the better idea is to get better neighbors.
Boo urns