'Mass exodus'

[MikeA]

Dear god, deliver me from the evils of Marriage !

[Steve]

This post doesn't surprise me, I know a few families who would love to leave suburbia for somewhere more rural, so city dwellers must be queuing up to leave.

Allegedly, crime is falling, but either that's a lie or people are out of sync with reality because fear of crime and anti-social behaviour seems to be a popular reason to run to the hills.

[NorthernRaider]

(9 August 2013, 21:15)Steve Wrote: Allegedly, crime is falling, but either that's a lie or people are out of sync with reality because fear of crime and anti-social behaviour seems to be a popular reason to run to the hills.

As greatly discussed on public media up here the general consenus appears to be REPORTED crime is down and ACTUAL crime and anti social behaviour is up. People apparently no longer bother reporting crime to the police because they have little or no expectation of the police doing anything worthwhile. Indeed in some constabularies crime detection rates often slips to as low as 9% .

Socially people also no longer consider the police as part of the community or as public servants, more as agents of the state and something to be avoided.

[Scythe13]

White flight is old news.

The thing is, with the established system that SD references, what it does is remove the 'wealthier' families, that are less likely to cause crime, while leaving just those poorer families whom have a higher average crime rate. What that means is, the 'good people' leave and the 'bad people' are left. Granted that's an over simplification, but cities are becoming a major ghetto. Technically the rural villages are also becoming wealthy ghettos too.

[River Song]

(10 August 2013, 00:52)Scythe13 Wrote: ......... Technically the rural villages are also becoming wealthy ghettos too.

That really is an over-simplification IMHO.

I live and work in a rural village and there is such a thing
as 'rural poverty'.

Personally, if I was in poverty and was reliant on social security etc etc, I would choose to live in an urban setting because the support networks are all there.

I am not poor but am not wealthy and exist in a house-that-comes-with-the-job on around £30K gross.

Allons-y

[bigpaul]

a lot of incomers are buying into the "gated community" idea, there is a new one just outside Holsworthy about 13 miles from me.

[NorthernRaider]

The poorest people in the UK are the rural poor who have to spend more on transport to access public services, they usually or often have only a very limited bus service, no libraries, no cheap supermarkets, no cheap petrol stations, few liesure facilities, they have to travel much further to access medical care etc. Many people of limited means elect to live rurally with poorer public services because they prefer the slower pace of life, they sacrifice the access to other infrastructure and services in order to be able to live in a village.
Of course there are also those who have lived and worked in villages there entire lives and are of limited means. Traditionally the most impoverished people in the UK when it comes to income, access to services etc are those in places like the West County, Welsh Hill farmers, and agricultural workers in the dales.

Moving out of London IS feasable for most Londoners its often ( but not always) lack of will, I have pointed out before that you can buy houses in rural villages up here from £45,000, you can rent from £300 a month, and these villages have good bus access to Durham, Darlington, Teesside, and Wearside so commuting is feasable for work.

[Lightspeed]

(10 August 2013, 00:52)Scythe13 Wrote: White flight is old news.

The thing is, with the established system that SD references, what it does is remove the 'wealthier' families, that are less likely to cause crime, while leaving just those poorer families whom have a higher average crime rate. What that means is, the 'good people' leave and the 'bad people' are left. Granted that's an over simplification, but cities are becoming a major ghetto. Technically the rural villages are also becoming wealthy ghettos too.

This is a vast over simplification Scythe.

Almost everyone of normal wealth has a large part of their wealth tied up in real estate. To join the White Flight, they first have to realise the value of that property, either by selling or renting out. Either way teh people moving into their vacated homes will also have to be wealthy in order to purchase or rent.

Its more a matter of old money moving out and new money ( and new morals and ideals) moving in.

[bigpaul]

my area (and most of Devon) has a high cost of housing but low wages, most employment is minimum wage and lots of part time jobs, shops-supermarkets that sort of thing, a lot of people commute to Exeter-30 miles away, or Plymouth 40 miles away, there IS a bus service here, regular but several hours between each bus....most villages around here have NO bus service or maybe ONE bus per week on market day, so most people HAVE to run a car even if its an old banger! nearest supermarket is 8 miles away..there are actually 3 but they are all small ones, nearest big Tescos is at Crediton a 50 mile round trip!

[Mortblanc]

What happened many times here in the U.S. was that middle class and upper working class people sold their single family houses at a loss to escape the urban problems, mostly taxes and poor services/schools. The "white flight" was about escaping totalitarian municipal government control as anything else. (severe restrictions combined with tax increases with no voter consent or control as happened in Detroit)

The single family houses were purchased by absentee landlords, broken up into apartments and 3-4 families each charged rent equaling what the previous single family paid.

The NEW urban ghetto is not a tenement house or a run down apartment building, it is a neighborhood filled with decrepit single family houses, that were once the homes of middle class people and are now controlled by a "management company".

The present "recession" in the U.S. was triggered by lending to people that could not afford the homes out in the burbs that they were buying. The politicians took the attitude that everyone had the right to own a home even if they could not pay for it. Easy lending accelerated the flight from the city centers through the 1990s and with the first small downturn in the economy all those houses of cards came crashing down as thousands of bankruptcies and foreclosures.

---

I know people that drive 50-70 miles one way to work daily.

20-50 miles one way is normal.

Most people plan for 1-3 hours commute time added to their work day and make job decisions based on the fuel costs to get there.