The Reliance School

1,000 Words / 4 min. Read

‍Rural Risks & Advantages

When we think about building resilience, many of us picture a self-sufficient homestead somewhere in the countryside. The logic is easy to follow; food and water are necessary for human survival, and in order to produce those both yourself, you’ll need more land than you can find (or afford) in the city. This idea often goes hand-in-hand with a rejection of some aspects of modern society, or simply a desire to return to nature and traditional ways of being.

These are all valid reasons, but for most people, putting this into practice is neither practical nor resilient. Over 80% of Americans now live in cities and urban areas,¹ and few people have the desire, means, and skill set to leave behind their community and careers and pursue full-time homesteading. Rural areas are already facing declines in population,² lifespan,³ income,⁴ infrastructure,⁵ and essential services,⁶ and as climate-fueled disasters become more frequent, governments and municipalities may not have the resources (or political will) to rebuild less populated areas.

In 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, Thomas Gladwin and Jørgen Randers predict that rural areas will be increasingly left to fend for themselves as people flock to climate-hardened cities for refuge.⁷ With a quarter of rural Americans living over 34 minutes away from the nearest hospital,⁸ it's not hard to imagine how sparsely-populated areas could quickly become unlivable if roads and bridges fell into disrepair. And while we don’t believe that a complete collapse of law and order is likely in the near future, isolated homesteads or communes would present easy targets for larger groups of armed individuals in that scenario (consider how dangerous it was to travel between towns in historic periods of unrest).⁹

At the same time, rural areas consistently score higher on ratings of happiness and wellbeing,¹⁰ which may be due to stronger social bonds and community ties.¹¹ And if your goal is to own a farm, the countryside is your only option. But even the most resilient homesteads may become prohibitively difficult to sustain as the effects of climate change worsen.

Urban Risks & Advantages

On the other hand, large cities have a massive resource burden that’s almost entirely dependent on fossil-fueled transportation and infrastructure.¹² New York City alone consumes nearly 20 billion pounds of food per year,¹³ requiring a constant influx of goods and services from thousands of miles away.¹⁴ Without open space and arable land to provide a measure of self-sufficiency, populations are left vulnerable to climate disruption in the long supply chains that keep them fed and fueled.

Cities also have several physical risks; urban heat islands amplify extreme temperatures,¹⁵ while impermeable surfaces like asphalt and concrete increase the risk of floods.¹⁶ Most urban areas are situated alongside coastlines or rivers,¹⁷ making them vulnerable to hurricanes and sea level rise. Due to the demands of population and industry, cities are depleting their freshwater aquifers faster than they can be recharged.¹⁸ And as we saw in the protests and violence that erupted in 2020,¹⁹ urban areas are often hotbeds of social tension, which can be exacerbated by the pressures of climate change.²⁰

That said, cities have many advantages over rural areas. Urban populations have lower all-cause mortality,³ likely due to better access to healthcare and emergency services. Despite higher rates of transmission during the Coronavirus pandemic, urban populations had nearly twice the survival rate of rural areas.²¹ Transportation is cheaper,²² due to nearby amenities and availability of public transit. Cities offer better economic prospects, specifically for those with college and graduate-level education.²³ They receive more investment in arts and culture,²⁴ and offer more venues for entertainment and socialization.

The Goldilocks Zone

For all these reasons, we advocate for living in (or near) a small city with a population between 25,000 and 250,000. This is the “Goldilocks zone” where you get most of the advantages of both urban and rural areas, without the drawbacks of either extreme.²⁵

This range is large enough to attract investment in infrastructure, essential services, industry, and culture, but small enough to be feasibly sustained by local supply chains. In a decarbonized future, we estimate that cities of this size could be reliably fed without fossil-fueled agriculture and transportation²⁶ (this range also mirrors the populations of preindustrial cities).²⁷

Smaller populations put less of a burden on their water supplies, while mixed surfaces and lower population densities decrease the risks of flooding and heat islands. Smaller cities also tend to have lower levels of income inequality,²⁸ which lowers social tensions. At the same time, they offer more amenities and economic opportunities than rural areas, and many small cities have begun to lead major metropolitan areas in innovation and growth.²⁹

Our ideal homesite would be a small house on a ¼ to ½-acre lot, in a central area where essential services and amenities are within walking or biking distance. Specifically, we'd recommend looking for neighborhoods that were designed before 1950, which are more likely to feature human-centric planning and zoning.³⁰

If you’re looking to live on an acre or more, we’d recommend finding someplace within 5 to 8 miles of the city center, so that you’re not cut off from emergency services in the event of natural disasters. We do not recommend living in the suburbs; they're neither efficient (like the city) nor self-sufficient (like the countryside), and are effectively the worst of both worlds.³¹

There are over 600 cities in America with populations in our recommended range,³² so in the next post, we’ll take a look at location and begin narrowing down our options. >> Climate Havens, Part 2: Location & Latitude

Footnotes & References

1. Degree of urbanization in the United States from 1790 to 2020, and with projections until 2050 (Statista)
2. Most of America’s rural areas are doomed to decline (David Swenson, The Conversation)
3. People in Rural Areas Die at Higher Rates Than Those in Urban Areas (Tanya Lewis, Scientific American)
4. Six charts that illustrate the divide between rural and urban America (Brian Thiede, Lillie Greiman, Stephan Weiler, Steven C. Beda, Tessa Conroy, The Conversation)
5. Rural Communities Fall Through the Cracks of Bad Infrastructure (Michelle Kumar, The Public Purpose)
6. The Consequences of Rural Hospitals Closing in the U.S. (Giving Compass)
7. 2052 - A Global Forecast for the next 40 years, p.185 “The Flight to the City” (Thomas Gladwin, Jørgen Randers)
8. How far Americans live from the closest hospital differs by community type (Onyi Lam, Brian Broderick, Skye Toor, Pew Research Center)
9. ‍Highwayman (Wikipedia)
10. The Degree of Urbanisation's Effect on Happiness (Lewis Dijkstra, Eleni Papadimitriou, Stafford Nichols, Gallup)
11. Rural–Urban Differences in Bonding and Bridging Social Capital (Jens Fyhn Lykke Sørensen, Regional Studies)
12. The Myth of the Sustainable City (John W. Day, Charles Hall, Scientific American)
13. Feeding New York (Kathryn Garcia, New York City Department of Sanitation)
14. How far did your food travel to get to you? (Becky Henne, Michigan State University Extension)
15. Urban Heat Islands (Jeremy Gregory, Hessam Azarijafar, MIT Climate)
16. Cities are scrambling to prevent flooding (Casey Crownhart, MIT Technology Review)
17. What percentage of the American population lives near the coast? (NOAA)
18. America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow (Mira Rojanasakul, Christopher Flavelle, Blacki Migliozzi, Eli Murray, New York Times)
19. List of incidents and protests of the United States racial unrest (Wikipedia)
20. Global Warming and Violent Behavior (Courtney Plante, Craig A. Anderson, Association for Psychological Science)
21. Covid is killing rural Americans at twice the rate of people in urban areas (Lauren Weber, Kaiser Health News)
22. Household Spending on Transportation (U.S. Department of Transportation)
23. 5 Charts on the Economic Gaps Between Urban and Rural America (James Pethokoukis, AEI)
24. Funding the Arts in the Rural: Is it time to pay attention to bias and barriers? (Heidi Jeub, University of Minnesota)
25. Urban-Rural Happiness Differentials Across the World (Martijn J. Burger, Philip S. Morrison, Martijn Hendriks, Marloes M. Hoogerbrugge, World Happiness Report)
26. It’s estimated that ancient farming practices could produce approximately 1 million calories per acre on an annual basis. Without fossil fuels, we estimate that perishable food could be reliably transported from about 20 miles outside the city center (a trip that would take 6 hours walking, or 3 hours by horse-drawn wagon). A circle with a diameter of 20 miles has an area of 201,062 acres; assuming a caloric intake of 2,000 kcal/day, 201,062 acres could potentially supply food for 275,427 people.
27. Historical urban community sizes (Wikipedia)
28. Income inequality is getting worse in US urban areas (Brian Thiede, David L. Brown, Jaclyn Butler, Leif Jensen, The Conversation)
29. America's smaller cities are embracing the knowledge economy and leading innovation (Craig Schwitter, Alice Shay, World Economic Forum)
30. The road to ruin - how the car drove US cities to the brink (Ryan M. Allen, Financial Times)
31. The Problems With Suburbs Are Numerous. Is a Change of Course Possible? (Camille Fink, Planetizen)
32. ‍Advanced U.S. City Search (City-Data.com)