Desolate towns

And one more:
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FowVay said:
It happened when parents stopped raising their children and they expected society to do it for them. Whoever thought it took a village to raise a child was a babbling idiot. It takes a dedicated mother and father. I won't go into specific details but you can't let the inmates run the asylum and expect anything good to come from it.
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I would kind of think the opposite, in the old days kids got the boot out the door for the day, toured around town, and quickly learned what they could get away with from other people in the town... Also more people grew up in an actual community, instead growing up in a near single demographic housing area, with car centric big box stores and chain restaurants around staffed by employees, all full of mostly anonymous people.

We live near a small small town where our elementary school is, and kids wander the streets, and sometimes get into trouble or do dumb things, but since everyone pretty much knows everybody, and everyone is generally pretty reasonable, the kid learns what's OK from both their neighbors and their parents. There is a level of respect so most people never hesitate to correct other people's kids behaviour in an adult way, so even the kids with not great parents still get some education on what's good behaviour.
Also parents can't be all things to their kids, and supervise them every second... The only way to do that is have them on a screen when I can't "watch" them in public... And nothing on a screen is better than some real life interaction with their neighbors, or local businesses.

If your community isn't capable of helping parents raise a child, you should probably ask why that is and how you can make it better?
 
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The Artillerist said:
Well, the spot in the picture says otherwise…
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It is most definitely Connecticut. That's the corner of Main and Chapel in downtown Hartford, looking East over the Connecticut River. I can assure you it feels quite "desolate" feeling, despite being a block away from a minor league baseball park.

Downtown has pockets of vibrancy but by large it's very car centric. Tons of huge parking garages and surface lots. Robert Moses engineered Hartford's destruction by ramming I-84 through the center going East -West, and I-91 cut it off from the riverfront going North- South. Very sad, it is nothing like the city Mark Twain knew and loved.
 
Blueshound said:
It is most definitely Connecticut. That's the corner of Main and Chapel in downtown Hartford, looking East over the Connecticut River. I can assure you it feels quite "desolate" feeling, despite being a block away from a minor league baseball park.

Downtown has pockets of vibrancy but by large it's very car centric. Tons of huge parking garages and surface lots. Robert Moses engineered Hartford's destruction by ramming I-84 through the center going East -West, and I-91 cut it off from the riverfront going North- South. Very sad, it is nothing like the city Mark Twain knew and loved.
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I very appreciate your insight. I concur that laying freeways brought urban areas was a “crime against humanity” in respect to American cities… What were they thinking back then?
 
Wife and I love small towns. Whenever possible I stick to the 2 lane roads. We had our wedding in oatman,az.

I grew up in smaller town that's very spread out. Nobody bothered anyone and you didn't have to lock your house or car up. I still live there but it's a bustling metropolis now and crime is rampant .
 
Chris142 said:
Wife and I love small towns. Whenever possible I stick to the 2 lane roads. We had our wedding in oatman,az.

I grew up in smaller town that's very spread out. Nobody bothered anyone and you didn't have to lock your house or car up. I still live there but it's a bustling metropolis now and crime is rampant .
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I checked it out, and while it looks like a hwy with one line of buildings on each side, google street view actually shows that the town is full of mom and pop businesses and people galore. Nice!

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4WD said:
A full century you say ? Name one …
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The first that comes to mind are lots of New England towns keeping the small-town name alive with preserving colonial-style houses.

On my roadtrips I drive through lots smaller/quiter 'downtowns' of little townships that rely on tourists and the surrounding ranches; or they're slowly dying towns that were not able to adjust when modern interstate highways bypassed their previously popular stop; ie: towns along the rt66 corridor that travellers were able to bypass with interstate highways.
 
I grew up in a small western PA town that was there only because there was coal in the ground. Beautiful hills and country side around it with family farms. But it was the coal industry that fed the proprietor owned businesses in the town: jewelry, clothing, furniture, restaurants and bars and lots of churches too and the businesses thrived, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights. Now the town is slowly dwindling away: all those stores we frequented in the 50s, 60s and 70s are gone and fires have taken big portions of the business district. The population consists of retired folks and people who have to commute out of town to find work and the closes modern highway starts 15 miles away. There is very little reason to live there except real estate is dirt cheap.
 
Pew said:
The first that comes to mind are lots of New England towns keeping the small-town name alive with preserving colonial-style houses.

On my roadtrips I drive through lots smaller/quiter 'downtowns' of little townships that rely on tourists and the surrounding ranches; or they're slowly dying towns that were not able to adjust when modern interstate highways bypassed their previously popular stop; ie: towns along the rt66 corridor that travellers were able to bypass with interstate highways.
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Sounds good - do they have high speed fiber ?
 
Allaneddie said:
I grew up in a small western PA town that was there only because there was coal in the ground. Beautiful hills and country side around it with family farms. But it was the coal industry that fed the proprietor owned businesses in the town: jewelry, clothing, furniture, restaurants and bars and lots of churches too and the businesses thrived, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights. Now the town is slowly dwindling away: all those stores we frequented in the 50s, 60s and 70s are gone and fires have taken big portions of the business district. The population consists of retired folks and people who have to commute out of town to find work and the closes modern highway starts 15 miles away. There is very little reason to live there except real estate is dirt cheap.
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How far away from Centralia was your town?
 
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