The Oil Drum

187 comments on DrumBeat: July 21, 2007

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mcain6925 on July 21, 2007 - 9:22am

Nor, relatively speaking, did we move very many of them. Choosing 1920 as an arbitrary pre-oil date, the US population was only 106M and 49% lived in rural areas (Census data here). We'll be at triple that total in a few more years, and our current split is roughly 25/50/25 urban/suburban/rural.

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Black_Dog on July 21, 2007 - 9:48am

Instead of looking at just percentages, look at actual population numbers. In 1900, total population was 76.2 million, of which 46 million were rural. In 1950, population was 151.3 of which 61.2 were rural. By 1990, the total was 248.7, while rural was 61.7 million. And that last number reflects a change in the definition of "rural", starting in 1950, which moved lots of folks out of "rural" areas and into "cities" (i.e., expanded metro areas). There's now about 300 million in the U.S. and there's still a large (and growing) number of people living in rural areas.

The conclusion is that those of us that want to move back to the land are going to find out that there's already lots of people living there who will compete for what ever resources are available. As a result, moving back to the "country" isn't likely to be a realistic survival alternative for most city folks, once the S&*t hits the fan.

E. Swanson