I don't live in the city, but I don't live in the country either, although a city dweller might say that I do. Nor am I a suburbanite. I live where the outer fringes of suburbia morph into what some call exurbia and some call semi-rural (as opposed to full-blown rural which to me, having grown up in Texas, means huge ranches, wide open spaces with people few and far between, farms with big herds of swine or sheep or cattle. That is not where I live). Using the latest figures, our county has 421 square miles of land (water doesn't count) and 266,000 human residents. The human residents, if spread evenly over the land mass (they aren't, of course), equal a population density of 631 persons per square mile. By way of comparison, the population density of the city of London, England, is 7,700 persons per square mile. The population density of the island of Manhattan in the state of New York (that is, New York City without the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island) is 74,309 persons per square mile. Compared to those places, I suppose where I live might be considered the wide, open spaces, proving once again that everything is relative.
I have written previously that the eastern part of beautiful Cherokee County, Georgia, where I live is like the hem of the high priest's garment in ancient Israel. If you went around the hem of the high priest's garment in ancient Israel you would have seen a bell and a pomegranite, a bell and a pomegranite, a bell and a pomegranite. If you go around the eastern part of beautiful Cherokee County, Georgia, where I live you will see a farm and a subdivision, a farm and a subdivision, a farm and a subdivision. Semi-rural, like I said. Lots of houses, but also lots of horses.
We also have little clumps of commercial enterprises every few miles so that we don't have to drive all the way into the city or even the suburbs for the necessities of life. These clumps were once little country crossroads that have metastasized into pseudo-mini-suburbs.
Five miles to the north of us the clump includes a Kroger supermarket (groceries, household goods, and pharmacy), three gasoline stations, a dental office that was once a bank, an Ace hardware store, a Subway sandwich shop, a veterinarian's office, a Mexican restaurant, a dry cleaner's, a pizza place, a Taco Bell, a Chinese food take-out, an automobile parts store, an Anytime Fitness Center, a funeral home and crematorium, a McDonald's, a Waffle House, a fire station, an elementary school, and, as Andy Griffith used to say, I don't know what all.
Five miles to the south of us the clump consists of two supermarkets (Kroger and Publix), two stand-alone drugstores/pharmacies (Walgreens and CVS), a library, two banks, an urgent-care facility, an assisted-living and memory care facility, a dental office, an elementary school, a middle school, a high school, a car wash, a cemetery, a Wendy's, a Waffle House, a McDonald's, a Burger King, a Bojangles, a Taco Bell, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, a Zaxby's, a Chick-fil-A, a fire station, a barbecue restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a Japanese restaurant, a pizza place, two automobile parts stores, two gasoline stations, another Anytime Fitness Center, even a Dunkin Donut. Everything one's heart could desire.
Hardly.
What don't we have? A lot of things. A hospital (though a large regional one is about 10 miles west of us). A post office. Clothing stores. Shoe stores. Jewelry stores. Department stores. Florists. Theaters. Music stores. Art galleries. Museums. Bike paths. Sidewalks.
Our subdivision does have sidewalks, but the only place they go is to other parts of our subdivision.
Our county grew 24% between 2010 and 2020, from 214,000 human beings to 266,000 human beings. Several more traffic signals have been added and there are even a couple of roundabouts now.
I forgot where I was going with this post. I'm almost sure I intended to make some sort of point, but it's too late to worry about that now. If I think of it, I will certainly let you know.
Until then, and as everyone says and nobody really knows why, so long* for now.
*To find out more about the phrase "so long", read this very interesting article written in 2018 by etymologist Anatoly Liberman. You'll be glad you did.
Ha ha, your rambling on turned out to be interesting. When places grow rapidly in population I wonder if enough doctors and nurses move in too. Just curious. I am glad to hear there are lots of horses, so it is still a bit rural where you live.
ReplyDeleteTerra, with the regional hospital not far away, yes, we have lots of practices with multiple practioners in the area. Their offices tend to be in the towns of Canton and Woodstock, however, not in the eastern half of the county, which is mostly either residential or pasture land.
ReplyDeleteWhere I live there are a little over 400 people in the square mile. That includes a farm house. My little town is about 4 blocks square. We have a city hall, a gas station, and a post office. I like it.
ReplyDeleteEmma, if you live where I think you do (does your county’s name start with an L?) then it has 588 square miles and a population of about 12,000 people altogether, and the density of the whole county is about 20 people per square mile. Your town’s 400 on one square mile is densely urban in comparison.
ReplyDeleteYour town sounds like a beautiful place to live. It actually sounds similar to where I live. I live in a small town outside Kansas City, Mo. When I moved here in 1976 it had one stoplight, no grocery stores and a population of about 1000. You could hear roosters crowing in the mornings and see horses and cows nearby. It now has a population of about 14,000, multiple stop lights, three fast food places with two more coming, a chain grocery store, a theater, a racetrack and we no longer hear roosters or see horses and cows. Since we are close to larger cities, I almost wish it had stayed small. What about you? Do you prefer a smaller town or one that has grown?
ReplyDeleteBonnie, it’s good to hear from you again. Actually, I don’t live in a town, although Cherokee County has three “larger” ones in Canton (33,000), Woodstock (also 33,000), and Holly Springs (15,000) and two “smaller” ones in Ball Ground (2,000) and Waleska(1,000). The eastern half of the county, where I live, is completely unincorporated but has several “communities” (Free Home, Macedonia, Hickory Flat) with a far greater population than all the towns combined. So we are not “out in the boondocks” but we have to drive a ways to really “do” anything. To answer your question, we have spent our lives moving “farther out” as civilization kept expanding until now we are 50 miles from the Atlanta airport but still considered one of the “inner” counties in the metro area. I grew up near (not in) a tiny town of about 1,000 with two stop lights, in the Dallas-Fort Worrh area. That tiny place now has 75,000 people. I like modern conveniences and amenities, but I don’t like heavy traffic or crowds of people.
DeleteIf my maths is correct we have about 4100 people per square km in my council area. It's a poor measure though because the area is large and encompasses a range of conditions. Almost anything I could want is available within a 5km radius (I choose that number because that is the restriction imposed by the current lockdown)
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, all of my favourite food places are outside our radius. The people of Georges River local government area apparently care little about food :)
kylie, in the U.S. we say math, not maths, so "If my maths is correct" sounds odd to my ears.
Delete4100 people per square kilometer sounds a bit crowded for my liking. I looked it up and there are 2.59 square kilometers in a square mile, which translates your 4100 into 10,619 per square mile. That sounds even more crowded to my ears, but it is exactly the same density you cited. Do you consider that you live in a suburb or live in a city. I mean I know where you live is a suburb ov Sydney, but would it be considered a city in its own right as well? I went to college in a small suburb between Fort Worth and Dallas, Texas that had 7,000 people at the time. Today that little town has 400,000 people. Sounds like a city to me, even if it is not the largest city in the "metroplex". Do you feel that way about your area?
Thats an interesting question, Robert. The suburb I live in is called Narwee and at the time we moved here was part of the city of Hurstville. Hurstville city was our local government area. Five years ago, Hurstville city amalgamated with the next door Kogarah city to produce one local government area called Georges River (not Georges River city)
DeleteSo I still live in Hurstville city but the designation no longer has a function.
To be a little more concise, I really just feel as though I live in one of the suburbs of Greater Sydney.
You might be interested to know that the next suburb across to the west is called Riverwood but was once called Herne Bay and the US established Australia's biggest military hospital there. The US connection is still seen in the street names and some of the hospital buildings are still standing.
"The area was subdivided in 1919 and redeveloped in 1942 during World War 2, when the Government of Australia and the Allied Works Council establish an army base hospital barracks for the United States Army, the 118 General Hospital. The hospital was built at a cost of one-million pounds and consisted of 490 barrack type buildings containing approximately four-thousand-two-hundred and fifty beds. The hospital was staffed by doctors and nurses from The Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland."