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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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Yes, unfortunately in the US it's two parts 1) rural areas are not very well-serviced as you say, there is a lot of land in the US (~8,000,000 sqkm) much of which is empty, so being able to do more yourself is always the better option 2) there's always been kind of mythos around self-reliance in this country that has become kind of exaggerated with certain political demographics, so that leads to people in cities owning these giant vehicles as kind of a political status thing "Look at me, I'm a self-reliant manly man who doesn't need help from any community or collective." Which us a ridiculous attitude to have when living in a city, but that's the political climate undortunately. Also plays into why so many of our services suck arse.
It doesn't even have to be that rural, honestly. My friend lived in a town in MA with about 70k inhabitants. To me this is a fairly large town, my current town is about 20k, and my previous town was about 30k. Honestly I didn't even have any idea that the town they lived in was so populous until now (as I just looked it up), because it didn't feel like it. In terms of services and population I got the impression that it was smaller than my hometown at the time. It's just spread out over a much larger area and very little is made to be accessible by walking.
My friend had a ~30 minute walking distance from their house to the nearest grocery store. In my current town I have 2 grocers within 9 minutes of walking distance. Both are easily accessible with bicycle as well.
There's also the general consumption attitude. My friend went shopping once every 7-14 days. Nowadays I order in groceries in bulk every 7 days, but in the past going for groceries was a more spontaneous thing. I know plenty of people who pick up groceries more or less daily on their way home from work. From what I observed, a lot of consumer goods is available in larger bulk quantities in the U.S. compared to what you see here. You generally also don't buy drinking water here, but in the U.S. that's sometimes required.
There's a lot of nuances. I live quite comfortably as a pedestrian/cyclist over here in Sweden. I don't think I could do that if I'd lived where my friend did.