Why? Honest question.
In a village, everyone knows everyone. Kids play with each other and run around freely. Every house protects all the kids and help each other. Everyone trusts everyone. You never feel lonely. Life is slower, much less stressful.
I feel sorry when I see kids today depressed, lonely, and distrusts society. This just didn't happen when I was growing up in a village. There is a joke that Asian parents don't think depression exists. I think part of that mindset is rooted in how many of them grew up - depression was just not really a thing in a village.
I sometimes hear of people who try to move to the country side, only to hate it and want to move back to cities. I get it. It's not for everyone. But I think it can be aided with technology such as AI+robots helping with your farms or house work, self driving cars taking your kids to school a bit far away, AI doctors who can do most of the basic healthcare work, etc. And if you can build a business with 1 or 2 people + AI, then it also makes remote work more viable. Basically, I think tech can bring a lot of the city quality of life to the country side.
If kids want to move to a town/city for more opportunities or networking, they'd be free to do so when they're older. Most do. But right now, the cities seem like the only path to having a decent quality of life.
That just means we need to structure cities differently.
I live in a 1 sq km neighbourhood (literally, 1 km square) that houses 10k people.
It has almost everything I could wish for at walkable distance, schools for all ages, parks, a gym, a pool, sports campgrounds, medics, pharmacies, stores, markets, etc.
What doesn't exist (e.g. a movie theater, a library) I can reach by public transit in half an hour. The city has 2M people, there's plenty of stuff to do.
I've lived here all my life, my kids go to school with the kids of my school mates. They walk to school from at least 10yo, they visit each other's houses. During school breaks and weekends, they play in the park with their school friends while their parents grab a beer in a nearby kiosk.
You can build communities like this within cities.
In Japan that's true in a lot of city neighbourhoods as well. The high trust is extremely valuable but villages are not the only way to achieve it.
That is said almost verbatim by every adult in the US, including the ones who grew up in cities.
> I feel sorry when I see kids today depressed, lonely, and distrusts society.
The weird thing is, rural people show a lot of distrust and fear that city people seem to show less. Rural people just assume that city means danger and fear.
> depression was just not really a thing in a village.
This is simply not true. If you look at social issues like alcoholism, drug use, suicides or domestic violence ... villages have plenty of those. They have harder availability of psychologists and psychiatrists. That does not mean issues do not exist there, they measurably do.
City kids have friends, play outside and go visit friends.
I think it's the degree that matters.
This is simply not true. If you look at social issues like alcoholism, drug use, suicides or domestic violence ... villages have plenty of those.
City kids do not have less friends then rural kids. They do not socialize less. And if their super local turns up mistreating them, they have actual option to go elsewhere.
> Degree matters here too.
Yes. Small villages have more of these. The rural culture of alcoholism and domestic violence acceptance is both something very real and traditional. What are we talking about here, seriously. You frequently had to drink with others, else you was an outsider. And if family situation turned out bad, you have literally no where to go. (It is not like it would be easy in the city. But you have to from village to city to maybe get help.)
Seems like a recipe for rampant child abuse.
Most of those opportunities involve getting hit by a car.
I did and am moving back to the village now.
It makes a pretty big difference. Yes, the opportunities in the city are bigger for everything, but so are the dangers. The amount of crazy people. The effort involved in getting to a nice and safe place where the kids can just run around without you having to watch them every second. Those places also exist in some cities, but way too few. So great that you don't have a car, (I mean it) car free places in cities I do enjoy, there are just not many of them.