You're right. To be clear, I've visited all of the National Parks I mentioned, sometimes multiple times, and I've loved my visits, and I recommend them highly to anyone who hasn't seen them. I suspect when I retire I will volunteer as camp host in whichever national parks will have me, and continue my travels. I really love our national park system is what I'm trying to say, but I'm also disappointed at how little most people step outside of the well-trod paths...even to the small degree required to take a short detour to hit up a national monument or forest or whatever. There's definitely a long tail at work; visitors drop off precipitously when talking about places that aren't the really "big" ones.
Also, I love how some places are left rugged and undeveloped, while others have an excellent infrastructure in place to allow people to see the highlights even from the car. At first, I thought it was pathetic: you drive through, get off at the parking lot, take a picture, and drive to the next parking lot, ad nauseam.
That's not seeing nature, I thought.
But then, if you're older and somewhat infirm, or, say, wheelchair bound - the accessibility of many parks still allows you to experience the sights.
As an overseas (or even domestic) tourist, you might be quite time constrained, and then, naturally, you'll go for the most famous ones within the vicinity.
This "long tail" phenomenon is at work elsewhere, as well: I've been to the Angkor Wat complex in Cambodia recently for the third time and took some time to explore more remote ruins (Koh Ker, Beng Mealea, etc.), and while the main sites (Angkor Wat, Ta Phrom) are visited by busloads of tourists, you can easily be the only person for a while at the more remote ones.
I doubt it will become a problem in my lifetime. America is big. We have a lot of beautiful mostly deserted places, including a lot of federally protected land. I'd like it if more people got out into it more often; there might be a bit more concern for protecting it, if more people saw it in person.
It's true, America is huge, but look no further than beautiful places within a two hour radius of Portland and Seattle on weekends to see what could happen someday. It's a wilderness traffic jam. Everyone out there respects nature, there's just a lot of people...
To go off on a tangent, I think we, as a nation, need to spread out again. So much of our nation's small towns were built on farm, ranch, oil, mining, etc. labor. And, as those industries got automated out of existence as a source of employment, all of the small towns that were supported by them shrunk/died. Small town America is a disaster these days (and I think why our politics have gotten so ugly; people want someone to blame). They're a meth-addled shell of their former selves.
The most popular cities in the US don't have room for all the people that want to live in them (for a variety of reasons, NIMBYism being a big one). If everyone who could work remotely moved out to smaller towns, we'd revitalize small town America and those folks could buy houses (which is not possible for a lot of people in a place like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Austin, etc.).
But, you're right. I do find the crowded parks surrounding major cities to be a turn-off. There is a point at which I wish there were some more quiet and solitude. Which is why I spend so much time so far away from major cities.
>I do find the crowded parks surrounding major cities to be a turn-off.
Although even there, you can get away from most of the crowds pretty quickly. It won't be untracked wilderness but it won't be crowded.
I was in Acadia National Park last weekend and the standard just-off-the-road spots were mobbed (holiday weekend) and the standard trails were pretty busy. But we hiked a handful of less-common trails and only saw a handful of people except at the beginning and the end.
If you have the skills, you can also go to certain National Parks in the off-seasons. Doesn't work everywhere but when there's access there are far fewer people.
I think this is consistent with your earlier point that more people should visit some of the less well known national parks and scenic sites. It spreads the tourists and visitors over a much larger area. This should reduce crowding in the major attractions and destinations, which should make them more enjoyable to those who do visit. The smaller national parks will see more traffic but perhaps this will create more awareness and build support for preservation and/or cleanup. The communities around these locations may also benefit from the increased business.
This makes an astounding amount of sense - so it will probably never happen. But it is just astounding the differential in housing prices. I know some people that are trying to sell houses in the little Maine mountain town I grew up in, and they'll be lucky to get 80-100k out of them - for nice houses with big 10+ acre lots.
If I could pick those up and move them to southern New Hampshire where I live (not even Boston or more expensive locales), they'd go for 350k-500k. It's really absurd.
Supporting remote, small towns is difficult to do without emitting a lot of carbon. I actually like the idea from a cultural and aesthetic viewpoint, but the city dweller generally has a smaller carbon footprint than the person in a small town (adjusting for income).
That's only due to the density of development and the cheap materials/ designs used for housing. In theory a town could be both small and dense with energy efficient designs.
Small towns generally do not have as wide a variety of shops as bigger cities, so residents in small town and rural environments have to drive several times a month to a bigger city, sometimes 100 miles or more round trip.
I think that's part of the problem to solve. I think there's a happy medium: A town big enough to support a few large groceries and a couple of big box stores, but small enough to not be a traffic nightmare (hopefully walkable/bikable for most and maybe even with a small but efficient mass transit system). Very few people need to live in rural areas, anymore, but also few people need to live in the most populous and most expensive cities, except for the opportunities those bigger cities provide.
I guess I wasn't clear when saying that I think we should spread out again, I did not mean I think people should live on ranches or farms, 3 miles from their nearest neighbor and 30 miles to the nearest tiny town. That's not what the future looks like, I would hope. But, small to mid-sized towns can be reasonably dense, and can provide reasonable amenities. There are towns like this that don't get a lot of attention, and I tend to like to visit them (I'm parked in Eugene, Oregon right now, and both Eugene and Springfield match the description I've just given...though Eugene, in particular, is maybe on the large, and expensive, side of the model I'm envisioning). But, there are others: Asheville, NC and Denton, TX spring to mind as excellent examples. Real estate isn't super cheap in these cities, but it's not outrageous, either. There's plenty of shopping, plenty of entertainment, plenty of stuff to do and see, but without the soul-crushing traffic jams, and dehumanizing crowds, of (sort of) nearby Atlanta or Austin.
> I think we, as a nation, need to spread out again
We, as a species, have spent the last few eons coming together, and all of the reasons why we have done so are still in effect.
For starters, transportation costs are vastly lower in cities. Take New York, for instance. Here we have a vast subway system the efficiently moves millions of people around, day and night. Just the Lexington Avenue line alone moves more people than the entire DC metro, the 2nd most used American subway system.
For $130 a month, roughly, I can get more or less anywhere I care to in the city at more or less anytime I choose to do so. The trains are electric and likely contribute far less to global warming, air pollution, etc. per capita than would driving.
Even without the subway within a 5 block radius I have restaurants, bars, grocery stores, a hardware store, a pharmacy, a few doctors' offices, parks, and so much more. My contribution to destroying the planet when I run my errands is far smaller than hypothetical spread out America.
Should I get food delivered, more often than not the courier is on a bike, not a car. I work on a delivery app myself and know that in some cities we use scooters, bikers, and even walkers. Way more efficient than spread out America where the car is king.
One of the major reasons to travel at all is to go to work, and with jobs being much closer, the distance travelled is far shorter. From a pure physics point of view the energy expended to move a given mass is going to go up the longer that mass has to travel. Traveling 2 miles to work uses less energy than going 20. Spread out America will result in fewer jobs being nearby, meaning traveling longer distances and times to get to work.
Sprawl is actually really bad for traffic, as well, as cars take up huge amounts of space. In the DC metro area the Orange Line moves more people than I-66 inside the Beltway, despite taking up far less land and being limited by the insane interlining the Metro has going on.
The aforementioned Lexington Avenue line moves far more people than the DC metro as a whole, and takes up way less space than an interstate highway of equivalent capacity. And even it could in theory move more people with a modern signaling system and articulated trains. New trains alone could boost capacity by 10% or so. My own line is getting about a 10% capacity boost from its new signaling system.
Transit scales in ways cars cannot. Spread out America is too spread out to invest in a subway system.
Even roads are cheaper in a city. One mile of road serves tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands vs. a few hundred in a small rural town. The cost is spread over far more people, making each person's contribution much smaller. Road improvements are more cost effective, as they can improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
Even ignoring the last mile delivery costs, being in a large enough city means having access to far more efficient means of intercity and global transportation. Freight trains and cargo ships are way more efficient than 18 wheelers. Intercity passenger trains likely pollute far less than jets do. Here in NYC I can reasonably use Amtrak's Northeast Corridor trains to get to places in Virginia, DC, Baltimore, Philly, and many others. There are also abundant, and cheap, buses to make the same trip.
Spread out America is too spread out for trains to be economical, as the infrastructure costs are too high and the potential passengers per stop too low.
The next major city efficiency gain comes in the form of heating and cooling. Apartments are more efficient to heat and cool given the shared walls and thermal mass. They are also more efficient to build, particularly low to mid rise apartments. Rowhouses are also fairly efficient for similar reasons. Electricity and gas for heating and cooling use is lower per capita than in suburbia and rural areas.
> The most popular cities in the US don't have room for all the people that want to live in them
Actually, every major American city has quite enough room to expand. This includes San Francisco, New York, DC, Chicago, Boston, LA, Seattle, and Portland. There are many I'm missing, but there are very few who are truly limited by geography.
(Note: DC is a special case in that it's not part of a state, so it can't annex surrounding areas and what is considered DC proper can never expand. It does however have suburban areas in its city limits, has a severe height limit, and is well below peak population).
The problem in all of these cities is political, not geographical. In all of these cities, we have put in place rules that limit population density in certain areas, make construction difficult and expensive, and even disallow certain entire classes of buildings. The 'missing middle' kind of housing is missing because it's illegal to build, even though historically these cities and others built large numbers of these houses.
Even Manhattan alone is below peak population. The area between Downtown and the heart of Midtown is much shorter and could support tall buildings just like the rest of the island. It is illegal to build them, though. Likewise, Brooklyn and Queens could easily support these tall buildings. Again, they are mostly illegal save for a few blessed spots.
Given Japanese zoning laws as an example of a better system, these cities would be far denser in their underdeveloped areas and housing far cheaper. Because it's a national, not local, system, you avoid the prisoner's dilemma of having to house every poor person in your neighborhood.
> If everyone who could work remotely moved out to smaller towns, we'd revitalize small town America and those folks could buy houses
Remote work is less efficient or impossible in almost every single job out there, including software, and that is why we don't employ it everywhere. I work in NYC but my company HQ is in SF.
So many things get done more quickly when I fly out there or when they flow here. Video chats, IM, and email are all great, but a poor substitute for a 30 minute in person chat.
Really what you want is to reform zoning laws so that the 'missing middle' is no longer illegal. This would ultimately lower housing costs in cities and increase worker productivity.
This is an issue that has actually started garnering attention on a national scale--newspapers sometimes comment on this now--but economists have been chatting about this for decades, and even have estimates on the costs these laws have.
You could potentially boost GDP by something like 10-20% just by reforming zoning laws.
I guess I should be clear: I want people to live in some of those smaller towns; I don't want them to live in the boonies, 30 miles from the nearest store. There were once small, walkable, towns, in America. Much of that is gone.
But, I don't get to tell people how and where to live. Lots of formerly vital little towns, with two or three grocery stores, two or three box stores, and a bunch of little mom and pop businesses, are in decline as younger folks flee to bigger cities. Those are the places I think would be nice to see revitalized. I don't recommend a return to rural lifestyles...unless you're growing most of your own food and working remotely (I know some people doing this, actually), it'd be an ecological disaster.
So, I agree with you. Fixing our cities by allowing more affordable housing to be built would be great! That's fine with me, too. But, there's also plenty of room to spread out in the US, and there are ways to do it without negative ecological impact. But, it probably takes planning on a scale and of a kind that won't happen. Just like moving the needle on the housing crisis in places like SF has proven to be extremely difficult.
Your plan sounds like utopia for me. I don't know how it would happen, however. Maybe some show in the style of 'Portlandia', silly yet demonstrating true lifestyles, in order to attract people.
The area around Seattle is actually the same exact thing playing out at a smaller scale. There are several (granted, more like a couple dozen) very popular trails and locations, like, say, Rattlesnake and Pilchuk. And then there are hundreds of great trails - some of which, yes, are hidden behind miles of forest roads, but still a lot of readily accessible ones - that don't see much traffic, but offer pretty views and/or great workouts.
And in many cases, both kinds are within spitting distance of each other - e.g. Si is always packed, but Mt Washington, right across it in the valley, and two freeway exits away to the trailhead, with similar difficulty, and just as nice views at the end, is pretty quiet.
Having lived just outside of Yosemite for 5 years prior to moving to Portland a year and a half ago... it's incredible to me, how packed the 'local' hikes and wilderness destinations are, around Portland. Yosemite was only a joke in Yosemite Valley - anywhere else outside of the Valley and you're going to be pretty secluded... I've yet to go on a hike in the Gorge that wasn't surprisingly packed, even mid-week on rainy days. It's startling.
