Given all the disasters that happened from 2011 on, what has happened to small towns in US and the rest of the world? I'd say there are a lot of ghost towns out there. Look at it this way, this is primarily for the US, there is VITAS. Now it didn't hit here as hard as it did in other less advanced countries but it's still a factor. There is the crash of '29. All of the various riots brought about by Goblinization and lack of resources. Then there is the war and Ghost Dance. Also keep in mind all the meta critters running around. Some of them are pretty tough. How would these things be addressed?

Well, we all move to bigger cities that have the resources and man power to keep us safe. So even with the population dropping the major cities are going to have an increase and leave a lot of small towns empty. Really look at all the small towns with populations under 10k. How would these communities survive all of that? Now I'm sure that some could, but I bet most wouldn't.

Notes and comments, please.

Thanos

In the NAN, small abandoned towns would pepper the countryside from when the Anglos were forced to leave. With the Natives having a much smaller population base they'd probably just be left- although I could see some Native countries starting up a demolition scheme to go round over time and get rid of them. Several of the books mention that smugglers often use ghost towns as stopping/hideout points along their ways.

I don't think that everyone would decamp to the cities in general like you say though. Whilst there are new paracritters in the world, they're not going to be everywhere. I just see these towns going back to a more frontier mindset. People out in the countryside are more likely to own a rifle or shotgun and know how to use it than say a city dweller I'd think even nowadays.

Probably. I can't see Valdosta, GA absorbing Tifton anytime soon, if ever. There's probably a large amount of small towns that aren't direct suburbs of larger cities. Look at Albany, GA. It's still kicking and has less than 100K. I'd also imagine there are quite a few, mostly on highways, as that would be bread and butter.

I'd also bet that corps like to have out of the way facilities. Just imagine a new weapons lab in Tifton, GA. Who's going to raid it? 1) You have to know it's there, 2) Any shadow talent is, more often than not, going to come from the outside and be a larger target for the cops or whoever keeps score.

Don

I'd say that some of the more "awakened", "Green" and simply depopulized areas (the NAN comes to mind) would still have plenty of the smaller communities - big cities pollute more, need a bigger population to maintain (so if VITAS/wars/toxic accidents hit an area really hard, the survivors would band in small communities).

On the other hand, small towns in "civilized" areas grew and expanded into huge metroplexes - especially in nations such as the UCAS and Russia - both of which had large portions of their former territory taken over by awakened forces, forcing the anglos/non-yakuts into the still remaining parts of "civilization", creating urban overcrowding despite the VITAS-led depopulation.

In mny vision of the 2060's Israel, for example, the contamination of much of the Tel Aviv area by the Libyan chemical weapons (which, I recall reading about having lasting effects of contamination that are ultraexpensive to clean) caused massive immigration to the north and south of the country - and making formerly small towns such as Kiryat Shmona (20,000 residents IRL) into huge areas of urban blight. Add to that the immigration of metahumans of Jewish ethnicity to Israel due to the Night of Rage and similar occasions.

I think that as long as there are farms, there will be small towns.

Farming => large areas of low population density, whether in family farms or agribusinesses. It's more convienient for small clusters to form to provide services and community. In the case of agribusiness, it may be a sort of 'Company town' but it would still exist. Can you imagine an hour commute to work on a farm?

The trick is to figure out where the trade-off between biger towns and small towns is. These days, with greater mobility, the small towns have been slowly dying since the Depression. It's cheaper to drive for 30 minutes to go to a big town for services or groceries than 15 minutes to get to the closest little town.

I think the threat posed by paracritters would be one of the toughest things for a small community to deal with - NAN included. Small towns of 5k or less would have a hard time dealing with something relatively minor like a thunderbird - never mind something like a jugernaut. Any mages they might have would probably have been lured away by more promising opportunities in the bigger cities. Nature shamans are the exception, of course.

Economics also tend to work against the smaller towns in 2063, I should think. The current issues strangling smaller communities in the states would only be made worse by the rise of the megacorps - concentration into large facilities is critical to their success, and a small town simply couldn't provide the personnel. Agribusiness will probably have put an end to the small-time farmer, as they simply can't compete with for efficiency. Sure, isolated facilities are nice, but why co-locate with an existing town? There's little benefit: they won't have the material resources you need, the population would not have the skills you need for the facility, and therefore is little more than a security risk. Better to just head out into the boonies, and be done with it.

I think such towns as survive in the rural areas fall under three groups:
1. The highly insular enclaves that hold on by shear determination. Probably well-armed, bordering on survivalist compounds, these are places where strangers are simply not very welcome. Chief means of income to the town are probably illegal - smuggling and the like.
2. The gated communities of wealthy sprawl-retirees and refugees. They can afford security and pastoral bliss.
3. Towns that have acquired powerful patrons to protect them. A few might have corporate patronage, but more likely they an extremely wealthy individual - a hometown boy made good, a retired exec, or a retired runner-type.

In any case, my thinking is that the rural areas (such as they are) are largely abandoned. The Southern Appalachians, for one, are probably quite empty.

The small, independent farmer of today and yesterday is facing stiff competition from large, corporate farms.

In the age of mega-corps, any indie farmer is going to be hard pressed to make much of a living at all. Especially if he draws the attention of any agri-corp.

-Siege

I could see them carving out a niche in high end totally organic fresh food for the Luxury Lifestyle types.

One thing I think would help in this discussion is a definition of what a small town is. 20k? Not to my mind. I come from a town with a population currently under 5k. It was probably around 8 or 10k when I was growing up in the 60's and 70's. Industry left and it's been shrinking ever since. The nearest big cities would be Pittsburgh and Erie. There are a lot of towns around 5k or lower in the area. All 10 to 25 miles apart. 20k thats a city to me. Are there official definitions around?


Thanos

Some small towns I have been in seem to exist just because people live there. Small town businesses support the whole town. Now I know that is not true, some where along th elies a cash surce needs to come in and help keep things a float. After looking around these small towns it seems one or 2 businesses are the major influx of cash.

In one small town, it is a nuclear power plant. The town was basically a retiremnt zone until a power company put a nuclear plant in there. So now you have a place for a lot of the locals to work and then you have supporting business crop up for those people. Stores, plumbers, adn assorted other busnesses. Also since the town was a retiremnt place and on th ebay it had a lot of marinas so that was anther cash source of visitors comeing to town.

Another small town I have been to was solely supported by a gypsum board company, you knwo sheet rock the material that most houses are made of today.The whole town worked in it. Except the supporting businesses that helped make th eplacea town.

I have seen dozens of towns like that. One major company out in the boonies, that brings cash into a fledgling area that just explodes because now people have money. They want the latest electronic gadgets, or air conditioning, and they don't want to drive an hour to get it. I seen a town built around a wal-mart. I am sure the town was there first. Wal-Mart just built this building there because this little town was the crossroads for a few larger towns near by and it was more cost effective to build on that site to allow the other towns access to the one Wal-Mart. So now the original town is starting to explode. I can still see small toens exsisting all over the place. I mean soem of these towns have been where the are for 200 years or more already so waht is another 60? I have been to towns that have buidings with corner stones that pre-date the declaration of independence.

Besides they talk about small towns in the Smuggler Havens so they are still around in canon.

I believe the Lone Star sourcebook had some things about small-town America in it. IIRC ghost towns are common, and highway patrols are somewhere along the Mad Max vein...

-JH.

I don't see people heading to the city in the time of crisis. In several instances in modern history, people have left US cities in order to escape "urban blight" The "Great White Flight" from Little Rock, Arkansas, comes to mind. I think when things hit hard, people will gather around the familiar, rather than head to something different. Besides, why head to a city? People are still dying, the infrastructure is still down, there are still mutants and freaks in the streets. In the case of a plauge, or in the early days of goblinization, when people thought it was contagious, heading to a more crowded place would be seen as dangerous. Besides, if you move, where do you go? It's hard to find good housing in a city for a reasonable ammount of money anyway, what happens when you have to leave your job? As most people have stated, small towns tend to be built up around one or two businesses. If you move, you have to find work. Most of the workers at these jobs tend to be uneducated, which makes finding work that much more difficult.

I think the cities in many cases might empty a bit as people flee what they percieve to be the "worst" part of the disaster.

I've lived in small towns my entire life in Missouri. I grew up in Sullivan, population still under 6 thousand, was barely above 5 when I was growing up. I now live in Washington, with a population of about 10-11 thousand. Close by is Union, pop around 5-6 thousand, and several other smaller communites. These towns work hard to stay independant and solvent. Several them are growing due to the increase of workers from St. Louis, less than an hour away, who wish to live in better surroundings. I think when the hell that is in shadowrun history hits, these communites would at least stay at the same ratio of population, or maybe increase as people sought safety and security in these outlying communties. (whether they found it or not is debatable)

As for farms, farmers currently are under pressure, as was stated in this thread earlier. I think the invention of auto-farms would close farmers who try to deal in bulk food, and blow open the market for organically grown substances. I think the wineries around the area, and there are several, would do quite nicely.

I know a guy who lives in asmall town. He and his wife make a relatively descent wage growing and selling herbs. They grow all kid so f stuff includeing a whole slew of different garlics in their green houses. ANd they don't do amil order. Every one comes to their house and "farm" to buy the goods. I would say they are well off but it supplements their income enough his wife don't work anymore and he is retireing early. Small twons can be easily still around in 60 years.

Like LaughingTiger said catastrophe sends the masses to the boonies to hide. Look at Y2K a lot of people of th eTV and radio were talkign about how they were buysing cabins in the woods and stock pileing rations and guns there incase.

LT-- my partner's from Rural Missouri as well, and now lives in Washington. Small world, eh?

About small towns-- there's still a need for truck stops and the like in 2060. Small towns are necessary, and they'll still spring up at any major crossroads.

As for farming... I did some work in Atwater, for JR Wood inc. They supply most of the frozen vegetables and fruit for Sysco-- you've probably seen the trucks around, at your local supermarket. If you live on the West coast, you've probably eaten their stuff. What's really interesting is that they get their fruit from small farmers, for the most part-- they have maybe 30-40 strawberry farms they buy from. Small farmers can survive, especially if it's cheaper to buy from them than to run a factory farm.

The closest town to where I grew up was Reform AL. (Yes that does say Reform.) The population is still under 2,000 even today. Keep in mind that I grew up ten miles (16 kilometers) from Reform!

The largest employeer in the county is the Board of Education - most people who live there work in Tuscaloosa AL or Columbus MS - about an hour each direction. I would imagine that small towns would still be there even if only for a stopover spot (legal and illegal) as has been mentioned before in this thread.

Personally I hope that Tuscaloosa is still there as I would like to have a character from there...

My 2.

- theartthief

I'd say that its a mix of what people've been saying. Small towns would have maintained at old crossroad regions, and popped up at new crossroads. Otherwise I'd think that disaster had hit hard enough to create long stretches of "Mad Max" style empty high way and ghost town living as mentioned in the Lone Star book, in several Native American Nations, as well as parts of the CAS and UCAS.

NAN would indeed be badly depopulated leading to vacant anglo homesteads but the CAS and UCAS are probably just fine. The new profit of real food would stop the decline of farmers and they might even get a more protected status from the government due to the need to maintain farm lands from devleopment.

The war didn't reach into the surviving UCAS and most of CAS(Texas excepted) so that wouldn't have bothered them and VITAS, like the Black Death of the 15th century, was more likely to strike in densely packed areas, so isolated communities were probably safer.