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Thanos007
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
FlakJacket
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.
shadd4d
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
Omer Joel
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.
Lantzer
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.
Runner Smurf
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.

FlakJacket
QUOTE (Lantzer)
I think that as long as there are farms, there will be small towns.

Possibly, possibly not. Just imagine what drones, rigged vehicles and automation could do to a farm by the 2050's. In the Mid-West for example, you could have one rigger controling a fleet of combine harvesters through a remote deck using Captains Chair mode. Plowing, planting, watering and general care could all probably be done faster and just as well by drones or robots. I could see the corps buying up whole tracts of land and then automating it all meaning you only need a small staff housed on site.

QUOTE (Omer Joel)
In my 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

Yeah, they just cordoned off the worst hit areas and left them. Although most of the sites will be livable again by 2075 or so according to Threats 2.
Siege
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
FlakJacket
I could see them carving out a niche in high end totally organic fresh food for the Luxury Lifestyle types.
Thanos007
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
Frag-o Delux
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. smile.gif
FlakJacket
QUOTE (Omer Joel)
Add to that the immigration of metahumans of Jewish ethnicity to Israel due to the Night of Rage and similar occasions.

What's your take on how metahumans are treated in Israel as a local? Would a common religion and shared experiences like military conscription help combat racism you think? Or would that only help paper over the cracks some. IIRC, the surrounding Muslim countries aren't too hot on metahumans so you could get some movement there as well.
Blaze
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.
LaughingTiger
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.

Frag-o Delux
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.
BitBasher
QUOTE
and highway patrols are somewhere along the Mad Max vein...
Highway patrols are freaking panzers. With freaking land sharks. Yeesh!
Cain
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.
LaughingTiger
QUOTE (Cain)
LT-- my partner's from Rural Missouri as well, and now lives in Washington. Small world, eh?

I did some work in Atwater, for JR Wood inc. They supply most of the frozen vegetables and fruit for Sysco

Damn small.

I used to deal with Sysco extensivley, considering I worked in several restaurants. All went well, but I had to stop using their meat products for a while, due to some problems.

If you ever have a chance to swing by Washington again, interested in some Shadowrun? biggrin.gif
theartthief
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 nuyen.gif 2.

- theartthief
Omer Joel
QUOTE (FlakJacket)
QUOTE (Omer Joel @ Jun 14 2004, 03:06 PM)
Add to that the immigration of metahumans of Jewish ethnicity to Israel due to the Night of Rage and similar occasions.

What's your take on how metahumans are treated in Israel as a local? Would a common religion and shared experiences like military conscription help combat racism you think? Or would that only help paper over the cracks some. IIRC, the surrounding Muslim countries aren't too hot on metahumans so you could get some movement there as well.

I'd say that Israel, being outnumbered and outgunned by the surrounding Muslim nations (and with no USA support) would have to use every available resource and every available advantage in order to survive. And the Awakened are an obvious advantage. So most local Metahumans (Jewish, Bedwin and Druze (sp??) but not most of the normal Muslim Arabs) would be conscripted into the IDF. This would make Metahumans quite integrated into the 2060's Israeli society. Besides, the Jewish religion is pretty much pro-awakened.

My take on the situation is that the Middle East is one of those areas where ages-old ethnical and religious conflicts predominate, and the Awakened are just split across the ethnical/religious lines. Ofcourse, the Awakening complicates things, but the Arab/Israeli wars are far from over in 2064.
Cain
QUOTE (LaughingTiger @ Jun 14 2004, 10:26 PM)
[If you ever have a chance to swing by Washington again, interested in some Shadowrun?  biggrin.gif

<--- *points at location*

I'm in Washington state, in the Seattle area. I take it you're out by Shelton?
Userlimit
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.
Garland
QUOTE (Frag-o Delux)
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.

But during Y2K there wasn't any danger of being killed by Indians, mutant paracritters, or rogue spirits. Nor were all the corps buying up all the available land for strip-mining (and forcefully evicting survivalist squatters without consequences due to extraterritoriality). I think there's enough call for the urbanization we see in SR not to worry too much about it.

Besides, the idea of empty hill-country dotted with ghost towns after "whitey" got run off is appealing. I'd imagine that scavenging is big business.
Frag-o Delux
QUOTE (Garland)
QUOTE (Frag-o Delux @ Jun 14 2004, 11:21 PM)
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.

But during Y2K there wasn't any danger of being killed by Indians, mutant paracritters, or rogue spirits. Nor were all the corps buying up all the available land for strip-mining (and forcefully evicting survivalist squatters without consequences due to extraterritoriality). I think there's enough call for the urbanization we see in SR not to worry too much about it.

Besides, the idea of empty hill-country dotted with ghost towns after "whitey" got run off is appealing. I'd imagine that scavenging is big business.

No you would just have to fend off roveing bands of ill-prepared murauders. smile.gif

Point is people flee cities in a hurry during crisis. Eisenhower spent millions on our highway system, not becaus ehe thought we needed it. Because it was for military use. If Russia nuked us, the highway system was for th ecities to empty and the military to have a means of moveing massive amounts of troops around.

I like the ghost town idea also. I like Mad Max, except Thunderdome, not a big fan of Tina Turner. I am not saying every little town we know today will be there or even that their populations have grown. I am just saying they will be there. In fact the run we did about 3 runs ago was based around a ghost town, well everyone in the big cities thought it was a ghost town, our Johnson knew better.

Case in point. If you don't have the Calfree state book, I think you are missing out on some good material, eve though the players from Cali feel other wise. Any way, in the northern portion there are thousands of refugees. They moved into a future war zone looking to avoid the problems of the south. All the rascism, the farm wars, the water wars, the Japanese. They just didn't know a few short years later the elves would be crossing the border in tanks. The small towns are there still, they are just fortified to keep out raiders from othe rnear by towns. America is the small town, I can only imagine so will the UCAS. When you look at America and its iconic symbols it is a small town. The white picket fence, apple pie, baseball in the spring, that is small towns. Big cities is just pollution, traffic jams and freaks, it is where the bad things are. I just feel small townswill still ahve there place. True a lot of them may disappear but, a goodly amount will still be around.

Garland
QUOTE (Frag-o Delux)
I am not saying every little town we know today will be there or even that their populations have grown. I am just saying they will be there. In fact the run we did about 3 runs ago was based around a ghost town, well everyone in the big cities thought it was a ghost town, our Johnson knew better.
<snip>
I just feel small townswill still ahve there place. True a lot of them may disappear but, a goodly amount will still be around.

No argument there. I can't make blanket statements either; surely some are gone and some remain. I was just pointing out that a mass exodus from the cities ("Head for the hills!") in THIS particular disaster might not be "logical" in a game-world sort of sense.

QUOTE (Frag-o Delux)
When you look at America and its iconic symbols it is a small town. The white picket fence, apple pie, baseball in the spring, that is small towns.

Although this makes me want to move small towns to the background even more, if only to further demolish any friendly, comfortable, familiar settings.

Edit: As a side note, I don't have CalFree, so I did not know that detail. Heh. Sucks to be those refugees.
Frag-o Delux
QUOTE (Garland @ Jun 15 2004, 09:25 AM)


QUOTE (Frag-o Delux)
When you look at America and its iconic symbols it is a small town. The white picket fence, apple pie, baseball in the spring, that is small towns.

Although this makes me want to move small towns to the background even more, if only to further demolish any friendly, comfortable, familiar settings.

Edit: As a side note, I don't have CalFree, so I did not know that detail. Heh. Sucks to be those refugees.

We were ambushed in a small town.We thoguh the white picket fences and all that jazz was comforting. Well the sherriff doesn't like "new" faces. We one trigger happy sam later. We were running from Jethro and Cletus as fast as cyber humanly possible. We could have staye dand fought but wipeing out a town is not a good thing to have on the resumé.

If you have some spare cash(lie anyone has spare cash) Calfree is a nice book, at least I think so. It demonstrates small towns all over. The south has them also, like Barstow, I am not sure of its current population today but, in the Calfree book it is made otu to be a small town. The Calfree Rangers are almost lifted directly from Mad Max. You pay a fine, that the Rangers put into a pot to pay for road maintainance and vehicle upgrades, with no government over sight. The big picture of one of the Calfree Rangers looks like a Mad Max reject. smile.gif I forget the guys name, Crazy Louie?, you will know him if you see him, he drives a Studabaker with a loud speaker on the roof with "I Fought the Law and the Llaw Won" blasting, he lives around Barstow." I still laugh when I think of that line of shadow speak.
Snow_Fox
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.
Crimsondude 2.0
QUOTE (Frag-o Delux)
If you have some spare cash(lie anyone has spare cash) Calfree is a nice book, at least I think so. It demonstrates small towns all over. The south has them also, like Barstow, I am not sure of its current population today but, in the Calfree book it is made otu to be a small town.

Whoever described Barstow must have had a stroke. It's not that small, but boy does it suck.
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