As a citizen of ND I can certainly appreciate the sentiment even if the numbers are way far off. 100K would put that town as #2 in the state for population (Fargo being 129K and Bismarck being 73K).
I grew up in western ND (Minot until 1990, grandparents and aunt/uncle still live in Beulah), fishing and camping all over the western part of the state. The landscape was beautiful then, and is still beautiful today, just in a different way. Beauty as they say is in the eye of the beholder. The oil boom brought a lot of people to the area, and a lot of investment into the area. There were growing pains with the rapid growth, but much of that has been worked out now. And if someone decries the oil rigs now dotting the landscape, just remember they won't be there forever. The reclaimed land from the open pit coal miles is pretty much indistinguishable from the nearby land that wasn't part of the mine.
Personally, I can see beauty in both industrial centers, and rustic small towns. They are different kinds of beauty, one has the beauty of an active volcano, the other the beauty of snowcapped mountain with forests at its feet.
That being said, the idea that people are free to move to unspoiled towns, and tourists are free to go to those instead, does a lot of work here. Currently there isn't a shortage of unspoiled rustic towns in America, but it might be a different story if there were so few left that would-be inhabitants and would-be tourists couldn't go there without swamping the place. Hopefully in such a situation the market value of rustic beauty would increase.
I'm writing this from the town of Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. As a tourist, I'm happy to experience the beauty of the scenery: the sea, the hills, the small towns. I'd guess the residents would be unhappy if the area was industrialized. Industrialization that brought in more income than tourism might be good for the Italian GDP per capita, but it would be so thinly spread that overall life satisfaction would likely go down in the world.
"If France had ten times the population with half of France’s current per-capita income and none of its famous attractions, I probably wouldn’t want to visit it. But all things considered, why wouldn’t that be a huge improvement?"
Need some metaethics that avoids the repugnant conclusion. Total utilitarianism should be tempered by bits of average utilitarianism, negative utilitarianism, deontology, and assigning nonzero value to capabilities even if they don't directly lead to pleasure or pain.
Good post! If you understand the "unseen" a lot of the ugly becomes beautiful in its own way, and will enhance the tourist experience: "Wow, that's a fantastic surface coal mine. Look at the size of those trucks!", "Check out all the pipes on that refinery. It must have taken a lot of engineering brilliance to figure it out!" From the cruiseship: "Can u imagine the design of that oilrig to withstand hurricane force winds!"
There's some kind of switcheroo going on here by which a perfectly reasonable desire to live full time in some place beautiful and natural and peaceful if it were financially possible to do so is conflated with tourism.
Most of us have been so ravaged by modernity that we couldn't manage life in a village such as those our ancestors lived fruitful lives in, even if we had the means to do so. And perhaps we try to slake our thirst for something that we can never have by visiting places that seem superficially similar. But the solution to this problem certainly isn't to build more industrial parks or to mock those who question their necessity.
As for a France that was no longer inhabited by the French, but rather had become a giant strip mall for disconnected and alienated people from all over the world, no, I wouldn't want to visit that either. Nor should such a place exist. Shame such places do exist, though, and that we live in them.
Then there are the worst combinations: solar panels farms covering wonderful meadows or portion of hills in Bavaria or Tuscany. They ruin what you see and don’t increase the value of what you don’t see. A waste for everyone.
As a citizen of ND I can certainly appreciate the sentiment even if the numbers are way far off. 100K would put that town as #2 in the state for population (Fargo being 129K and Bismarck being 73K).
I grew up in western ND (Minot until 1990, grandparents and aunt/uncle still live in Beulah), fishing and camping all over the western part of the state. The landscape was beautiful then, and is still beautiful today, just in a different way. Beauty as they say is in the eye of the beholder. The oil boom brought a lot of people to the area, and a lot of investment into the area. There were growing pains with the rapid growth, but much of that has been worked out now. And if someone decries the oil rigs now dotting the landscape, just remember they won't be there forever. The reclaimed land from the open pit coal miles is pretty much indistinguishable from the nearby land that wasn't part of the mine.
Personally, I can see beauty in both industrial centers, and rustic small towns. They are different kinds of beauty, one has the beauty of an active volcano, the other the beauty of snowcapped mountain with forests at its feet.
That being said, the idea that people are free to move to unspoiled towns, and tourists are free to go to those instead, does a lot of work here. Currently there isn't a shortage of unspoiled rustic towns in America, but it might be a different story if there were so few left that would-be inhabitants and would-be tourists couldn't go there without swamping the place. Hopefully in such a situation the market value of rustic beauty would increase.
I'm writing this from the town of Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. As a tourist, I'm happy to experience the beauty of the scenery: the sea, the hills, the small towns. I'd guess the residents would be unhappy if the area was industrialized. Industrialization that brought in more income than tourism might be good for the Italian GDP per capita, but it would be so thinly spread that overall life satisfaction would likely go down in the world.
The quality of beauty has a quantity of its own.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=charles+sheeler+paintings&form=HDRSC3&first=1
The question is whether we hedonically adapt to beauty MORE than we hedonically adapt to having extra stuff.
"If France had ten times the population with half of France’s current per-capita income and none of its famous attractions, I probably wouldn’t want to visit it. But all things considered, why wouldn’t that be a huge improvement?"
Need some metaethics that avoids the repugnant conclusion. Total utilitarianism should be tempered by bits of average utilitarianism, negative utilitarianism, deontology, and assigning nonzero value to capabilities even if they don't directly lead to pleasure or pain.
Good post! If you understand the "unseen" a lot of the ugly becomes beautiful in its own way, and will enhance the tourist experience: "Wow, that's a fantastic surface coal mine. Look at the size of those trucks!", "Check out all the pipes on that refinery. It must have taken a lot of engineering brilliance to figure it out!" From the cruiseship: "Can u imagine the design of that oilrig to withstand hurricane force winds!"
There's some kind of switcheroo going on here by which a perfectly reasonable desire to live full time in some place beautiful and natural and peaceful if it were financially possible to do so is conflated with tourism.
Most of us have been so ravaged by modernity that we couldn't manage life in a village such as those our ancestors lived fruitful lives in, even if we had the means to do so. And perhaps we try to slake our thirst for something that we can never have by visiting places that seem superficially similar. But the solution to this problem certainly isn't to build more industrial parks or to mock those who question their necessity.
As for a France that was no longer inhabited by the French, but rather had become a giant strip mall for disconnected and alienated people from all over the world, no, I wouldn't want to visit that either. Nor should such a place exist. Shame such places do exist, though, and that we live in them.
Then there are the worst combinations: solar panels farms covering wonderful meadows or portion of hills in Bavaria or Tuscany. They ruin what you see and don’t increase the value of what you don’t see. A waste for everyone.