As I've been exploring lately, I've been trying to figure out what feels different to me about Vermont. It's not just that the landscape is greener or that the business is less commercialized. There's something else, something that has to do with the establishment of community.
Things here seem really pretty distributed. Evidence: Vermont has 630,000 people, roughly. Yet Burlington is the biggest city, at just 42,000. If you add in the nearby communities, the Burlington area is closer to 85,000. But after that, the biggest cities are only about 15,000. But, more importantly, the "city limits" here butt up against one another: in other words, all of the rural space between communities counts towards the population numbers (I think, anyway). This means that the actual population of more built-up areas is much lower than the census numbers suggest. Instead of large built-up areas, there are "strings" of development, along highways and other routes, with occasional "clots" that count as towns.
I'm going to call this "anthroganic" development: humans developing in relatively organic ways, without much help from large-scale technologies. This form of development probably mirrors population patterns of other animals: congregating near water and in sheltered valleys, traveling along paths of least resistance, and eventually building in areas that didn't require a great deal of land-clearing. Overall, the system is consists of many arteries and even more, smaller capillaries, carrying traffic out in what seems to be a pretty even distribution--some more congested areas, but overall a relatively slow, steady flow of life.
In contrast, I'm going to suggest that lots of the West was settled in a more "technoganic" way: though major pathways might be based on long-past animals trails and paths of least of resistance, large-scale technologies may have played a larger role in the establishment of communities and major arteries. While much of Vermont was settled at a time when D-9 Caterpillers weren't around to help build roads, I think that, in the West, the re-routing of major roads (as emerging technologies allowed) has caused communities in the West to be established in places that aren't necessarily the most "natural" fit. Thus, communities clustered more, and required more large-scale technologies to enable further development. The relationship between major arteries is much different: flow is relatively unimpeded between major communities, but then slows markedly within those communities. And, there the "length" seems the capillaries is much shorter, overall.
I could be wrong about all this. In fact, I probably am. It's just a rough idea, and definitely the overall scale plays a role. I've already wondered what Wyoming's population distribution would look like if you compressed it to Vermont's size. And I suppose that Wyoming communities can be bigger just because the landscape--with vaster plains--does allow it, even without massive restructuring of the natural environment. All of this makes me wish I knew more about land/city planning. It's interesting to be somewhere that feels rural in a much different way than Wyoming does. It's odd for a space to feel rural without necessarily feeling isolating.
Another interesting feature of Vermont's development is the way that the interstate feels very much "overlaid" onto the landscape as a "late-comer" to the landscape. In my limited exploration, the interstate is truly the high road--built higher up on the landscape, above the communities, and I've often had to drive a good few miles to get from the interstate to the communities. The interstate seems to be NOT part of the local traffic system, overall, which means most communities along I-89 have only one access line to the interstate.
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