Bentley / VOLVO say, no pistons after 2030

[Piotrsko]

If you're on a travelled road, you have what my dad used to call furreners who prefer to know the quality and tastes of their food, hence the chain foods. Looking at a local place with parking in the back, you have no idea if it's a dive or not. Typical McD's has an child exercise area, pre-programmed visitors, uniform quality and sanitation.

In Nebraska, I saw walmarts in the towns of about 500 people, as long as they were about 50miles apart and the area could support the operation. Besides the muni building, postoffice and possibly a gas station, that would be the town.

I think the move out of cities is a desire to pay less income to cope with the A$$ nextdoor and the 2am drunken party, or at least that's what I did. Do notice I'm back in a big ish city

[freebeard]

My brother lives in an unincorporated town (really a crossroad). When I was growing up there there it had two (then one) grocery stores and a farm implement repair shop.

The only business that exists (not counting a K-12 school) today is a drive-up coffee kiosk. So I consider that a bare minimum.

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by Joggernot

I don't know what ya'all consider small town; we have 15k total in three towns here and have McD; Sonic; Popeyes; Taco Bell; Golden Chick; Kentucky Fried; etc. We tend to patronize our local restaurants (not fast food) because they have better food We also have a Walmart and three hardware/lumber stores. Amazon gets a lot of business because I'm lazy.

To me 15K is huge. I'm living in the city I've ever lived in and there's around 6K IIRC. And we're over an hour away from the next cities either west or east from here. This place for have a McDonald's and a small Walmart.

In my childhood years I remember the population being in the hundreds in the two places we lived in. It was an hour drive just to get to the grocery store in the first town.

[Hersbird]

To me a small town definition also depends on how close you are to a big town or a city. If you are 30 mins away from a 50,000+ population, you are just a suburb of that city. If the city is bigger, like 200,000+ then even an hour away is still probably just a suburb. So my daughter lives in a smallish town of 3800 and they have a McDonald's, Subway, a DQ grill, a brewery, a high end steakhouse, and a cafe. They are only 10 mins from my city of about 100,000. Now my Dad's store was in a town of 2800 but they have more franchises and restaurants, probably 3 times as many, but they are the biggest town about 2 hours in any direction.
It's also funny the bar ratio sometimes. My dad grew up in a town of about 6000 that had 14 bars. Jimmy Buffett wrote a song about it Livingston Saturday Night.

[Isaac Zachary]

Also what kind of roads are we talking about. Here, CB is only 30 miles away, but it's a smaller town. The bigger cities, Montrose (west of here) and Salida (east of here), are both over 60 miles away over steep mountain passes on two lane highways with sections that have speed limits as slow as 40mph and curves with 25mph signs. It could take 75 minutes one day and 3 hours a different day depending on the weather. So that doesn't make for a good suburb.

[JSH]

To me anything smaller than 50K people is a town. 50K - 250K is a small city. 250K to 1 million is a medium city. 1 million to 5 million a large city. More than 5 million a mega city.

For these I'm talking about the continuous metro area. I grew up in a city of about 100K people made up of a half dozen or so "cities". Today I live in the Portland, OR metro that is 2.5 million people and dozens of "cities"

It was a big adjustment going from a city with a population of 100K to 1.7 million when we graduated from college and then to a small town of 30K and hour from a city of any size.

[freebeard]

I left an high school with 30-some students (11 in my class) and went to Oregon State University. They had IIRC 8,000 students, by the time I graduated 5 years later it was more like 10,000.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

After living all my childhood at least 40 minutes away from the nearest fast-food place it would strike me funny when I'd visit other countries and find that the people there were under the impression that we Americans eat fast-food every day

It's convenient, relatively affordable there (while retaining a certain status in lower-income countries, where many people usually eat cheaper snacks more often), and you can also blame it on the media portraying it among the aspects of the so-called American Way of Life.

[oil pan 4]

2 things that will still be around in 2030, ecomodder.com, new gasoline engines and thats also very likely to include new Volvo gasoline engines.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

new gasoline engines and thats also very likely to include new Volvo gasoline engines

With so many breakthrough engine techs being shelved for a while, there might be an opportunity to finally getting some interesting designs finally released on the market.