City dwellers idealise the countryside, but there's no escaping rural poverty Patrick Butler
about 5 years in The guardian
The pandemic has exacerbated inequality in rural areas. We need a Covid recovery strategy that integrates town and country
The British countryside, or at least the seductive popular myth of the rural idyll, has become increasingly vivid in the public imagination as the pandemic continues. Covid has caused many to reassess their lives, and for city dwellers, that often includes where and how they want to live. “What am I doing here, so far from nature?” as one London columnist mused at the height of lockdown.
For urban dwellers with means, whose work allows them to be free from proximity to the office, rural living offers the heady promise of a refuge from the suddenly alarming cheek-by-jowl intimacy of the city, and all its noisy modernity. Fleeing to the country seems to offer respite from pollution, poverty, astronomic living costs, high rents and spiralling Covid infection rates. But is it really the promised land? Continue reading...
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