I spent some time in Poland for work about 10 years ago. I remember the cities being very expensive and chic - on par with Paris, Berlin, etc but when you got out of the cities (my project was in Bydgoszcz) it's a completely different world - poor, rundown, etc. would be curious how it is now and also where most of the Ukrainian refugees settled.
Most Ukrainians (and Belarusians) settled in major cities, starting with Warsaw. In 2022 I had a Belarusian girlfriend, and at some point I tried convincing people coming here to target smaller towns, to no avail.
Still, most of them stayed here, work hard and make it, despite rents literally doubling since when the war started.
That's funny, I spent several days in Bydgoszcz in 2015 due solely to a marvelous and slightly misleading video from the tourism board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiogaJADvPw
I learned on arrival that the city was not in fact color-graded and filled with beautiful slow motion video opportunities. Since then, every time I mention to any Pole that I've been to Bydgoszcz, the question is always "Why?"
All my memories of two fairly long trips around Poland are now ten years out of date, and I've heard only good things about its development since then.
You haven’t seen that much of the US if your only impression of small towns and rural areas is rundown and poor. There are some vibrant and beautiful towns scattered throughout “flyover country”. Plenty that are decrepit too, but rural America is not a monolith.
> There are some vibrant and beautiful towns scattered throughout “flyover country”.
In my experience, these places tend to be where rich people from cities own vacation property or can commute to a city for work. An example in Minnesota is the Brainerd Lakes area, which subsists almost entirely on people from the Twin Cities visiting their lake cabins from May to September. There are some nice small towns and plenty of beautiful homes, but it’s a result of outsiders bringing money in. Next door you have Aitkin County which is poor as hell because it’s basically a swamp/peat bog that has been partially drained for agriculture, 65% of the county is wetlands: https://www.mngeo.state.mn.us/maps/LandUse/lu_aitk.pdf
Most of rural America has been hollowed out to the point where local hospitals are closing. I’m not making any judgements about rural poor people, just that rural areas tend to be poor due to a lack of local economic opportunity.
So you brought up two examples that are right next door to each other. I think you are underestimating how big and diverse the US is, as well as the positive impact the tourism and service industry can have. Rich people aren’t the only ones who go on vacation.
You’re right about limited economic opportunity, which comes with its own problems. That doesn’t preclude towns from responsible use of their natural resources or using the tax base to reinvest in the town. Not all do, but some do, to varying degrees of success. This idea that the majority of the US outside of urban areas is in a state of rotting collapse simply isn’t true.
I think this is largely an east vs west thing. Rural areas in the west certainly arent rich, but theyre generally not dirt poor like rust belt areas in the eastern US are.
The hospitals are closing because there arent enough medical schools in the US so there is a doctor shortage and since doctors are highly educated the vast majority of them prefer urban living. Most rural hospitals have to pay around double to convince doctors to work there compared to urban hospitals.
I never said that was my impression, as I'm sure there are also some vibrant small towns in Poland as well.
But it's fallacy to think that lots of wealth hasn't further concentrated in cities over the last 50 years. A lot of my family is from upstate NY, and I remember visiting them as a kid and feeling like they were nice places. They have all deteriorated greatly since I was a child. E.g. people always complain about how expensive housing is in the US. Well, there are plenty of cheap places to live in upstate NY - housing costs in a lot of those places have lagged inflation for decades. The problem is nobody really wants to move to Cortland, NY.
The issue looks especially clear when you compare small towns in close proximity to big cities compared to further out. There are lots of vibrant, quaint small towns on Long Island, for example, because they get a ton of money from their proximity to NYC. I often think a lot of the upstate NY towns would look just like the "cute" Long Island towns (e.g. similar architecture and history) if they had an influx of money.
I haven't been to Poland but have a second home in Czech Republic (my wife's country) which has the same phenomenon. It has nothing to do with economics or poverty and everything to do with people. Young people move to where the jobs are which means the larger towns and cities (this happens worldwide BTW). This means old villages are entirely inhabited by old people, most of whom only worked during the days of communism. They can't and won't change. They don't want to renovate or live in a new house. So the village gets run down. Canada (where I was born) also has run down towns and even ghost-towns, you'll just never see them. In Europe secondary highways pass through every town it seems, so you do see them.
My wife's grandma, now in her 90's, lives in a >100 year old farmhouse that's crumbling and only 1/3 of the home is even heated. Hell installing the electric heaters and indoor toilet involved a ton of arm-twisting. She's been insisting she'll die any day for the last decade and refuses to move or renovate. Meanwhile my wife's cousin lives in the same town (is a remote worker) and lives in a super-modern new home that's built to a much higher standard than the average new home in Canada. Old people are just stubborn...
Anyhow the point is that things only get renovated when the owner wants to renovate it, it has nothing to do with wealth. In the city, land is worth $$$ so inevitably it gets bought and improved. In small towns, meh...
