Comment by dont__panic

As someone who frequently blames car-dependence for many of the USA's social problems, this passage really stood out:

  The large size of the townships and the long distances
  between dwellings have had much to do with making social
  coherence difficult. A single township may embrace four or
  five communities two or three miles apart, with no common
  rallying-point but the annual townmeeting. Not only do
  these detached sections get nothing socially from the
  township as a whole, but they are not, as a rule, populous
  or compact enough to have any appreciable social activity
  of their own. In this respect our farming communities are
  at a distinct disadvantage as compared with those of
  France and most of the other countries of the Old World.
  There the tillers of the soil live closely together, in
  almost crowded villages, from which they go forth to their
  work in the outlying fields.

I wonder why even early in the USA's history, before cars, before railroads, we distributed housing so widely as to inhibit socialization? I guess it's because towns grew up around separate farmsteads, instead of a bunch of non-owners living in town, working fields around town for an estate owner? I usually assume that this USA-specific "missing middle" of dense housing is a result of car culture and the suburban nightmare we've created across the country. In fact, I specifically chose to live in a small, dense New England town because I like that kind of socialization and walkability. It is curious to hear someone complaining about the same issue, over 100 years ago, for entirely different reasons.