I’m going to round up to yes because I have and expect I will again, but it’s very infrequent. My home town is Cape Town, South Africa. My parents still live in the house I grew up in. I’ve visited a couple of times since moving to the United States but mostly they’ve come over here. I’d like to go again soon, but it’s a lot of travel with young kids. I’m very close to being literally on the other side of the world (i.e. if you drill a hole through the center of the earth …)
To answer the OP, once.
I was born and raised in a small town just across the state line from Norte Dame.
I left when I was 18, heading to the unknown.
Which turned out to be the best decision I ever made.
Difficult? Yes. Regrets? No.
On a road-trip, we passed by my old stomping grounds.
Decided to stop by, get a motel room and check things out.
Nothing had changed. Depressing.
We go once a year to visit my parents. I don’t know that we would go otherwise.
Until my mother died I went regularly. Since then I have visited my sister a few times. One of my sons lived there for two years in the early 2000s and I went a few times. My sister feels too weak to host a visit and I haven’t been there in about two years.
Where I grew up (0-13 years) - Oh, Hell no. The place is the asshole of California and is nothing but poverty, gangs and bankruptcy.
Where I graduated high school (13-21) - All the time. It’s all of one town over.
I still live in my hometown, so I’m there all the time, but I don’t suppose it counts as “visiting.”
Still live in the area. Parents still live in my childhood home (from age 7 forward). Technically my office is in the adjacent city to my hometown. The house I grew up in from birth to 7 is only 10 minutes from my work office.
Sadly I still don’t really see my parents that often. Because of normal traffic conditions around the DC metropolitan area, even though it’s 1/3 the distance from my office, it takes the same amount of time (40 minutes) to get to either my home or my parent’s house, and they’re in opposite directions.
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Alexandria, Virginia was a wonderful place for a kid to grow up in the 1950s. Mom would give me a quarter and me and my buddy would walk down to King Street, take in a monster movie at the Reed Theater and then get an ice cream cone at High’s. If we had a little extra money, we’d browse around G.C. Murphy’s and maybe pick up a Man from Mars or a Purple People Eater. On the way home we’d stop in at Rosemont Variety and look at the comic books. On a hot summer’s day we’d get a grape or orange Tru-Ade at the little grocery right across the street.
Later on, I purchased my first 45 rpm record at the shop around the corner from J.C. Penney’s – She Loves You by the Beatles. My parents’ best friend ran a haberdashery on King St. You wouldn’t venture too far down towards the water, that was a “bad neighborhood.”
Nowadays I go there once in a while, mainly to visit the cemetery where my parents are buried. I invariably return greatly depressed. There are no businesses on King Street of any use whatsoever, unless you want a latte.
The town I lived in until I was 10 (a far western suburb of Chicago) is about a thirty-minute drive away from me. I have a number of friends who live close to there, and my church is near there, so I drive around in my old neighborhood maybe once a year or so, just to look at the houses and feel nostalgic.
But, I consider my “hometown” to be Green Bay, where we moved when I was 10. My parents still live in the same house, and my sister, my niece, and several other relatives and friends live in that area, so I go up to visit every few months. I haven’t been up there since Christmas, which is probably the longest I’ve ever been away, and I do miss it.
FWIW, Joe Jackson sings “Hometown.” Joe Jackson-Hometown(The Big World Tour,1986) - YouTube
Lyrics: Joe Jackson - Home Town Lyrics | AZLyrics.com
Wanna go back to my home town
Though I know it’ll never be the same
Back to my home town
'Cause it’s been so long
And I’m wondering if it’s still there
Town I was born in was less than a thousand people, had one main street named Main Street, was surrounded by hay fields and orchards. It was in the Santa Clara Valley.
It now has 70,000 people. There is no back home to go back to. My town has been obliterated as effectively as if it was bombed.
Hometown #1, 0-12 years old: every few years via a drive. It’s changed, as all the cathedral elms are gone from Dutch Elm, and the brick houses have faded a bit, but in some ways, it’s spiffier.
Hometown #2, 12-18 year old: about once a year, when I go back to visit relatives. But my old house may not be around much longer. All the other houses on that side of the street, which has a nice view, have been replaced by those architectural abominations, McMansions. Only our old house remains as is, so it won’t be long. 
How anyone can think those monstrosities are attractive is beyond me. :mad:
Yes and no. Depends on what you consider a hometown. We moved so much as a kid, not military just my dad job jumping every couple of years. Mom put her foot down when I got to high school. Some of the cities I’ve been back to.
Yeah, me too. With every new town/city we moved to, we enjoyed a better home and a higher status.
I visited all those places again. Some parts look the same, some are really different - nothing special about it.
Except for one little town where I lived between 3 and 5 years of age. The neighborhood where I played and large areas of the town where I roamed (I used to be a rover) are intact in my mind - I can picture them quite vividly. And because I am a fully adult now (I hope), I can also realize how modest and unremarkable the whole town was. I will never go back there for fear I might ruin some of the most beautiful memories of my early childhood.
They say childhood is the most beautiful of all life’s seasons. The most beautiful times of my life were the years I spent in university and the present time.
Yep. Couple times a week at least during ski season.
I haven’t visited the place where I was born for over 30 years, although I have driven quite close to it when I took my mum to visit her family’s graves and to visit my dad’s grave. Last time, we spent a day in the town right across the river from my birthplace, but still didn’t go back to visit.
Mum lived in the place we moved to when I was 16 right up until she died earlier this year. I went back for the funeral, to see her solicitor and to clear out her flat but since then I have not been tempted to visit. My partner and I talked about it because the nearby city has some very good concert venues but it would just not be the same without stopping off to visit mum.
For me the egregious part is the lot size. They wouldn’t look so bad if they were in a lot that is slightly larger than the classic mid-century suburban lot, but instead they are squeezed into something that is the low end of that scale or, conversely, plopped down all by themselves on a mansion-size lot.
I live close to the town I grew up in and pass through it rather frequently. When I was in high school, in the mid/late 60’s it was still a thriving steel/coal town, where a kid could graduate high school and be hired at the mill the next day.
All that’s gone now and the town can only be described as ‘crumbling’. Good people still trying hard but the economic engine has stalled. It’s depressing and discouraging and there’s really no reason to go there anymore.
Senegoid and I grew up in the same general area, Pacoima, a district of Los Angeles. I lived there until age 14 along with scads of new families and kids my age. It was a blast. We moved to Orange County for a job transfer. On those rare occasions I’m down in Los Angeles I make it a point to revisit the old neighborhood. It has had its ups and downs over the years but I could still live there if my situation warranted it. Senegoid would probably disagree about living there. But what do you expect from someone on the other side of Van Nuys Blvd? 
Yes. My mother and sister still live there (sadly, all my other relatives that lived there – most of them – have passed away or, if they were cousins, never lived there). It’s also close enough to my wife’s family, and a staging area for visits to New York City.