Dopers Who Have Lived in Both Large and Small Cities: Which Did You Prefer/Why?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am considering a position that pays very well and is a lot more suited to my interests than what I now do, but the only drawback is that it’s in a very small town (about 4,000 people + a similar number of college students from August to May [far fewer in summer). That’s nowhere near as isolated as I grew up (I grew up on a farm 20 miles from a town of 4,000 people) but I do have reservations about it.

The largest city I’ve ever lived in was about 250,000 people and the smallest (other than the farm) about 10,000. There are major things I prefer about both. I like the specialty stores and movie theaters and greater varieties of restaurants/people of a larger city and I like the less traffic and congestion and sense of community of a smaller city (though meeting people can be difficult). One upside of the new position is that it’s only about 15-20 minutes from a fairly major “Interstate City” that has most of the chain stores/megaplex cinemas and it’s about an hour to 90 minutes depending on traffic from downtown Atlanta so it’s not like it’s the Alaskan Outback.

A part of me has always wanted to live in a really big city, preferably D.C. or Atlanta, and I mean smack dab inside the beltway/perimeter/city limits. OTOH, I’m scared shiteless of doing so until I have a lot more cash than I have right now. Plus, I haven’t lived in a rural area since high speed Internet/cable/NetFlix came into being so it’s probably not half so small as it once was.

Anyway, for those who have lived in both, which did you prefer and why? And which do you live in now?

2

I’ve lived in large cities (Houston, Prague) and now ilve in a relatively small city. I prefer large. More restaurants, more to do, police have more important things to worry about than whatever quasi-suspicious thing I’m engaging in.

3

I grew up in Wytheville, VA, I honestly can’t remember what the official population was when I was growing up; but it’s around 7500 now so it’s not unlikely it was around the size of the town you’re moving to back when I was a kid. It is about 70 minutes away from Roanoke, which isn’t a huge metropolis or anything, but Roanoke has ~100,000 people and thus almost any product or service you could need can be found there.

I liked growing up there, people didn’t lock their doors at night and you never had to fight for a parking spot. The local police were friendly and didn’t hassle you if you were a High Schooler walking home a bit tanked.

My grandfather lived farther west in Virginia, so far out that for years and years he didn’t have regular postal service, got his water from a well, certainly had no cable television and didn’t get very good reception on the radio or television. While places like that can be nice to visit to ‘get away’ I’d never want to live that far out.

Truth be told I wouldn’t want to live in Wytheville again, but I haven’t lived there in years and years. It’s probably fine now with high speed internet, tons of online merchandisers and et cetera, you can probably get most anything you want without being forced to drive up to Roanoke.

I’ve lived in San Francisco, New York City, several large cities in the UK, Columbia, S.C., Orlando, FL…basically I’ve lived in a ton of different places. Most of my stays were not in excess of 12 months though I lived in NYC for a few years; it’s the best of the major American cities IMO because you never need to drive and you never miss being able to, in a lot of other cities you still need to drive to get around but it’s incredibly painful as parking is rare and expensive and traffic is barely tolerable.

If I had to choose between living in NYC and Wytheville, it’d almost certainly be NYC that I chose. However I like where I live now more than both. I live in a small community (~12,000 people) about 20 minutes from Richmond, in a way I get the best of both worlds. Going into the city is easy and quick, and for day-to-day purposes (buying groceries and other such mundane things) I don’t have to leave the area, which means no fighting with traffic or et cetera.

Housing prices are way more reasonable than inside the city, I actually have property and a house versus no property and renting inside the city.

4

I spent most of my life in Baltimore, MD until I moved to Chillicothe, OH (population around 20,000) in 2000.

The good things: not much traffic or noise, I have met and conversed with every elected official in my city and county, more than once. Most of them know my name. I know the owners of most of the business that I do business with. Housing is cheap. When I am out and about, I almost always see someone I know.

The bad things: no book store, not enough store or restaurant variety, plus some of the goods things have a down-side: too many people know my business. That’s about it.

5

I prefer small towns, or more specifically out in the boonies.

I like the peace and quite. No nosy neighbors. If I want to go hiking or snowshoeing, It’s right out my door. A corner of our property backs up to national forest.

The closest town is about 5 miles. There is a bar that serves good Mex food, and some sort of coffee house.

The next town down the road is a ranching community of a couple thousand.

I the other direction about 20 minutes away is a ski resort community. Very nice with plenty of restaurants.

But it’s not for everyone. We don’t even have mail delivery or garbage pickup. Want a pizza? Got to go get it. Or make it yourself.

But I like it. I’m a homebody anyway and don’t need to be always surrounded by people.

And you sure can’t complain about the views.

From my front deck.

And another.

6

I’m not normally an envious person, but that view! Wow!

7

And I try not to brag. Something isn’t it. They are both 14,000 foot peaks.

8

I live in a distant Boston suburb and my wife commutes through Boston but I can go months with seeing it because I commute suburb to suburb. Despite what they say, most actual cities are very inconvienient. There may be lost of stuff to do but most of what we need on a day to day basis is pretty mundane. My suburban area doesn’t have any real traffic but it still has almost anything you could want in reason so going shopping, to the bank, or out to eat is a breeze. That has lots of value for me at this point.

I grew up in a tiny town, went to college in New Orleans, grad school in Hanover, NH which is about the size you describe, and then lived in Boston proper for a while. Unless you can come up with a way to have some unique city setting (as in not just a residential part of the city), I wouild go with the smaller place in general.

9

I’ve lived in a town of 2000, a town of 12,000, and now I live in a city of half a million (or three million, if you want to count the entire metroplex.) I couldn’t imagine going back to a small town. Can’t stand the nosiness, the insularity, or the limited options. Every time I visit my in-laws, I’m reminded of how much I dislike small-town living. At Christmas last year, we were eating dinner when we heard an emergency vehicle go by. They absolutely had to know what it was about. My step-SIL even called around to find out. (Turns out someone fell out of a deer stand.)

10

I grew up in a small town of about 500, close to Peoria. I moved from there to Chicago, population: a ton. Then back to Peoria, which has a population of about 125,000, or about 300,000 in the metro area.

Out of all of them, I prefer Peoria. It’s got most everything Chicago had, save for some museums and the lake, but tons of restaurants and stuff to do, as long as you don’t mind looking for it.

But parking is so much better. Everywhere I want to go has a parking lot. It’s SO much cheaper to live here. Going from 1 side of the city to the other takes 20 minutes instead of an hour. Less traffic. It’s more personal.

For me, this size of city is sort of a “best of both worlds” type thing. As trashy as everyone says Peoria is, I really like it here.

11

The bummer of small towns for me is running into people everywhere. Like the hairdresser that you don’t go to anymore right after you got a new “do” from someone else. Or the pediatrician that your kids don’t go to anymore. Or that one guy’s wife whose name you should know but forgot.

12

I can live anywhere as long as I’m within an hour or so of a major city (and that city really should be Chicago). I need to know I can get an easy culture fix. So, you gotta ask yourself…can you get the fix if you need the fix? If not, I’d take a pass.

13

Small town experience: kid in Quebec but I won’t count that. I went to grad school in the middle of the cornfields and I worked in Kokomo, Indiana for a while.

Big Cities: Los Angeles (well, close enough, I live in Pasadena) and Montreal, and I lived about 7 miles outside of Boston for a while.

My preference is still to live in an “urban” suburb right next to a big city or a suburban neighbourhood in a big city. The reason for this is that I am single and IMO it is very stifling to live in a small town. Kokomo was okay because I was there on a congressional campaign and we had a whole bunch of kids and I was dating one but Champaign blew. If I met someone it was usually when I was hanging out in Chicago and I absolutely hated the commute up there. I refuse to date lawyers and I felt that it was difficult meeting kids in other programs, especially with the workload. Plus, C-U as an urban environment is really small.

I feel that small towns and remote suburbs are most fun when you have your own family and established relationships or a group that you fall into right away. Otherwise, I prefer the illusion of being able to meet different people to the absolute certainty that there is no one to meet :).

14

I grew up in a medium-sized town - about 24,000, in southern New Hampshire. It wasn’t a terrible place to grow up - absolutely safe, and the public schools were superb. But I hated the fact that the nearest real city - Boston - was an hour’s drive away. No indie theaters, no culture, nothing to do except read, watch television, go to school or drink. And I watched every bookstore in town die within a few years. There are times I miss the place, but I’d never go back.

I live in DC now, and I love it. I’m in the upper-northwest part of the city - Van Ness, near UDC - and it’s very quiet, leafy suburbia (like where I grew up) - but if I want to muck about the city, the metro station is just a few minutes walk away. I love it. Bookstores, movies, lectures, music - everything I missed when I was younger. This is where I want to spend my life.

15

Is Big Als’ still downtown? The only Peoria landmark I know other than the statue down on the last street before the river, near the ADM plant entrance. Can’t even remember, was it a mermaid? Something.

16

Okay, I’ll buck the trend. I’ve lived in Nashville and Minneapolis, and now live on a small farm outside a tiny town. I love where I live - I can drive into Nashville (50 miles away), but I have peace and quiet. My neighbors are helpful if I need it, leave me alone when I don’t. If my mower breaks down and my grass gets long, no one complains, but if I ask a neighbor to take a look at my mower, he’ll gladly help fix it. I have room to have lots of animals. At night I can see more stars than I could imagine in the city. I love it.

StG

17

I grew up in a town of less than 100,000, lived in a city of 500,000, and now live in Manhattan. I find the middle choice to be the best.

Manhattan has more at the margins. More and better museums. More job opportunities. More bars. More restaurants. Smaller cities also have all of that, just not as much and not the best. But you pay for it in sky-high rent, lack of environmental recreation, constant noise, constant crowds and dirt (trash, bad air, poorly-maintained parks, etc.). To be fair, part of that is the distinction between the Pacific Northwest and the East Coast generally.

As for small city vs. small town, it’s a closer fight for me, but small city wins out. You don’t lose too much going from small town to small city. It’s a little more expensive. You have a few more parking headaches. But you gain so much. Art museums, the ability to see foreign films in the theater, a wide selection of restaurants, etc.

IMHO, this is one area where the golden mean really applies.

18

I live in New York City, which is large. I have lived here for my entire adult life.

I still have very close ties to where I grew up in Western NY. In fact, we own a summer/vacation home there. The plan is to eventually move there permanently. The pop. is under 4,000, and it is about 30 minutes away from a good-sized city (but nothing like NYC).

I love NYC, but in some ways, I have grown out of it … well, not out, but grown differently. When I was younger, I wanted to go see experimental theater at midnight on a Tuesday. NYC is great for that. It was also ideal for being a young single person who liked meeting lots of different people. Now that I am old and boring and not single, I don’t take (as much) advantage of the big city things that make NYC such a unique, 24 hour place.

Now, my preference would be to live (full time) in my small town. I enjoy the relaxed and friendly environment (although NYC is very friendly, just less personal) and I like knowing everyone and don’t care that they know my business. (It probably helps to have boring business.) The larger town is close enough that I can still go to galleries or more trendy shopping or whatever.

Another factor is that I have what I think is an advantage in that I have a lot of family in the small town, so I have never been an outsider type person there. I sometimes wonder if someone with no connections would find the town as pleasant and fun as I do. Maybe it is harder to “break in” to a small town scene where everyone has known everyone else from the cradle. This might be less of an issue in a college town, where presumably many people would be coming from other areas.

19

I went from Chicago to a VERY small (pop. 3000) town in rural Bulgaria. Honestly, sometimes the only thing that makes me sane is the knowledge that I’m here temporarily. Although I am somewhat used to it by now, yeah, I definitely miss being able to do…well, anything I feel like.

I’m not sure how that would compare to living in such a small town in the US, where I expect one has more amenities than are available in Bulgaria.

20

I’ve mostly lived in small towns and much prefer them. I lived in Atlanta for a few years while I was in grad school, and while I loved all the theaters and museums and Little 5 Points it was just too…impersonal. Mean without actual malice, just indifference. People don’t make eye contact when you pass on the sidewalk, they don’t smile.

Columbus is either the second or third largest city in Georgia now after Atlanta, and it’s really larger than I would like. Since I’ve gotten addicted to the hockey team and we bought a house, I guess I’m stuck here. And I can always go to the cabin on Lake Harding (during the week when the idjuts are at work) for a little peace and quiet.