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

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’ve spent my life living in small towns (5,000-8,000 people) and not horribly large cities (65-75,000 people); by New England standards for the cities, since ours are mostly small compared to many other places. I much prefer the small towns.

There is almost no crime where I live now, and the neighbors keep to themselves. Unlike in the cities where police sirens were part of the nightsounds and the neighbors’ main activities revolved around watching each other and gossiping about it.

There wasn’t anything more to do in the cities than in the towns, with the exception of shopping in more stores. No museums, no theaters etc. There were some nicer restaurants, but that’s about it. There was a bowling ally and mini-golf in one of the towns I lived in, and I couldn’t tell you where to find that in the cities. Maybe if we’d went to Brockton, but that wasn’t a short trip.

22

It’s not about size. Madrid (which I’d avoid like the plague) and Barcelona (waaaanaaaaaaa!) are about the same size.

Coming back to Philly with Mom and Lilbro after the two days we’d been in NYC, we left the train at 5pm. I lived on 3rd street, 3 blocks north of Market. Mom took one look around and said “damnit, this place is a damn village! Everything is closed at 5-effin’-pm!” NYC, like Barcelona, only goes to sleep after the party’s over, and the party’s never over.

I currently live in a small town… which happens to be zero inches away from the 4th-biggest town in Switzerland. Only, my small town is on the French side :slight_smile: The decision has had to do with the advantages of being a EU citizen in a EU country and with language, not with city size.

23

I’m deciding what I want to do myself. I grew up in Baltimore and will move to DC in August (I’m getting tired of the commute to work). After that, I think I’m going to work on getting a job where I make the same amount of money I make now, but in a smaller town.

I’ve lived in a few small towns - 3 years in Enterprise Alabama and 2 years in Clarksville Tennessee. I’m in the small town fan club, but there are two non-negotiable factors that the town MUST possess:

  1. It has to be within 2 hours of a major city … I have to have my culture fix so I have to stay within a resonable distance to a major city.
  2. It has to be in Florida. I fell in love with the Floridian gulf coast when I lived in Alabama. I don’t even like hot weather and I still fell in love with it!

My two major gripes with big northeastern US cities are:

TRAFFIC: in the BaltoDC area it’s the worst I’ve ever experienced. I don’t even remember Atlanta being this bad. On most days, if I get onto a major road, and drive from point A to point B there will usually be some type of significant backup. I leave for work at 5 or 6 am so I can get to work at a reliable time. I found that if I leave after 7am I can’t make it to DC before 8:30 reliably.

COST OF LIVING: Everything here is waaayyy over-priced. I had a hard time getting a decent paying job when I returned to Baltimore after being in the military. I make good money now, but I know all too well that this region will leave you broke in no time if you bring home less than 45k. On top of that… I can’t recall being hit with SO MANY governmental costs such as taxes, fines, service fees, and high registration costs (for permits, vehicles, etc.). It’s kind of surprising if you actually compare what you pay for and what public services you get.

I talk to my friends (who have never lived in any other region) about it, and they just assume that thats just the way it is, and I try to explain that there are better options available. But nope… they just don’t want to hear it. They all sing the same song about restaurants, theaters and museums. You go to restaurants, theaters and museums a few times a month, but you have to deal with a high cost of living and horrible traffic every friggin’ day! It’s just not logical to me.

Then there are the little things… I actually found myself missing the fact that I can’t look up on any given clear night and see the milkyway. I actually found it strange to look into the night sky and only see the moon and a few dozen stars.

Don’t even bring up beaches on the Atlantic Ocean side. Nasty.

As I close out my longest SDMB post evar! I think I just decided what I’m going to do over the next few years. I’m gonna phase out my big city life. I don’t think I wanna keep on living in one… I’m out… I’ll begin my plan immediately!

24

I’m actually moving back to my home town of Carson City (pop. +80,000) after living here in Vegas for 5 1/2 years. I came here because of school and now that I’m been done for a year all my college friends are gone and I have literally two friends left, and they’re both flaky assholes.

Back in Carson all my friends are car nuts, sport watching outdoors type people which I use to look down on. Now I’m a little older and wiser and can really appreciate that type of thing. Whenever I go back to visit I always have a blast.

My advise is go where your friends and family are, the size of the city shouldn’t matter.

25

That’s a great description of Atlanta- it’s exactly how I perceive it. It’s there because there needed to be a major city there- once it was Terminus to the railroads and now it’s an Airport City/Regional Capitol. Twixt Sherman and the Confederate army together only 30% of Atlanta was destroyed in the Civil War and yet almost nothing remains of anything Scarlett would have known even though you find businesses and streets everywhere named for her or other aspects of GWTW.* It’s almost a lot like Hollywood and Manhattan in the way that newbies come in such numbers and old buildings are torn down to build new expensive nondescripts that there’s no real sense of culture or history. Compare this to Milledgeville where I lived, also occupied by Sherman but with the antebellum Governor’s Mansion, the old capitol, the world’s largest abandoned lunatic asylum, beaucoups of antebellum and Victorian houses, Flannery O’Connor’s houses, etc.- history and sense of place on every street corner even if you’re at the Ruby Tuesdays or Lowe’s Hardware.

Montgomery is much the same way. It’s all chain stores and shopping malls and McMansion neighborhoods popping up to the east and massive White-Flight causing perfectly good and as recently as 5 years ago profitable malls and businesses to close and relocate to be camp followers to the WASP Yuppie Migration- you could just as easily be in Greenville SC or Tulsa OK or any other mid sized city. Downtown there’s the capital and a few historical attractions: the White House of the Confederacy, MLK’s Dexter Ave Baptist Church, etc., but they’re in the shadow of bland 12 story buildings and in a move the City Fathers & Mothers didn’t seem to appreciate the great irony of one side of the street where Rosa Parks was arrested was razed to make way for the Rosa Parks Museum & Library (meaning that when Angela Bassett filmed a TV biopic they had to film the arrest scene in a city 20 miles away because the actual location was too modern).
I’ll say this for Georgia outside of Atlanta- they’ve a MUCH better appreciation for their history than Alabama does.

*The oldest house-museum in Atlanta is The Wren’s Nest, the home of Joel Chandler “Uncle Remus/Brer Rabbit” Harris, and it dates to only 1870; I believe there are only 4 buildings in Atlanta that are antebellum and nobody seems to know where they are.

26

I lived here in Columbia all my life until I went to college in Atlanta, after which I moved back here.

I never, ever thought I’d move to the great big city! and want to come back to Columbia. I thought Columbia was a shitty place to live and there wasn’t anything to do here.

After four years of having to watch when I left the house because the traffic is a freaking horror show between, say, 3 and 7? Screw that noise. Yeah, theres museums, the symphony, the opera, etc. But you know? We got most of that here. If I want more of it than I can get here, I can always drive to a big city. And I can afford to do it because my salary goes a lot farther here in Columbia. I got a whole lot more house for the money, for example, than I ever could in Atlanta, and I live right in town! It’s so convenient - I bitch about driving all the way up to the northeast part of town for my golf lessons - it’s twenty minutes! It took me at least half an hour just to get to the mall in Atlanta!

I don’t know that I’d like to live in a really really small town (when I was a child we lived out in the country on a rural route and such, and I don’t think I’d be crazy about it) but a smaller city is fantastic. Smaller cities are organic - even a planned city feels natural. You don’t see people you know all the time, but people smile at you on the street. (I know this is also a Southern thing.) Atlanta was fun for college, and there were advantages - but now that I’m a grownup and have a house and such, I love Columbia. You sure you don’t want to up stakes and move to South Calackalacky, Sampiro? It beats the hell out of Alabama! :wink:

27

The largest city I’ve lived in was Seattle (metropolitan area 4 million), and the smallest being Winnemucca, NV at 8,000 people.

I prefer the nightlife and amenities of a big city (and with Seattle, the grocery stores), but the cost of living in one almost makes it not worth it at this point in my life. Nevermind the traffic (Seattle traffic is TERRIBLE).

My SO and I have moved to Yakima, WA in the last week for a change of pace. It’s quiet, no traffic, and its a hell of a lot cheaper. Sure, its not Seattle - but we’ll actually have money! He was making $50k a year in Seattle, which almost meant nothing in terms of buying property and whatnot, and he’s making $45k in Yakima and its allowing us to buy a house - in a nice neighborhood and bigger than a shoe box even.

28

I’m kind of in a similar position to what you are looking at. I live in a town of about 20k, that is about an hour from a Minneapolis. I actually commute daily, about 40 minutes, to the edge of the Twin Cities suburbs.

Good points - I know my neighbors. I’m not worried if I accidentally leave the garage door open. My house cost about 30% less then if I lived in the Twin Cities. I actually get to know the owners/employees for the stores I use. Traffic, what’s that? I’ve found that calls to plumbers/furnace repair/garage door repair people are much cheaper and faster. There are a number of small specialty store in town and nearby, that I couldn’t match easily in the Twin Cities. Thankfully, 20k people means enough people to support a 24hr grocery store. It’s gotten so that a 40-70 minute drive really isn’t that big of a deal on a weekend or occasional weeknight.

Down side -
There are lots of things that we don’t do, not because of the hour to get there, but because it will be another hour to get home afterwards.

I’m guessing that because it’s a college town, even a small college, it will have things that a typical 4-8k person town might not. There is probably good internet connection to the town. I’d guess that because of the college, there are some clubs, meetings and cultural events going on.

29

Wow, no wonder southerners often characterize New Englanders as cold. I can’t imagine purposely making eye contact with or smiling at everyone I saw, never mind expecting the same of others. People would think I was touched in the head if I smiled at random strangers for no reasonunless they were cute guys. Keeping to ourselves is a regional trait rather than city vs town, though.

30

I lived in Seoul for about 11 years. Crazy, crazy city. Now I live in Chicago, which seems quite peaceful by comparison. I visited NYC last winter which reminded me a lot of Seoul.

I used to think I hated big cities, but I’ve come to realize that despite the pollution and the frenzy and the general insanity, I’ve grown to like them. Or at least, I’ve grown used to them. I like having access to culture and shopping and good food. As long as I have the opportunity to get out every now and then. I can imagine when I’m old and grey that I’ll want to live somewhere quieter, but for the time being I think I’m sticking to the bigger cities.

31

I would think age and/or life stage would affect a lot of people’s preferences. When I was a kid, I loved living in a medium sized town (30,000). I could get on my bike and within 5 minutes be on the banks of a river, in the woods, or in a field that stretched as far as the eye could see. There was a wal-mart and a Target- what more could a guy need? As a teen, it was easy to be a big fish in a small pond and everyone knowing everyone else was not such a bad thing- it was like a big revolving party on the weekends.

Of course, as a young adult, I had to get out and move to a 1 million plus city. I wanted the fun and excitement. It was OK, but I never really had a chance to developed a sense of community or a feeling of “belongingness.”

Now as an adult, I don’t need the excitement. I need peace and quiet with low cirme, good schools, and high property values. I moved to a rural part of the county that holds the 1 million city. Close enough, but far enough away. This is perfect for me. You know, my kid and I can get on our bikes, and within 5 minutes…

32

I’ve lived in big cities (San Francisco, Austin, Jersey City, Manhattan), small college towns, and rural areas, although never really that far from at least a small city. A year ago I lived in Harlem on the 12th floor; I now live in a house on an acre in a village (in New York State parlance a “hamlet,” or “census-designated place,” which really rolls off the tongue) of about a thousand people, 12 miles from a small college town and 2 hours from NYC. (OK, at 9 AM, 5 hours.)

I think right now (I’m 41 and single) being in a quiet area within bicycling distance of a college town would be my ideal, and what I have now is not far off. New Paltz is very small as college towns go (and not really a quick bike ride for me, what with a small mountain in the way and all – did I mention I’m 41?), but because of the proximity of Woodstock, Kingston, Rhinebeck, and other towns in the area, there’s not really much that I would envy of a resident of, say, Flatbush or Astoria besides a greater variety of ethnic food, museums, and a lot more live music of all varieties. And I found that most of my peers aren’t really taking advantage of that stuff more often than I am anyway. People go home to their neighborhoods and stay there, by and large. And there are plenty of downsides to NYC, besides the main one of the expense.

The big minus for living out here, I fear, will be my future for dating. A search on Internet dating sites in Manhattan would spew back thousands of profiles; here, it seems that even with a 20-mile radius and a ten-year age range, by the bottom of the first page you start seeing the ghostly profiles of people who haven’t checked them in months. A lot of that can certainly be chalked up to Internet dating not having gotten a toehold here yet. But, in general: fewer people, fewer single people, and fewer single people in their 40s in an area like this.

Alas, NYC is really too much city for me, I guess. I think DC and Atlanta woul dbe about the same. In Harlem it was a good 5 minutes between my front door and a blade of grass. It drove me nuts after a while. The fact is I enjoy gardening and bike riding more than museums and seeing bands, and not everyone can live across the street from Central Park with a roofttop garden. The more desirable the city, the harder it is live in a place close to your ideal.

I loved Austin, but I always lived close to downtown and bicycled everywhere – I essentially pretended it was a medium-sized college town. I imagine most of Austin’s million or so residents are out in the sprawl and have to sit in traffic to get to Zilker Park or the Continental Club. Foo on that.

33

I like the extremes.

I’m Sydney born and bred, and it’s the biggest city in the region, but when I go to Hong Kong or somewhere, Sydney seems like a country town. I love the biggest, fastest, highest energy cities.

I’ve also lived in a place where we were the only house in the valley, and the next door neighbour was two miles away. I loved that too.

But I grew up in a mediocre boringly suburban 800 000 population type place. I HATE those.