Just outside of a small town about 30 minutes from a big city is what I like. I’m only 30 minutes from stores and nightlife the few times that I want that, the small town has groceries and other necessities, and I can go into my yard and shoot a gun or ride an ATV at any time.
I don’t even know how I would classify my hometown- a beach resort area- but I guess it most closely fits “country,” especially if you leave the peninsula. I guess I grew-up mostly in the “country” by these criteria. Really I would say there are huge parts of the U.S. that don’t fit neatly in country, city, suburb.
I find some of the stereotypical comments about the “country” here to be bizarre. I have lived in towns/cities with 20,000 people that had large hospitals, universities, malls, stores (usually multiples of the same brands/franchises),etc. I was even born in a hospital, not a barn. I have also lived in towns of 5000 or so that had all of the same amenities on a smaller scale. My 2nd hometown ( the little town 8 miles from the seasonal beach town) even added a decently-equipped hospital during my childhood. These towns could not in any way be considered even small “suburbs,” as they were at least a couple hours and bodies of water away from any cities.
That said, I am not just an “introvert,” but I have severe social anxiety disorder. I agree with some others that the “country” is not necessarily the place to be for introverts, despite the privacy implications. It sucks to be in a small town where everyone knows everyone else and you always run into people. Or when your perceived failings are publicly scrutinized. I’ll just say I have a sort of reputation there I’d rather not be reminded of. Nothing really bad, just an unfulfilled potential “didn’t you used to be -----?” sort of thing. I have a few really good friends who remain, and I keep up with people on facebook, and I mostly feel sad for people. I guess I shouldn’t- I’m sure some are happy. I just couldn’t see myself happy hanging around there around the same people doing the same things, being genuinely excited about going to high school football games and shitty bars, and so on. Not that i’m doing anything too exciting myself, but at least I’m somewhere else.
Now I live in a suburb. I think it’s about as suburban-suburb as one can get (though there is still rural land all around). Technically, I am “in the city” as I have city water, police, services. My mailing and school district address are suburban. I guess “in the country” some people have to drive 30 miles to the grocery store. I have 6 grocery stores within 5 miles, but it probably takes just as long and as much gas to get there because of all the congestion. I work at home, fortunately. I am finishing up a degree at a major university in my city- so i do commute for that. Some parts of “the city” are around 30 miles apart. I have to leave my house 90 minutes early to make the 15 mile trip. While I’m in “the city” I can walk or take a bus to other places “in the city,” but that’s not really all that convenient. City living also means paying 3-4x as much to live in an apt with no yard (some of us country folk like having yards and places for kids to play and weird stuff like that) and zero privacy, compared to the 3BR 2BA House with a garage and yard with a playground that literally costs me nothing. Admittedly, now I live in a suburb and not the country- so my yard is way too small and my neighbors way too close. Those aspects are only marginally better than the city. When I was growing up in the semi-country, poor families had 1 acre and a ranch house. It was always weird for me to see new developments with huge houses and no yards. When I dream about where I will move when I have some real money- I think of some type of ranch or “farm”- not some condo. Ideally, I’d probably like to have a “place in the city” as well, but that would be an extra, not a primary place to live. As far as my personality goes, I’m not “country” but I don’t fit in with “city people” either, I guess. I don’t really have the socialization and lifestyle interests of either.
What an ignorant statement. Do we want to REALLY go into the various unsavory types of the “kind of people” who live in the city?
Oh, we’ve heard.
I haven’t. I hear that there may be certain style of music that tends to extol the benefits of living in the country, but I just can’t put my finger on what that style might be called. I’ve searched up and down the radio dial for it, but the airwaves are noticably silent about people singing about how great living in the country is, as well.
No kidding. I’m starting to wonder who exactly the country people are trying to convince.
ha! nice snark.
What I don’t understand is how city life came to be associated with sophistication and culture. I spend more than 1/3rd of my life living in cities, and I associate living in cities with crime, poverty, grime, and over-crowding. I’m aware there are cities with museums and the like, but I’d be damn surprised if they out-numbered the type of cities like I lived in.
Also note that people tend to associate the benefits of living in the city with things like museums, lectures by people well respected in their field, fine restaurants, large sporting events and a vibrant nightlife. That is great if you can do it but hardly anyone ever does even two of those things on a regular basis even if they live in the city proper and most do none of them. It takes time and money that most people don’t have.
Do the math yourself. Boston has all of those things and yet only a small fraction of the population does anything that supposedly makes it a great place to live more than a few times a year at most if that. For the rest, it is just a place with really expensive housing prices, horrible driving conditions and really bad weather six months of the year.
I enjoy the supposed attractions of the city in smaller doses but ironically, it is almost never in the Boston area where I live. I travel frequently and I enjoy the attractions everywhere from Honolulu to Paris where I do what want in a week or so and then leave. Most of the locals there are doing the same thing with other cities rather than at home where they have to work or have simply become entrenched in a limited routine.
However, the vast majority of the cities don’t fall into anywhere close to the world-class range. All I see for most of those is hopeless and unattractive living conditions that are mediocre even in the best case. You can get that in rural areas too but the difference is that your land is your own and you have direct influence on your own fate.
I have lived in the City (Atlanta, inside the perimeter, and outside the perimeter; the city-without-a-capital-c (Savannah, mostly,) small towns, suburbs, and the country, and except for the suburbs, I can understand why anyone would want to live in any of those areas. (And really, I can understand the suburbs as a compromise. Just not as a first choice.)
I think that my husband and I have finally hit an absolutely Solomonic solution to the Green Acres dilemma. He wanted a lot of land, privacy, rural life… and access to great schools and high speed internet. I wanted some space and privacy, but I could give a rat’s ass about rural pursuits - my outdoorsy inclinations are satisfied by having a drink on the patio now and again - and I wanted access to great schools for the kids. We got very, very lucky, and found almost 5 acres of land on a dirt road, in the school district we wanted, at a price we could afford, zoned as we wanted. And the “back” of the land has frontage on the bypass around town. Our new home will be three minutes from the grocery store, and five from the kids’ schools. It’s a college town, so there’s more going on than the 35,000 person population would suggest, and we’re still close enough to take a day or weekend trip to Atlanta or Savannah or Charleston or St. Augustine. The kids and dogs will have plenty of room to roam, but we won’t be too far away for them to participate in school extracurriculars or audition for the city theater. The hospital is a good-sized regional hospital, with basically every service we hope we’d ever need. The high school offers more than two dozen AP classes, and joint enrollment at the university, and there are two 2-year colleges here in town also. And no, this town doesn’t offer as many shopping options as a larger city, but I can buy mostly anything I need, any day of the week.
The biggest draws of the city are not the big ticket museums and events- though those are nice and (believe it or not) lots of people do take full advantage of them. It’s really about the little daily pleasures- a stroll down the street to your local brunch spot, wasting a few moments at a well-curated independent bookstore, stocking up on spices at the Indian market, getting Ethiopian food delivered to you, people watching in the park, etc. Its a lifestyle, not just a set of places.
It’s kind of like how, for a nature lover, a monthly hike doesn’t compare to tromping around on a big beautiful chunk of land every day.
It’s also about the very specific. I may not eat at every restaurant in town, but the four Cameroonian restaurants nearby are In heavy rotation. I don’t go to every event, but my international development book club is a highlight of my month. Whatever floats your boat, it’s there. I was looking today at activities to do with infants, and found out I live blocks away from an infant yoga studio, of a things. Want to do yoga with a baby? Want to join a ski-ball league? Want to learn to speak Twi? Almost any interest, no matter how obscure, can be pursued.
Anyway, that’s not to say the city is better than the country. But city dwellers are not all crazy people who enjoy paying high rent for no good reason- there are very real things that people like about urban areas.
I think it’s worth saying that for whatever reason, a lot of people aren’t living where they’d necessarily want to live. I bet there are plenty of country people who would rather live in the big city but can’t afford to move / have no job skills that would be useful in the city, and there ARE a lot of city people who would sooner live somewhere more rural, but can’t manage it for one reason or another.
I mean, I’d probably ideally want to live somewhere about 50-60 miles outside of a major metro area. Out in the country, but within arm’s reach of the benefits of a big city, if that makes sense.
However, I don’t want to commute like that, and nor do I have the money to go buy the house and land I’d probably want. So I live in the city, although in some older (1960s/1970s) suburbs, and don’t have to live in an apartment/townhome and be right on top of my neighbors like I would somewhere like NYC, Chicago or San Francisco. Plus, the rural school districts tend to be underfunded and kind of bad compared to suburban ones.
The thing is, the true hipsters - that is those that listen to alternative rock and metal, have much bigger and better speakers - overwhelmingly big enough to turn the local bluegrass every other spectral hue of the burning sun - instilling devil fears, humbling and curdling baptist souls yonder over hill and the horizon. There may be country music being played around here but I never hear any.
I heard more country music in the city than I ever heard in the country.
WHAT! you think city people never listen to country music?! You think there are no country bars in the city?!
Of course I heard a lot more of all kinds of music when I lived in the city. Whether I wanted to or not. Even in the winter time when all the windows were closed.
I was so happy when the woman across the street took a baseball bat to her grandson’s car stereo system.
Would have been easier on her in the country, she could have shot it instead.
This is what sets my brother and I apart. I like living in the suburbs/city. I like my work being 15 minutes away, everyhing is CLOSE by. There are plenty of city activities going on in the weekends and I live in an incredibly diverse area. When I’m at work i’ll hear people talking in six different languages in a room, and we dont work for the CIA, we’re just bus drivers 
. Its expensive, yeah, but there’s more work and the pay is better, so its worth it in my opinion.
My brother, in contrast, lives out in the country and likes it there. He likes having the freedom and space to work on outdoor projects without people complaining about the noise, or having camping, fishing, or ski places an hour away. He likes living in a house that looks like a little cabin, raising chickens, and going dirtbiking. However, he’s also kind of lazy, and I often wonder if he lives where he does because his rent is so cheap and renting/buying a place means even a minimum-wage job can support a modest lifestyle. Sometimes I wonder if its not so much him disliking suburbs/cities as the housing prices mean he would have to find more than just a part-time job at wal-mart to pay the rent.
My wife, being nonwhite, is scared of ‘redneck/hillbilly’ types and like Anaamika is painfully aware of when she is the only person of color in an area. I dont think she would ever live where my brother lives, since she would be concerned about getting stared at/harassed all the time.
I’m fine with people not wanting to live in the country, because if a bunch of people move to the country then it won’t be country any more. We have people moving here from the DC/MD area to get away from the traffic and congestion and high cost of living. And then they complain that there’s nothing to do, substandard civil services, and no stores. Well sorry but if you have a lot to do, lots of civil services, and lots of stores, you’re back in the city!
I would absolutely love to live in a less populated area (we live in NYC and my husband keeps blibbering about moving to Mumbai), but I don’t have the type of education or career that lends itself to working in a rural community. My ideal would probably be some place near a rural university. I went to UIUC and it was pretty much perfect in terms of environment, except I’d rather be near a major body of water than landlocked. I say this all the time, but I wish I’d just gone down the med school route when I had the chance…I could easily see myself living in some bucolic area being the local doctor.
I grew up in a super rural community in Quebec and it wasn’t a pleasant experience (for my parents, we were just kids so things weighed on us less), but that had more to do with political issues that made life difficult for us as non-white immigrants, and the isolation my parents/family had to live with for a decade.
Whenever I leave NYC for some place more bucolic, even MetroWest Boston where my family still lives, I feel…way more relaxed. But I finally convinced my husband to move to the Dirty Jerz. Hudson County, so no more city taxes but he can still look at the city from across the river 
I hope our inspection goes smoothly.
I want to move to the country. As I love nature; especially deciduous forests. Forests provide both beauty and free heating fuel (wood).
Having a large place for a large vegetable garden and a large fruit and nut orchard would be lovely. Fresh fruits and vegetables are healthy and delicous.
I value peace and quiet. I would love for the only sounds I hear from my house to be birds, wind, thunder, and rain.
Having a private well would be wonderful as there would be no water bill and well water tastes better than city water on account of no chlorine. Also, well water has more minerals (usually) than city water.
I am misanthropic and I value my privacy, so living in the country should help with those considerations.
Having fewer municipal restrictions would be nice. Towns impose more restrictions than just the basic county ones.
I could and should add to this, but I am sleepy.
You do realize cities are more prone to pest infestations than the country, right? Pest species live off of humans. Thus, more humans=more pests. Also, there are fewer natural predators in cities than in the country. Think New York City and rats. Rats in the country have to contend with owls, hawks, cats, foxes, and snakes, not so in the Big Apple.
Infectious diseases also spread from person to person more readily in higher population densities than in lower population densities.
Cities are also usually more violent than rural areas; especially in terms of gang violence.
Cities impose more restrictions than counties.
People who live in rural areas are often more self-sufficient than those who live in town.
Natural surroundings contribute positively to mental and physical health.
Sounds like a right bloody din to me mate!
One of the odd things I found about living in the countryside was how accentuated small sounds became. That wren (or whatever) chirping outside my window at 6am had the piercing quality of an alarm clock. That same bird in London would get lost in the white noise of traffic, trains, aircraft, dogs, people and general hubbub of the city. I always half-joked that we came back to London for some peace and quiet.
Still, the good thing about living in a compact little island is that you can live in one and never be far from the other.