Are Asperger problems worse in the city or in the country?

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I live in the country.

Pros:
- Not as many people.
- Not a lot of noise.

Cons:
- Fears. (afraid of the dark-- lots of woods. afraid of bugs-- lots of bugs)
- Being isolated to where I can barely leave the house.
- Not being independent (having to be driven around, never being around streets so I can't walk alone if the need arises..).

that's about it. I think the pros/cons of living in the country and living in the city are about the same, city being worse for most I'd say.

I live in a college town, of 50,000 people, that's 30 minutes from two major cities (San Antonio and Austin), and it hasn't affected my AS.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this very question.

I am in Edinburgh too. A large and busy city, indeed the capital of Scotland.

Pros and cons of Edinburgh for Aspies? It is, in fact, far from lacking in services for AS. (McTell - I have pm'ed you with details.) In fact, Edinburgh has better services for AS than almost anywhere in the UK.

If a "vocational rehabilitation agency" means what I think it does, there is one in Edinburgh.

The Lothians Joint Learning Disability Strategy, a partnership between the NHS and the four Lothian councils, is a strategy for services for people with ASC. Funding has been committed for developing services for ASC so we should see an enhancement in the services we have.

Edinburgh and its streets are indeed very busy. I have the same issues with walking in streets. It's a real struggle for me too. An urbanised area in Scotland, I would say, would have to be at the very least 6,000 people per square mile. The city of Edinburgh is more like 10,000 per sq mi.

The population density means much of the housing is flats. If you're an Aspie who lives independently then you'll surely be living in a flat, which would be in a communal stair with 6-12 or more properties. This can stretch the independent adult Aspie, as it certainly has done to me. Close proximity to many neighbours, multiply increasing chances of having to live with nuisance. As does affordability.

Many adult Aspies stay with their parents and supposedly very few live independently, though I've a feeling the numbers who live independently are underrated. Then they'll probably be in houses (family home) as opposed to flats, possibly affording less distressing interferences from neighbours, since there are less neighbours per acre.

Edinburgh could not be better for mass transit. There is a very comprehensive bus network. But one should not think public transport is always an Aspie essential, since many Aspies do drive, though I also cannot.

There are plenty of country walks outside Edinburgh. Buses to the edge of the bus network (Lothian Buses) can enable you to access rural areas to walk in, especially the Pentland Hills.

I think, looking at it from a social standpoint, a large city with a variety of activities is better for Aspies. Therefore I chose in the poll that an urbanised area is better. Socially there is more chance of finding a like minded community, such as an Aspie community which is something that exists in Edinburgh. In a rural area or small town, you are a bit more stuck with the same people and with less social variety.

Despite the serious problems I have had with one particular issue i.e. neighbours/neighbourhoods, I'm convinced that a large diverse city is best. For example I attend a church in a suburb of Edinburgh where I live. That's a bit more like a small town community and is in a particular pocket of the city. Well, I find life there constricting to my individuality and independence, traits which I feel discouraged in the church. I feel a lot more free in life in the city generally, and the stuff I do in the wider city.

Fact: The most isolated people are those in small, remote rural towns who have some sort of perceived difference to the rest of the community. This was made obvious when I made friends online, who were only contacting me because of their extreme isolation.

Edinburgh must be a particularly liberal place compared to the rest of Scotland, being the capital and having such a great student population, but then I'm hardly political at all.

I live in a small country town (suburban).

Pros: Quiet, not many people wandering the street, close to shops, has good health services

Cons: Boring, need a car to do weekly grocery shopping, eastern part is full of thugs, unemployment is at an all time high. Also, no live music scene. That's a pro for the city.

The city to me is worse because of the many noises and sounds, not to mention I can really get lost in it. People are also nicer in a country town. I have so many panic attacks and meltdowns in the city that I've lost count.

First off, I would say that I am probably heavily in favor of urban spaces, mainly because of the opportunity and resources available, as well as the wide diversity of viewpoints.

I currently live in a rural area in Montana. Well, Columbia Falls, by virtue of the fact that within a one-mile square area is considered urban as a result of its size. It has only 3,000 people in a region of Montana with only 85,000 people, and Montana only has 900,000 people within its 186,000 square miles.

I find it hard to deal with the overbearing conservatism and intolerance of the people here. I tend to be liberal and Democratic, while many people in my family are strongly Evangelical Protestant and materialist. I can't stand the lack of mass transportation, because I don't drive and the distances between towns here are over 10-20 or even 100 miles or more.

Within a few months I will be moving to a city in Idaho with 200,000 people, to attend Uni for my Bachelor's degree. And then maybe I will go online or to Seattle for my Masters of Library Science.

Here is a list of places I am thinking of moving to:

Stay in the Pacific Northwest:
Boise (maybe stay)
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA
Vancouver, BC

Move somewhere else in US:
San Fransisco, CA
Honolulu, HA

Overseas:
Singapore
Tokyo
Osaka
Shizuoka
Hong Kong


I would go on longer about my issues, but I am here waiting at the college for a bus to come, and time is running out.

(I was wrong in saying that there was no mass transit, but the transit here is insufficient and the population density is too low, and I am rushing to complete this post before and will not change the post)

I live in a rural area. Mostly orchard and vineyards around. There's about a hundred acre orchard in back of the house (belongs to the neighbor), and about the same across the street. There's about a dozen houses scattered along a few miles of the road.

It's very quiet, the air is clean (except when they spray pesticide), and the view is great. And I can work on projects in the garage all night and no one complains about the noise.

OTOH, there isn't much going on, driving is a necessity, and there's less anoyminity. I've lived here a long time and the pharmacist and other such people recognize me by sight. So social mess-ups and such with store workers is a more serious problem.

There's not much to do, save for a few good restaurants, in San Marcos since I am not a party guy (there are a lot of bars, though). The next town over, New Braunfels, has better restaurants.

Austin is too wild and wooly for me, plus traffic is a nightmare there. When I go to the big city, I go to San Antonio, which is more laid back.

I must add that while in most regards I am the furthest thing from being an ageist, that I agree with millie's sentiment here.

Take into consideration that autism is a spectrum condition, which is, in truth, organized quite differently from the spectrum the holy order of NTs blessed and presented to the world. LFA is not necessarily LFA, and HFA is not necessarily HFA, and Aspies are not necessarily high functioning either, as the DSM-IV specifies only having no language or cognition delays is what distinguishes Asperger's from supposedly HFA.

I see more a central vortex surrounded by a diverse collection of vortices, all contributing either a lot or a little or something somewhere in between to the larger vortex in the center. That being representative of the Autist in the middle, shaped by the various and sundry array of extras the Autist has at their disposal. Some of it most certainly useful, and some of it most certainly not. There are certain vortices that all Autists have in common, to varying degrees. DSM-IV for Autism But then there are other vortices that are really contributing a lot more to the central vortex in one case, and with a different configuration of vortices, not so much.

For example, I have rather pronounced sensitivities - all of them, in fact. Visual, audio, smell, touch, and taste. In that order really, though as a means of scale I'll say that I can usually taste and identify the individual spices used in some food item that was prepared fresh, and that in addition to being screamingly hot, habanero peppers also possess a distinctive flavor.

On the other end of that, it's really too bright outside on a sunny day for me. Inside, anywhere but my home, I have to contend with the nauseous feeling I get from flickering fluorescent lights. My vision is detailed rather than generalized, so that if I pay anything more than basic navigational attention to say...a city block, what I'm processing is hundreds of thousands of bricks and the associated window panes and other structural elements, and peeling paint (often a different color on each side), casting shadows across whatever surface it's ceasing to adhere to, and the bright green little individual tendrils that make up the moss that fills the cracks in the pavement, and light-source bouncing off of various reflective surfaces, and all the people, wearing a dizzying arrary of patterns and colors, and I could go on, and on, and on about all the things there are to look at for me.

Hearing every little thing. Smelling...all sorts of acrid odors. But maybe I have made my point if any read this and have a DX, but don't feel distracted by this sort of thing. And when I say distracted, I mean something that's going to be a constant irritant that builds in intensity until eventually Fight or Flight is triggered.

I've read that sensitivities decrease with age. I'm convinced this is BS, because they certainly haven't for me, and it would seem not so for a number of the other elder Autists participating here.

So whereas some Autists may not be dealing with things that doom them to meltdown in dense population areas, others certainly are. It's also a pretty good guess that those who have had the opportunity to spend a number of years experimenting with their individual comfort levels in terms of what they can reasonably deal with will have likely have figured out what those levels are.

Time spent composing this reply: 2 hours.

Currently live in a medium-sized town (Newcastle-under-Lyme), which forms a conurbation with a large-ish city (Stoke, which in many ways is like several smaller cities grouped together), I actually quite like it.
When not in university term time I live with parents in a small rural town which I hate.

At least in urban areas there's a semi-decent bus service - I don't drive, so I always feel very bored at home - nothing to do and hard to escape!
I've always felt that I'd prefer to live in an urban area, simply because there's more to do and a greater chance of meeting people similar to myself. The problem with living in a rural area is not just the lack of facilities but the isolation in general - there were few people I could actually say were that much like me or shared my interests. My social life's always been difficult and I can't say that helped.
Currently go to Keele uni though so the majority of people I know are not from the town where I live, but from the university - maybe my opinion isn't as valid because of this. I did live on campus which was quite good, helps in getting to know others and still had a reasonable bus service to get away.

It depends. I grew up in a place that was so far out in the boonies I sometimes felt like I was in a refugee camp. Naturaly I hated camping becuase my life was camping. I also recently moved to a small town. I had a horrible time in the country as a child manily because there was simply nothing to do. There was a patch of woods behind our house but my parents would never let me explore them. The neighbors were your classic Bible thumping holly roller hicks. They used their religion as an excuse for everything but manily as an excuse to abuse their animals. The youngest son would tease me for my obsessions and when I told his mother about his behavior she would defend him saying people are supposed to enjoy being teased...WTF? Next time I see her I will tell her she is so religious she scares Jesus away. She'll probably think that's a hoot and afterall people like being teased . Anyway they were too stupid to know where their noses were let alone know about modern phycological terms. I was horribly bullied at the school in that town and was told it was my fault. Aside from the annoying neighbors and the Hell of a school, the rural area was the best. We live litterlay one house down from the park and the park is always having concerts and thinks they can blast their amps and bass as loud as they can. The sound and vibrations came through the walls and their was no way to escape from it. Headphones couldn't block it out and I should not have to block out someone elses sound in my own home. Sometimes I do not want to listen to music. It was so bad I would have a panic attack when ever there was a concert. I think my parents should have complained to the city ordance people and bout it and made them make the bands keep their amps on a lower level. Autistic or not, a person should not have to endure that kind of thing in their own home. The neighbor girl was always coming over when I was working on a project and would expect me to drop everything and take her someplace. But when I wanted her to come somewhere with me she was too busy. I also felt as if she was not coming to hang out with me but to just use my computer to look at stupid youtube videos and music videos. Whenever I see the actual singer or group it ruins it for me and when I tried to explain she said "then don't look at it." Well excuse me, missy but it is MY computer and MY house. You will obey MY rules and respect MY wishes. She was also always wanting me to ride bikes with her. I could never learn to blance on a bycycle and stay on the right side of the road at the same time. Plus she was always wanting to go where ever she please including to the part of town where registered sex offenders are known to reside. Maybe she wants to get molested but I don't. She really had no friends of her own outside of school because her dad was like crazy overprotective of her. Gee, I wonder why. My parents felt sorry and made me be her babysitter in a way. They told me that I need to hang around with her because the AS makes it impossible for me to make friends with people my own age. Well I will never learn if I am being forced to babysit kids seven years younger than me. We eventuly moved back to the boonies but my parents want to move back to the town. My mom says she will buy me some really good headphones but they don't work to block out the noise of the concerts and my mom dosen't really understand my issues as much as she thinks she does.

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2 hours well spent. you just outlined many of my sensory difficulties. And an AS specialist will tell you - these are NOT OVERCOME - but require lifelong management. real autisics know that. the fakers do not. if they recede of their own accord over time - all good and well. BUt one cannot RID oneself of them by way of strategies that apply to humans who are not autistic.

as for sensory issues decreasing with age... mine have fluctuated and continue to do so.
anyone who comes on WP and assumes that how it is for them is how it should be for all others needs a little counsel in the finer art of understanding the notion of hetergoneity. that is what makes the world go round.

and as ZodRau points out - all these LFA/HFA/AS classifications are just that. classifications. they are not reality. I have the dx of Aspergers and yet my rocking and stimming accords with Autism. I find the classification thing a laugh.

as LabPet and Inventor have said...let's all rejoice in THE BIG A.


ps. i am not agesist either. I just take offence to someone who has not lived my life making assumptions about how it is for everyone. I'd come down hard on an 80 year old who does that too. In the end, we just have our SELVES...all pure, all individual, all different with some common threads.

I've lived half my life in the country, the other half in the suburbs (born in the desert, family moved to the city, lived there till onset of adulthood, then we moved back out, but not as far).

The country is a zillion times better for me. No vehicle noise, no vehicle smell, no close neighbours, no people noise; I can go for walks without interruption and out of sight of people, camp out whenever I wish, work the land if I so wish (animals and food), walk around with a rifle without anyone seeing me, panicking and calling the police; build stuff and juggle projects that are related to an interest on the land and away from prying eyes.

I live on 40 acres, and I highly doubt I'll ever leave this place.

Ditto! Although my sensitivity to noise/vibration and smell and colours/textures fluctuates, and I have perhaps only sometimes been as sensitive to them as ZodRau and millie describe, I too find many of the aspects of urban/suburban environments almost intolerable. I think that what I used to do, without even without realising it, was numb-out and/or seek dairy and gluten, sugar and coffee, and alcohol "highs"/painkilling/deadening effects, ( respectively ), in order to cope.

What has made me understand just how much cities/towns used to impact on me so that I became over-excited then exhausted, is my reaction, ( after 2+ years living in the countryside ), in front of a meadow or other relatively "wild"/natural environment. I become transfixed by the complexity/variety/detail, of leaf and petal and insect and light and shade. It is so rich I can look at it for hours. One square foot of ( natural/wild ) "grass" land is totally absorbing, astonishing, so ...

Living in a city, with, as ZodRau says, teeming thousands of people aswell as all the noise and movement and rapid change, was only bearable if navigated it in a pared-down, "shut-off" sort of way, ( with a wall/shell/drug-like-"diet-cushion" around me ). I have lived in London, Manchester, Marseille, and other towns, and have only realised since living in the countryside for more than a year, ( only 10 and 6 and 4 months in rural places previously, and university terms on a countryside campus ), just how much I was in permanent overwhelm.


Village of 2,800 people. Rural, 15 miles from a medium-sized town and motorway.

Neither my son, who is probably Gifted PDD/Autistic of some kind, nor myself, ( also probably "twice exceptional" as the professionals are calling it ; Gifted and Aspergers in my case, no language delay ), are diagnosed, so we have no access to any special services.

There is a "reinsertion" programe locally to help people who have difficulty with work to find some kind of employment suited to their needs, but we just about scrape by on my co-parent's income, so I haven't tried.

The small local council seems far more sympathetic to my son's homeschooling than the administration in Marseille, which seemed to suspect homeschoolers of sedition or cult activities judging by their "police" tactics.


A couple of buses a day to the town, but expensive. Luckily we don't need it, and when we do go to the town to do a "big shop", ( in my co-parent's car when he is there ), I always come back shattered by the noise etc. The village has almost everything I need, so long as have the internet for contact/community and for online shopping for books, CDs and DVDs, aswell as research/information. Don't know how my son is going to feel about this as he gets older; he is almost 10.


Definitely not much to do, if can't entertain oneself with reading, ( online or books ), drawing/painting, thinking, online discussion, walking in the beautiful countryside, astrological musings, occasional friendly contact for a meal or a film, ( at the tiny local "arts" cinema ), or the Karate classes, ( which my son goes to ).

If I wanted to/felt up to it I could belong to the local Green Party, go to Bridge group, do yoga/other fitness classes, get involved in the small "citizen's cooperative" which runs various activities incl. computer training, photoshop, and vaguely "art" workshops, aswell go to the occasional Friday evening live-music at one of the cafés, ( but it's usually too blues/cajun/rock to attract me ).


No idea.

The main pluses of this place for me are the absence of car vibrations, ( which makes a huge difference to me ), and low level of fumes/chemicals, the general peace and quiet, and beautiful landscape surrounding us, the very small, "human" sized, roads and houses, and the few relatively fixed/unchanging faces that I need to deal with on a daily/weekly basis. It's as if I can profoundly relax, and also "open" up, allow myself to become "aware"/"actively" sensitive again.

Time taken to compose this reply: One and a half hours.

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PS. The DSM does not include sensory processing differences/sensitivities in its criteria for Aspergers or Autism.

So in a way my reply, like some others, has little or nothing to do with whether urban/suburban or rural/countryside environments are better or worse in the context of AS, but more to do with sensory processing issues. These are not the same thing as Aspergers/Autism, not according to the authorities issuing the official labels.

If I restricted my answer to precisely and purely AS criteria, and whether they are easier to deal with in urban/rural environments, I think it would boil down to the number of different, and/or fixed/unchanging faces that I have to process, the number of people I have to relate to, and this is definitely far easier in this small village.

I do/did appreciate the anonymity of urban situations, in that most people behave in a fairly robotic/impersonal fashion in that environment, and most people are no longer surprised by/judgemental of an absence of social reciprocity, but one still has to respond to some people more personally, especially in work places.

I am finding that having only a small number of people to deal with on a daily/weekly basis enables me to build up, bit by bit, a "working" dialogue of polite responses and civilised connections with others, even if it seems so far very difficult to achieve much more than that.

The problem with large towns was combining "robotic" anonymity with closer connections, except when hyped up, protected by, various stimulants, ( which contributed in the long term to exhaustion and breakdown ).

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It's under Autistic Disorder in the expanded text, which is actually more important than the criteria themselves.

Most professionals now admit that Sensory Integration Disorder is a core aspect of Asperger's Syndrome (post-DSM-IV-TR); if they retain the AS label, you'll find that they'll most likely include it like it is now with Autistic Disorder.

Thank you for the correction. How recent is that? How is it that the "expanded text" is more important than the official list of criteria?

The last time I had a discussion with someone on the subject of SPD/SID, ( last year sometime ) I was categorically informed that AS/Autism diagnosis does not include them, and when I looked at the DSM for Aspergers last week there was no mention of SID/SPD in the 6 criteria-subheadings. ( ... cabal ... )

So the label is "expanding", officially, ( like "woman" unfortunately seems to still mean more than just having female sexual-reproductive organs, "gay" seems to mean more, ( to many people ), than just having sexual relations with the same sex, and black still means more than skin colour ).



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