Small Towns/Villages vs Big Cities

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The older I get, the smaller the town that I would prefer to live in. I was wondering how the rest of you feel.

I love living in the city - everything I *need* is in walking distance - but it is also no trouble to get in the car & drive a few miles for what I *want.* I also love the cosmopolitan feel - there are people from all over the world who live in my neighborhood (or close by) - so I feel as though I'm not the only "outsider." Plus, in the city, it's easier to blend in & go unnoticed than it is in a small town.

I grew up in a small city (around 40k) and then moved to a small town (306 total) - and near went crazy from boredom. Moved to the city at the soonest opportunity.

As an artist / photographer, one of my mottos is "Living in the suburbs, dreaming of the country."

Growing up in the suburbs and living in a family where my dad was into performing card tricks and coin tricks as a hobby, I joined for awhile the International Brotherhood of Magicians and was treated to articles and lectures on showmanship.

Showmanship stressed the importance of making eye contact with the audience. So somehow I ended up an Aspie who can make eye contact.

Okay, so how does this relate to cities / towns / rural areas?

Simple. In a city, people tend to ignore me if I smile and try to look at them in a friendly way, in fact they sometimes look the other way. In a small town or the country, people are more willing to return my eye contact, smile ... and even be the first one to approach me in friendly conversation!

I bet I'd have a much easier time making friends and being accepted out in the country or in a small town.

Plus, I love beautiful, quiet landscapes ... great for photography and birdwatching, too.

small as possible please! flagstaff is still in that phase of smalltown charm, bigtown exitement. if it gets too overgrown, i'll move out here faster than you can say 'move'. once the forest starts to dissapear, and the mountains start to suffer from pollution, like in utah

I live in a metro area of about 400,000 people. It's a decent-sized area, but not big enough for me. I hate sitting in traffic, but I love huge cities. I go to Dallas and Houston as often as possible, because I am only 4 hours from Houston and 3 hours from Dallas. I also go to Chicago a lot, because I fricking LOVE that city. I want to live there SO bad but I know I cannot afford to. Living there I would ride public transportation as much as possible and avoid traffic gridlock. I love cities that have a lot to see and do, and where no one knows me and I can just disappear into the crowd. I so want that. I have a past where I live now, and from time to time I will run into someone from my past and wish I lived elsewhere ... somewhere much larger. Though I live in a decent-sized metro area now, the actual town I live in is way on the outskirts of the main cities and only has 3,000 people in it. I fricking hate it there and I hate my commute, especially at times like right now when the freeway is being repaved and my commute takes an hour or longer some days because of it.

I really like living in the city area, where there's a lot of people and a lot to do. My hometown only has about 25,000 people, but I live right near San Jose, the 10th biggest city in the U.S.

By the way, a city of over 1 million people isn't a "regular city", it is a large city. And a city of 900,000 people is far from being a "small city". Sorry to nitpick, but cities and populations have been special interests of mine for years and I had to point out that flaw.

my hometown trondheim has some 165000 people, and i find it to be very much "perfect" in most senses. it has virtually no violent crime, but then again, it has most of what a city should have, in case you need stuff.

i lived for a while in a small town of 10 000 people. i could live in such a place, but i am a city-slicker, and i start to miss the city after a while. scandinavia has other definitions for town/city tho, since we're SO FEW all in all. the city definition starts at 20 000, and trondheim, norway's 3rd largest city, is considered a "storby" in norwegian terms, in other words a metropolis

my spanish family lives in valencia, a city of about a million and a half.
i notice i dont really use any MORE of valencia than i use of trondheim, i tend to stick within the same size of area, but i really enjoy the urbanity of valencia.
i like the "ugly".


mmmmmm :]

SWEET HOME CHICAGO!

I think I'd love a small village. I grew up in the forest and moved to the city for 4 years for school. It was pretty cool, very convenient.. but by the end of it I was really bored because there was nowhere I could go and just mess around and not worry about other people or their trash. D: (Like, I couldn't just climb around in a patch of foresty stuff because there were drug needles and broken glass and dog crap all over, and I never knew when I'd trip over a sleeping bum.) I want to live in one of those little self-sustaining towns where we have to build stuff and hunt and farm and stuff. That sounds really fun. Even though I lived in the forest, we just had a regular house and never went hunting or anything.

I'd love to live in a medium sized suburb very close to the city. I'd like the small town feel, but I'd also like to be able to visit the city every week.

While we're posting pictures of our favorite cities - here's mine: Minneapolis (pop. 373,000) - from across "Lake of the Isles" - about a mile from my apartment.

I live in a "small town" near a "large city". I hate it. I'd rather live somewhere much smaller.