Small town vs. Big city... who shall come out the victor?

I love all that stuff. Don't like the small town feel. The gossiping, the (usually) homogeneity. I like feeling like part of a community, though.

Me too. I like the energy of big cities, and the availability of things like Vietnamese food and good museums. But I also really like knowing my neighbors and knowing that my kids feel like they belong. And I like less traffic.

Hay, seed. <smile>

There are advantages and disadvantages. I love my neighborhood, but there is an awful lot of closed ranks when it comes to getting stuff done.
I have a bad sense of direction, so big cities can be tough on one who doesn't know her way around.

Mornin'
from a fragmented Florida

The Camp we live in overseas had a population of 3000 - 4000 when we came here 12 years ago. Now it's down to somewhere around 500.

12 years ago we didn't think anything of going back to Houston on repat. After a few years of living in the Camp, Houston started seeming way too big for us. We then started taking vacation in Reno. This was fine for several years, but then the same thing happened again. Reno started seeming too big for us. After 911 the missus insisted we buy a place in the States. We're in a town of about 2000 people a pleasant drive north of Tucson. We don't have to see another human being if we don't want to, and we can drive to Tucson any time we want. It seems to be the best of both worlds.

I live in a small town and prefer it much more than the big city.

I was born and raised in the big city, but if I make a shift in my career direction, it would likely be in a smaller town.

yea i like the hustle and bustle of the big city as well, but i can only put up with it for a small period of time. So where i live it only takes me about 45 minutes to get to the city and go to say a big mall or eat fancy or go to a show or something to that nature. so i feel like i live in the best of both worlds as well...which is great. :-D

I live in the country about 50 mins away from a major city. The sleepy little town nearby
is about to double its population and already
many commercial chains have moved in. We are told how wonderful this will be.

The farmland is producing subdivisions instead of crops. We can't move to the country further north since all these communities seem to be in the midst of similar development. Small is beautiful!

Re: Living in a small town


What's your idea of a small town?

I grew up in a city with about 45,000 - 50,000. I hated it. I was a kid who wanted to be in a city, a big city. I live in the big city now. Talk intermittently of moving to a smaller community to live. Tried it about 10 years ago - it just about made me suicidal. The art gallery changed its exhibit once a year. I could tell you every detail of every wart on the porcupine's butt at the Science Centre there. Hellish.

Where I live became part of the big city (although it's inside it) about 4 years ago. It's still got quite an old-fashioned community feel to it - but I can get into the hustle and bustle quickly. Thank goodness.

I guess I'm an extremist. I love the country but I don't like small towns (or small cities, for that matter). If I had my d'fruthers, I'd live in the woods, with the nearest neighbor no closer than, say, half a mile. Further would be better. I did live in a situation like that for quite a number of years in New Hampshire. My "driveway" was a single-lane dirt logging road, three-quarters of a mile in length. The nearest paved road, along with my mailbox, was at that three-quarter mile distance. Loved it. If, however, I'm in a city (and I'm city-born and bred) I emphatically do not want to live in the 'burbs. A city-dweller should not have to worry about mowing a lawn. I have an apartment that's a five-minute walk from Copley Square in Boston. Although I do drive, I don't really need a car to go just about anywhere in this town. Had a similar situation when I lived in New York. Apartment in Manhattan. Brooklyn? The Bronx? Those were suburbs to me. And Staten Island is the sticks.

I guess I'd like to be like MA. Either live in the heart of a big city - or out in the woods, by myself.

As it is, I live in the heart of a city thats distinctly too small to my taste (270.243 inhabitants, without adjoining districts - had to look that one up).

Worst must be living in the suburbs or in a town of, say, 30,000 - 100,000, especially if it's a new town.

Hate the 'burbs.

I lived in a compositey sort of place -- it was a bona fide city, and had been for more than a century, and as such had a real city center which is where I lived. But it was absorbed by Chicago's westward expansion and around the old city center was horrible horrible subdivisions, and the old city center was increasingly mallified (Gap Williams-Sonoma Pottery Barn Talbots Ann Taylor Barnes and Noble...)

Blech.

Glad to be out of there. Miss some of the people (though the people I miss the most moved, too), miss some other specifics, DON'T miss the burbiness.

I grew up in the country wanting to in a neighborhood and have friends close by. i used to hate having friends live no closer then 20 minutes away. Then i moved to the city, all i heard was cars and sirens and it just wasnt what i thought it would be. I can handle the city for a while but after that i got to head back to the country for that peace and quite

I've lived in cities, suburbs, towns, and villages, and out in the boonies. As far as I'm concerned, its the boonies for me, hands dowm. Its half a mile from my driveway to pavement, and 15 miles or more to the nearest towns, only one of which has a stoplight, and it has only one. All the nearest towns are in different counties. The county in which I live has only one stoplight, and that's nearly 35 miles from my place. My nearest neighbor is a bit more than a half mile away, and this time of year, with the leaves on the trees, we can't see each other's houses, even though his is on a higher hilltop than mine. If any neighbor's crittters get onto my land, I shoo 'em home. They do the same for my critters. If ya see a gate needs closin' or a fence section needs temporary patchin', ya just do it and let the owner know. That's what bein' neighbors is about, I figure.


'Course, there's alway old Ernie Rasmussen ... but then, he's been a jerk for the last 50 years from what I understand, and he plays his part in the community too, I suppose. Glad he don't have critters anymore.

Timber.. couldnt say it better my self... though i dont live in the boonies... i have lived in the sticks and thats close to the boonies... i love it... no smog, no traffic backed up for miles... that is till i get the itch to go to the city... always nice to be able to go outside at night, hear the bug zapper zapping and get dizzy cus you've been trying to count stars... something you couldnt do in the city

I was born a small town [20 m from HERE( less than 20,000 [including vilages] close to where I live now.

Lived in various bigger towns and cities before I settled in a village (4,000), which belongs to a bigger (70,000) town.

I like it - all I need is here - and what I might miss [=anything else], is to be got within 3/4 of hour by car.

I was born in an old, regular-sized city (specifically: founded by the Romans, 80.000 inhabitants). The city had, and still has, a large university of good but not exceptional reputation.

Maybe I have a sentimental bias because I spent my childhood there, but I believe cities like these deliver the best of both worlds. Because the city is small, all of it feels like home, not just the particular burrow you live in and the specific subculture you hang out in. And because of the university, it has most of the things that make big cities like Munich worth living in for me: good bookstores, good cinemas including foreign-language ones, good pubs -- even some interesting jobs in high-tech companies. I will always have a soft spot for the mid-sized University towns of the world, and I will always love to spend time there.

Nevertheless, for carreer reasons, the city I'll move to when I come to America is going to be a largish one -- about 0.5- 2 million people, depending on where I'll end up exactly. Judging by earlier trips to the United States, American cities of that size seem to have onion-like shapes. The centers are about 10*10 blocks worth of skyscrapers, with some of the skyscrapers devoted to condos. Around these, there is a belt dominated by 3-6 story, multi-family brick houses, which come in varying degrees of structural integrity and gang violence. Around this, there's a much larger ring of nice, one-family apartment houses which degenerates into ever more depressing urban sprawl as you move outward into the periphery.

Based on little more than gut feelings, I'd say I'm a brick-belt kind of guy. Cheesy as this may be, I prefer them gang-free. There's my midsized-university-town-bias showing again.

I would prefer to be in a small town, but because of what I do for a living a small town wouldn't support it so I live as far in the burbs as possible by the lake surrounded by trees...I'm in an army corps of engineers area so no commercial development allowed....but I can still get into town quickly.....actually I would prefer to be on an uninhabited island with total privacy but have a helicopter so I could fly to a major city in 30 minutes......