300 k is the sweet spot, but I want to live in the outskirts, small house with a big garden. 15 mn drive from the city or 35 mn walk to the city
I’m definitely a city person. I love walking to things (for which I need sidewalks) and hate cars. I like being able to walk to a bar, personally I find more sense of community with close neighbors instead of being a mile from anybody. I have a rural friend who once asked if I got freaked out that my neighbors could see what I do in my yard and…no. Doesn’t bother me. Honestly I feel safer when I leave for vacation that my neighbors would text me if something was wrong at my house. I’m not scared of violent crime because it’s vanishingly small odds in most residential areas that aren’t poverty stricken.
Any outdoor activity I don’t do frequently enough that it’s worth having a huge plot of land for it and I don’t want to have to mow an acre or more. I wouldn’t be able to survive on satellite internet.
Rural village please and thank you
Costco or bust.
Country. But I admit I love cities for the “night feel”. Small towns are a decent mix.
Small town. Cities are high energy. I like visiting but get worn down by the hustle and bustle.
Perfectly located small town. 10k population, right besides the train station which takes me in 10min to either a small city, a medium sized city or, in 30min, to the largest city of the country.
Given those choices, a big city. But ideal is a medium sized city.
Within 30 minutes of a Costco.
City.
Fewer bigots, fewer people in your business, there’s community spaces other than the church, the food is better, and most of all, there’s work to be had.
It is a matter of personal preference, but there is a reason most people are migrating into cities right now.
Edit: I was wrong. While most people were migrating to cities for work, that isn’t necessarily true anymore nationwide. In my state, it is still happening, but we have a large influx of people from other states.
More people are moving from City to Rural now actually.
It’s not a huge trend but it’s surprising nonetheless. Significantly to Extreme COL changes is probably a big reason.
Isn’t that reason return to office policies though, and the majority of people would happily leave the city life behind if they were not forced to go back?
Appreciate you are answering a question and each one of us has their own preference but not sure you can say most people agree with yours.
So I looked it up, and this isn’t true anymore most places.
It used to be, young people flocked to cities both for work and for things to do. It looks to me based on where this is/isn’t happening now that the main factor is cost of living.
I’m confused now, are you saying that the current trend is to move out of cities or to the cities?
Most places, the current trend right now is moving out of cities. In my local area, people are still moving into cities for some reason.
Big city. I feel claustrophobic in small towns.
City. Everything closes at night in podunk towns, and everybody is a Republican.
Countryside.
Small town, need woods
City. Around 100k is the comfortable size.
Not like I require the city’s wider array of amenities all that much. I will still be spending 97% of my time at work or at home.
But if I lived in a small town again (born and raised in a town of <8,000), that extra 3% of the time I wanted to go out I’d have to remind myself, “Oh yeah, I live in a dead end town in the middle of nowhere that services none of my personal interests,” and that 3% would rapidly become 0%. I’d live fine with that, but eh. Why take a strict net loss when I can simply not?
The walkabiity and community arguments for small towns are complete non-factors for me, seeing as I go basically nowhere and talk to basically no one. And I’m not persuaded by the cost of living argument for small towns, since lower rent would be almost equally counterbalanced by lower salary opportunities.
Not only does the salary go down in small towns but the number of positions are greatly reduced. All it takes is a layoff and that “cheaper” small town could be too expensive because there are no more positions to fill.
The exception would be high-paid remote work, I guess. But with the reputation that corpos big enough to field those salaries have been recently building, going mask-off with no warning for no reason and asking employees to start filling desks again, I don’t know if I’d risk it.
100k is a big town, not a city.
