Thanks for the in depth response, it took me a while to read it properly. It seems to me that cities are full of silly people who work each other to death in o

Thanks for the in depth response, it took me a while to read it properly. It seems to me that cities are full of silly people who work each other to death in one way or another for no real benefit. You mention homelessness, and that's also part of what I'm talking about: people go to cities looking for opportunity, and end up simply subsisting. There's zero community, if you have a streak of bad luck you're fucked and serve as a warning to others. There are a few people who deeply embed themselves into elitist cliques, at great personal cost, and the rest just work 9-6 then do nothing except things that are Instagram-friendly. My point is that all cities have lost nearly everything that once made them attractive for tech people: 1) Culture is driven by the internet now. As long as you have good internet, you're in. In Europe, that means basically anywhere. The art/tech scenes are gone. The only art scene that isn't totally dead is urban graffiti, otherwise everything is better online. When people say there's a "tech scene" somewhere they mean there's a bunch of strangers sitting around on beanbags in a warehouse called something like "Bit Factory". 2) Networking happens on the internet. Geographical proximity is now dictated by a range of time zones rather than kilometers. 3) City wealth is illusory. Software engineers in London make £40k-£60k per year, which is way more than anywhere else in Europe - but they spend £2k per month on their apartments and end up having nothing to show for it all. The only "compelling" reason anyone ever gives these days for why you should live in a city is: good food and nightlife. Sorry, but living for nights out is embarrassingly stupid. It would be one thing if it meant fostering deep social connections, but who are we kidding? On a night out in most places you're either rich or you're a clown with piss-stained shoes. The only reason that makes sense to me is that sometimes you need to access resources and get training in things you can't find outside of the city. Things like cooking classes, for example. This is a very good reason to have cities, but I'd be happy to commute an hour every few days to access those resources. I have lived in the suburbs, satellite towns, and the boonies (rural), and I used to like those people much more than city people. But I don't know what those places are like anymore. You mention having lived in Alaska, which reminds me of that show "Northern Exposure" where the big city doctor is forced to move to Anchorage and ends up becoming part of the community. I'm not sure that kind of thing is actually possible, because this isn't TV and because of the realities of a world with the internet.