I've never lived in a major city. The closest I've been to a major city is actually where I am now, which is the far suburbs (takes about an 45 minutes to 1.5 h

I've never lived in a major city. The closest I've been to a major city is actually where I am now, which is the far suburbs (takes about an 45 minutes to 1.5 hours to get downtown during the week, or as little as 30 minutes on the weekend). Sometimes I think I would like the amenities of a major city more close at hand, but I don't think I could deal with the rest of it. I currently live in a quiet neighborhood where I can walk the dogs a couple blocks and see a lake and a nice-sized field (and sometimes see deer or coyotes in the prairie just beyond my back yard), or drive 10 minutes and go to my choice of several parks and trails through nature. And yet I'm also only a 7 minute drive away from a Best Buy, Target, Home Depot, and about 30 restaurants. And there's a decent number of people around that share my interests in board games and game design that I can meet up with on a semi-regular basis without driving more than 30-40 minutes. And that's pretty good for my needs. That being said, I do sometimes want something a bit quieter (not much, just a little). In particular I'd love to live closer to a major body of water, like the Great Lakes or possibly a beach. I would love to spend some time on a boat, maybe learn the basics of sailing. I've eyed some smaller cities (but still of some size, like 10k people) as possible places to move to eventually. I don't think I could do much smaller than that. My current city is 75k people. Sometimes I fantasize that I can live on a boat, and mostly satisfy that by watching sailing Youtube channels. I don't think I could manage it very well in actuality (and almost certainly not my wife or dogs, although she does want to try RV life at some point), but it's a nice fantasy. I also grew up in a smaller city for the first 22 years of my life, but that was still 40k+ people when I was born (and has since grown to 78k itself).