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Sure, medium cities that aren’t shitty and still have some vibrancy are a solid middle ground. Bonus points for being somewhere close to nice natural areas or o

Sure, medium cities that aren’t shitty and still have some vibrancy are a solid middle ground. Bonus points for being somewhere close to nice natural areas or outdoor recreation. But I grew up in a town of less than 5k in the Midwest. The nearest cities and towns were all less than 50k population. Rent is, of course, incredibly low. There are even dozens of small universities in the area. The nearest city of 100k plus is more than an hour away. There are vanishingly few hipster spots in these places. You get chains, more chains, suburbs, and a couple of mom & pop restaurants. Some of which are decent, but most of which are disappointing. The variety of cuisines is extremely limited. To see any kind of major entertainment, like comedy or concerts, is a two hour drive. The major airports are two hours away. Your options for outdoor recreation and activity are extremely limited: not enough people for lots of recreational sports. Too much farmland for beautiful parks. Too flat for winter activities. Too few people to have a variety of cultural events or festivals. You can, of course, be very happy living here. But what you get is extremely different from city life. Like you say, there are small cities that can check a lot of boxes. But I’d go out on a limb and say that’s not typical for small town America, and not everyone is happy in suburbia either, even if they have their own cookie-cutter home!

trollbridge 1y ago
When I lived in NYC, it was a given it would take at least an hour to get to an airport, and then I’d budget an extra hour for something to go wrong. Driving to smaller airports - just arrive 50 minutes before departure.
- 7thaccount 1y ago
  Yep. My airport has less than 20 gates and is a 30 minute drive and 10 minutes to get through security. You frequently have to fly through hubs though.
onecommentman 1y ago
This is my thesis about the size of where you live. There are three types of people: 1. People who like the mega cities/metastacities. They genuinely enjoy the idea that they could never “fit into their head” the city in which they live. It’s just too big. You can never possibly exhaust all the possibilities, much less keep up with all of the changes. They can be intensely loyal to their abstract city, abstract because they can never physically/socially experience the entire city, so it mostly exists only in their head. But the endless horizon of that abstract city is where they really live, and why they like it so much. Never boring…of course neither is a war zone. 2. Smaller right-sized cities, defined as cities/regions that you can just about fit into your head. Big enough that they are rarely boring, especially if you take advantage of the third dimension of time/local history. But small enough that you can experience the coziness and stability of fully living in that one space…in other words, a home. 3. Smaller towns of which you can exhaust the possibilities in just a few years. If you grok the place, it is supremely cozy, and you can deepen the sense of that by raising a family and becoming (an old phrase) a pillar of the community. You go deep socially instead of craning your neck across an endlessly broad horizon. You also have the third dimension of time/local history. And you have the additional option of defining your location not just as the small town, but rather a whole surrounding region as your actual home. For Americans this is easily an area of 60-100 miles/100-160 km radius, given our love affair with the automobile. That regional view then gets you into the second level of a small city, enough stimulation so it’s rarely boring. And there’s always cyberspace. The small town life isn’t so extremely different when that part that is online is so similar for everyone, big city or small town. For extremely different, try 19th Century Western life, or 20th Century non-Western life.

trollbridge 1y ago

When I lived in NYC, it was a given it would take at least an hour to get to an airport, and then I’d budget an extra hour for something to go wrong. Driving to smaller airports - just arrive 50 minutes before departure.

7thaccount 1y ago
Yep. My airport has less than 20 gates and is a 30 minute drive and 10 minutes to get through security. You frequently have to fly through hubs though.

onecommentman 1y ago

This is my thesis about the size of where you live. There are three types of people: 1. People who like the mega cities/metastacities. They genuinely enjoy the idea that they could never “fit into their head” the city in which they live. It’s just too big. You can never possibly exhaust all the possibilities, much less keep up with all of the changes. They can be intensely loyal to their abstract city, abstract because they can never physically/socially experience the entire city, so it mostly exists only in their head. But the endless horizon of that abstract city is where they really live, and why they like it so much. Never boring…of course neither is a war zone. 2. Smaller right-sized cities, defined as cities/regions that you can just about fit into your head. Big enough that they are rarely boring, especially if you take advantage of the third dimension of time/local history. But small enough that you can experience the coziness and stability of fully living in that one space…in other words, a home. 3. Smaller towns of which you can exhaust the possibilities in just a few years. If you grok the place, it is supremely cozy, and you can deepen the sense of that by raising a family and becoming (an old phrase) a pillar of the community. You go deep socially instead of craning your neck across an endlessly broad horizon. You also have the third dimension of time/local history. And you have the additional option of defining your location not just as the small town, but rather a whole surrounding region as your actual home. For Americans this is easily an area of 60-100 miles/100-160 km radius, given our love affair with the automobile. That regional view then gets you into the second level of a small city, enough stimulation so it’s rarely boring. And there’s always cyberspace. The small town life isn’t so extremely different when that part that is online is so similar for everyone, big city or small town. For extremely different, try 19th Century Western life, or 20th Century non-Western life.