Usually those places are lacking (unfortunately). Food deserts, lack of infrastructure, sometimes even poor medical facilities. Also, locations like these tend to be more conservative, and conservatives are not always the most friendly. I personally did move to a smaller area, but I don’t have a family/kids so I’m able to be more indifferent towards the lack of resources. (I also moved to the hood 👀)

Related meme:

The majority of jobs simply don’t allow any sort of WFH: if it involves creating or transforming something, people have to be physically manning the tools. Healthcare can’t be WFH, education sucks when it’s fully online.

Smaller communities are great for peace and quiet, but terrible when you need anything they don’t have (or don’t have in decent quality), like jobs, transportation, healthcare and education. If you happen to be “socially weird”, you have to adapt and “unweird” yourself

As an American (not that it’s particularly unique from Europe) living in a city feels much better because I’m not completely tied to my car. Living in suburbs and rural areas makes it far less tenable to walk or bike anywhere. Cities are the only place with any sort of public transportation or even pedestrian infrastructure that is remotely walker-friendly. Walking is not only more physically healthy it also makes me feel better emotionally

WFH isn’t available to most people. To have a WFH opportunity, you have to have a job that’s almost entirely done on a computer with no need to be on-site almost ever. That’s just not a reality for most people. For some? Sure. But even most people with jobs that are largely WFH still have to go into their office once or twice a week.

I live in New York City and have no desire to move to the suburbs or countryside. It’s great here.

• I can walk to most of my needs. Several grocery stores, pharmacies, a big park, bars, restaurants. I don’t need a car.
• there’s a thriving music scene. I can go see live stuff of many genres every night if I want
• a deep dating pool. Lots of people. Lots of queer people too, if that’s your jam.
• I like there being people around. The empty streets of the suburbs feel spooky and hostile to me.
• more people means it’s easier to get group activities going. Join a soccer team. Brass band. Bird watching group. Knitting community. There’s everything. Usually more than one, in case a particular group isn’t your vibe.
• stuff is open later.

Some of the things people imagine about cities aren’t really true

• it’s not constant noise
• I typically can’t hear my neighbors
• people don’t typically interact with you on the street, but if you need help someone will usually step up
• it’s not shoulder to shoulder constantly. People seem to imagine it’s always times Square on NYE, but it’s just not.

While you’re not unseen like you might be in the countryside, no one really cares that they do see you.

Some people want “more space” but I don’t really know what for. A one bedroom apartment is fine for me. What would I do with more rooms?

If I had kids, I wouldn’t want to put them in the suburban hell cage like I had. Nothing to do. Can’t get anywhere on your own. Don’t like the few dozen kids in your school? Well that’s your whole pool of friendship options. I was always so jealous of the kids I knew that lived in the city. They could just get on the train and go to the beach, or go skating, or go to a punk show, or whatever. I had to beg my parents to drive me anywhere interesting, and usually they didn’t want to.

The reasons I moved from a town of 3,500 people to around 100,000 people after 2 years are

More dating options: most of the women in the small town I lived in were already in relationships or weren’t compatible. I started dating my wife a few months after I moved

Better access to services: if I wanted to get groceries on Sunday I would have to drive 30 minutes to the next town over and banks would be closed before 5. The local restaurants were good but there were only a few.

Better access to fun stuff: I train jiu jitsu and the closest gym to where I lived was a 50 minute drive 1 way and the closest 10+ mile bike trail was 30 minutes away. I would stay at my friend’s house overnight or get a hotel so I could have a decent night on the town since it was also 50 minutes away from home

There are opportunities to have fun and build a happy life in small towns but if you have niche interests then it can be a little lonely. Plus some of the activities are private so it can be harder to find them and access them.

The upside was the people there are really nice and it was really cheap to live there so I paid off a ton of debt.

Australian here; I much prefer living away from cities. I like having a big house on a big block with lots of nature and as few other people around me as possible.

The catch is while the housing and land is wayyyy cheaper, other stuff is more expensive and inconvenient. The biggest thing people don’t consider is trades people; you’ll have plumbers, sparkies etc just refuse to even come out when they find out you’re more than half an hour away from civilisation, and if they do come out they charge for the travel.

My mom came from a small town and said she’d never raise a kid in a small town - her cousins, all save one, were in jail or pregnant before they graduated high school. Because there was literally nothing to do.

I like having restaurants, a good library system, concerts, bars, not needing to drive to get anything. I like living in a mid-sized city, but if I couldn’t, would go bigger not smaller.

I don’t like conservative communities, i get threatened for not being a white man

All small communities left in the US are just the angry conservatives who were too stubborn to leave.

There is not enough stimulation in a small community. In the US, they are also usually full of hateful/ignorant people.

As someone who has lived in a couple of small places before, for me it’s accessibility. The first place I lived at for the longest since birth pretty much, there were so few places to go to. You had to kill 45 miles back and to, to get anywhere and that ate a lot of gas to do so. My place of origin, didn’t really put anything interesting down that would attract more people to want to go to, converse in or conduct commerce in. Yeah the small community may have bonded people together, but it was all still relatively small.

Where I am at now, it feels bigger, there’s more opportunity around and everything. I’m having a bit of a difficult time imagining where I could go if I decide to move that equals where I’m living now.

I’ve personally been thriving since moving to a big city. I never want to go back to the middle of nowhere. I enjoy urban exploration, I love the diversity of business and people, and I love the sheer amount of community that exists. I love that there’s always new things to find. That just doesn’t exist outside of cities.

I don’t drive. Where I live, you can really only “not drive” in cities. And even then, it can be hard at times.

At the same time, I live within reasonable commuting distance of multiple friends and family members. I can walk to a few of them. I don’t need to be closer to my community.

I might want to retire someplace quieter, but I like being able to hop on a train or a bus to get to somewhere fun, or to be able to walk across the street to a store if I need something. Heck, I can even easily get takeout if I don’t feel like cooking – I don’t even need delivery.

Remember when American tax payers gave billions to telecoms to install fiber in rural America?

Don’t worry they conveniently forgot too.

That plus other services like rural hospitals and education are huge drawbacks to living in most of rural America.

European

As an American, it’s because there’s nothing out there. We have SO much land. A small town means you have to drive everywhere. It means the local grocery is 30 min away. It also means 300 people in the town, one library (maybe), but at least three churches. Very much not my vibe :-)

Not everywhere, obviously, but it’s a thing.