Why does urban life always have a bad rep?

It doesn’t. There are many pieces talking about the vibrancy of city life. Look at how many people live in cities.

Due to air quality, traffic and potential noise and the fact that many cities have an area best to be avoided due to drug dealing, cities are sometimes vilified. But we all know the marvelous benefits of large cities regardless of the pitfalls.

You have to look at all the angles when you compare urban to rural. They both have advantages and disadvantages. Try finding medical specialists in a rural area, as an example of some of the downside.

Urbanisation creates dense populations in a smaller area, which in turn makes it easier to see the effects of human pollution. The article you read seems to focus most of its attention on the lack of natural beauty in a city which is strongly related to pollution and urban sprawl.

Also, I think there’s a degree of concern about how urban life can reduce people’s ability to be self-sufficient – for example, people in cities do not grow their food. Instead they rely on sources outside the urban area.

For all its downsides though there are reasons why so many people move to an urban centre. Financially the situation is usually much better with lower unemployment. Also, there are many cities in the world with vast parks and nearby retreats which means a lot of people don’t miss out on the natural beauty of the world – they just don’t see it as often.

It’s not for everyone. And people need to explain why.

As @marinelife said…it doesn’t.

I think it is an old fashioned idea from when cities were crime ridden, polluted and noisy. Cities here have improved a lot in recent decades and city life has a lot of advantages over rural living.

Uneducated people, lots of crime, lots of grime, broken up streets, dilapidated housing, abandoned factories…

Most of it is true, all except possibly the one that people are most afraid of: crime. I believe that when you adjust crime for population, it turns out that some suburban areas have more crime than urban areas.

Due to gentrification, there are far fewer neighborhoods like the ones suburbanites are afraid of.

No, it must be attractive to those people who spend millions of dollars to live in Manhattan.