Do you prefer the city, small towns or the rural life?

I live on 25 acres out 1500 feet from my closest neighbor. I love it. I have a stream behind the house and I get tons of wildlife.

I’m definitely for the towns. I can’t be doing with the hustle and bustle of a city on a regular basis, unless it’s somewhere really, really nice. Villages? No. Actually, hell no.
My town isn’t exactly small, but the scenery can be quite nice. Remove the tourists during the summer and it’s all good, ha.

Small town life please. I’ve lived in all three and prefer being in an area where I can walk to the market (unlike rural) and prices are cheaper (unlike metropolitan areas). The people in the neighborhood perform unexpected delights, like shoveling another’s driveway or the newspaper carrier that delivers it to the door instead of the mailbox because he/she knows that that the subscriber is an invalid.

Man I so want to snowshoe this year. Last year sucked. No snow.

Little cities. Big enough that I can hear cars going by at all hours, but not big enough to have a subway. Rural is where you go to be alone.

I’m more of a suburb person.

I grew up in a small city (~25k), have spent a few years living in the woods, and in the middle of cities, and I find it best to have something in between. Someplace quiet, yet with supermarkets closer than a half hour drive.

I live in a small town, but I spend the majority of my time in the city (Boston). which is easy to get to from where I live.

Rural areas are, for me, weekend getaways. For apple picking, or to enjoy the changing leaves. I could never live there though.

Rural all the way. I am on 5 acres in the Sierra Nevada foothills in a small tourist community.
2nd house of only 3 on a private dead end road with 20+ acres of raw woodland right across the road and the neigh-bors all have hooves and big brown eyes.

Love the city. Just love it! Most efficient way to live. You don’t need a car. Public transit gets you everywhere. A bike will get your everywhere. All the culture you could want. Great restaurants. Great teachers for your kids. Neighborhoods full of liberals and yoga studios and farmers markets and anarchists and art and opportunities to work with artists everywhere.

Living in a rural area or small town would feel deathly dull to me. I suppose I would get used to it. .I got used to big cities and I never thought I could live in one. I grew up in a rural area and I was so fucking lonely I don’t know how I survived. I’ve met most of my lovers in cities. Cities are where people like me live.

I have tried all of them and they all have their perks but country life suits me best! Thanks everyone, for your answers! You are a fascinating and diverse group of people!

@say_what Welcome fellow country mouse! :-)

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Rural is also where you go if you want geese and horses.
Kinda hard to find a condo that wants geese on the balcony. lol

@Coloma Look at it from my point of view. Cities offer the possibility of young women who want to make bad decisions with older men.

I was raised in Las Vegas, Nevada and am now raising my daughter on a farm in rural western Illinois. I love the small town country life and you couldn’t pay me to live in a large city now. We can hop on Amtrak and be in St. Louis or Chicago in less than 2 hours if we want the crowd or experience, but we prefer the small town local community for our daily life. We get to come home and sleep with our windows open and the sound of wildlife instead of locked doors and the sound of traffic or neighbors outside our window. My daughter is in a community that knows her and supports her. If she was in a city she would just be another face in a large crowd. no thanks

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Then the young city women grow up and become savvy middle aged country women that trade in their bad decision making with men for horses, hot tubs,happy brownies and a stable of studly helpers.
Hi Ho turbo jets awaaay! lol

@jonsblond Yeah, we’ve answered similar questions like this before. I have said I haven’t even SEEN my house keys in the last 7 years. The only thing I lock is the barn, so nobody gets eaten during the night. lol

@Coloma House keys? Definition please?

If you all find your house keys would you look and see if mine are around anywhere? I haven’t seen them in years. Truthfully, I’m not looking very hard for them! :)

I like a happy town. Cities have always been a bit much for me. Hustle and bustle isn’t my thing. Neither are masses of people. I love nature and it needs to be easily accessible. Someday I’d like to live out in the country with a bunch of weeping willows, but right now it is easier to be able to bike and walk everywhere.

Rural ,with a small town within reasonable traveling distance. The city has too many nit picking rules. The big city closest to us will fine home owners if a dog turd is seen on their property. Doesn’t matter if they even own a dog or not or if it was some other dog’s crap that dropped there. You gotta get that shit up pronto. Cities suck balls.

I spent the night in the city with friends a couple of years ago. I had to have a guest parking voucher to park in front of their house. What a joke!

@woodcutter Ugh. The lawn police. They suck. Once when my son mowed the lawn the grass clippings ended up in the street and I had a policeman knocking on my door 12 hours later telling me to clean up the mess. Our grass clippings and leaves end up in a field now that we live rural. I haven’t raked in two years. :)

@jonsblond Yeah really. Since this drought I haven’t really mowed in two years but raking is like; yeah right, you gotta be kidding. “Better Homes and Gardens” can bite me.

Frontier, if there is no cell service, road or cable TV it is ideal.

I’ve pretty much always lived in a suburb, and like it well enough. Ideally, though, I’d like to live in a rural area with no neighbors I can see from my house, but on the outskirts of a suburb or town. I want a real grocery store less than 20 minutes away, and at least one 7–11 or other 24 hour establishment I can get to when I run out of cigarettes in the middle of the night.

I like the best of both worlds. I like living in the country but I want to be able to get to a city within an hour or so drive. And I prefer a couple of acres outside of a small community. In USA (or at least east coast USA) that is not easy but in Australia, no problem!

The city, no question. I love to visit the countryside but more than a week and I go stir-crazy. I can’t drive so I need a good public transport network that runs late at night, and I need at least one good grocery store within walking distance.

I like a small town close to the countryside. Where I currently live us great as it’s easy access to both the city and the country!

I like hearing the reasons that we all have for living where we choose to live. I tried the city for a bit but I felt very stifled. I grew up on the outskirts of a very small town(about 250 people), that wasn’t quite for me either. I can walk out on the deck here and never see another human, much more my style! :)

@say_what Yes, me too. Isn’t it great to be able to scamper around in your undies, nighty or bag lady attire without fear of being seen? This mornings mountain mama fashion statement:
pink flowered jammy bottoms, brown thermal shirt, pink and black socks, and crazy bedhead ponytail. haha

I grew up in suburbs and would not want to go back. Such a wasteful lifestyle. Single family homes using more electricity than an Indian village needs. I was in shock for weeks when I came back from my first teenage visit to India and contemplated all the McMansions in my area (I didn’t grow up in one, but plenty of my friends and neighbors did).

Although I’d love being able to grow food, I think I would get too lonely in a rural setting. Also, I’d likely need a car, and I’d need to be sure I didn’t live somewhere so close minded that I couldn’t find a decent team of doctors who would deign to treat a transsexual person.

I agree with @wundayatta. Cities are where people like me live. My preference would be to live in a city full of beautiful European gay men ;)

Big cities are fun, for a little while. I had a blast staying in Taipei city Taiwan a few years ago during chinses new year. Huge crazy city, bigger than San Francisco and nonstop action 24/7. Still, it was great coming home to my little green acres.

Our modern world, one day your on the other side of the globe buying fireworks that would put you in jail for terrorism in the states and 18 hours later your back at the feed store in your little western community buying chicken scratch. lol

I agree with @Coloma , my fashion statement this afternoon could probably use a makeover, but I look over and the love of my life is dressed in a similar fashion. We are delightfully unfashionable together! :)

@say_what Pssst….inside tip on what THE winter 2012/13 hot fashion, must have, for farm women everywhere. Cool, patterned mud boots.
Sexy is a pair of pink and black paisley mud boots!
Shovel that manure in high style! ;-p

Rural. LOT of work, though. Lot’s of special considerations. And snakes. And shit.

@Coloma proud to say I own some of those! ;)
@Dutchess_III you say that like it’s a bad thing, lol

Snakes in my bed. BAD thing!

@Dutchess_III ok, agreed! Snake in bed, very bad thing!

That’s not to say you can’t get snakes in town, though!

Heh, many of you already know the summer of the rattlesnake over here. Jeez…I hope they freeze their rattles off this winter. haha

There are no snakes in Manchester. Except lawyers and politicians.

@downtide Well I think it high time we exchange some american snakes to introduce new wildlife into G.B. lol I want hedgehogs, what say, your Hedgehogs for my tree frogs and rattlesnakes?

Don’t forget your washer frogs, @Coloma.

@Dutchess_III Right. They keep your hoses free from bugs. :-)