Choice between living in a populated area or rural area: which would you choose?

Rural area. I like knowing I can go to the party and leave when I want.

City! That’s how I live now. I’m the urban spaceperson.

Urban. I’ve done both (Chicago more than counts for a big city, and Laramie, WY more than counts for rural). I can’t stand the rural way. Just a little to slow and laid back for me.

I have done both and love both for different reasons. In a perfect world, I would live in a rural area with a pied a terre in the city.

I’m all about the suburbs. I like living close to the city, but close to rural areas.

I loved living in the great NE cities until I turned 35. Then I wanted to get my kids out of the pollution, noise and crime. A suburb of Philly and a summer house with no road on Lake Placid in the Adirondacks was perfect for all.

Now in my dotage, no longer needing or wanting what NYC has to offer, I love the rural ethos, my 20 acres of old field, woods, a creek, gardens and lots of wildlife. I have friends and family nearby and can get to my mother in rehab in 25 minutes. Many people here keep a small apt in NYC, but it is getting pricey. The Amtrack costs $80 round-trip.

There is very sophisticated culture here, particularly during the summer. Music, dance, art. museums. good restaurants and movies. The only downside is the tick population.

In 1986 I bought a 3000 square foot house here w. 2 car attached garage and the land for $85,000.

Rural. I live in a fairly quiet neighborhood now that is surrounded by woods and it’s still not rural enough for me. I love to sit in my backyard and watch the wildlife. I also enjoy how quiet it can be. I can walk out my door and find a number of trails to walk or bike.

I grew up in the city and I know that I would be miserable if I ever had to live in a city again.

When I moved back to town from the “rural area”, I promised I would never again live where they don’t have pizza delivery and cable TV. For seven years, I lived so far in the sticks, the local electric company had to run 3.7 miles of line to get me electricity. We joke about having to have electricity pumped in – well, I really did! No, thanks! Urban living is more my speed!

Pizza delivery, cable…what are they? The male red fox who lopes around at dusk in order to feed his cubs more than makes up for so-so pizza.

Rural. I have no need for most of the things you can get in an urban environment, save for a high speed internet connection which one can get out in the boonies. I already make my own pizza and view TV through DVDs or downloads.

I intend one day to buy a big plot of land and build my dream home on it, as well as develop a small but thriving farm. This is pretty hard to do in the city!

And finally, I value privacy above everything else. Where I live right now is pretty private, but I can still hear the beeps and sirens of the rest of the world (well that’s what I get for living across a hospital I guess). Living on a plot of land I own, where I can make all the noise I want, where I can have emus guarding my fence line, that’s the life for me!

Urban. I have a better chance to have friends that share my interests and that I can do stuff with. There are more improvisational and free jazz players in cities. Also, more kinds of dance. Also better bagels and coffee. Not to mention French patisseries and nice restaurants. I grew up in the country, but I am a pure city boy, now.

@dynamicduo: Down the road from me (read 1.5 miles) a guy has llamas. They seem charming.

I have an open question for all you“rural” voters. How “rural” is your “rural”? How many stores are there in your town (grocery and supermarket, not clothing)? If you needed to get something from a more “mega” store (Target, Home Depot, etc), how long would it take you to get there? Are there doctors in your town, or do you have to travel to get to the doctor (and how long is the commute)? How far away is the closest town? I’m just curious to see what people’s definitions of “rural” are.

It takes me about 10 min to get to a Kohls or a Walmart. That is through farm fields and the likes.

We too found it difficult to choose so in the Spring & Autumn we’re in downtown Chattanooga enjoying our loft apartment and all the fun things a city like Chattanooga, TN has to offer. In the Summer and Winter you will find us on our farm in Jupiter, FL when we are not cruising the Oceans & Rivers of the world.

@gailcalled – Awesome! Llamas are one animal we are going to get, hands down. I can’t wait to shave off llama fur and make my own wool! Them, and fainting goats, which are just too funny to not get.

@Les: The doctor could be up to an hour away, though I’d prefer 30 minutes, even if it’s a small clinic or even a call-in doctor. Home Despot and Walmart can be two hours or more. Grocery could be up to one hour away. All times are each direction. When I mean rural, I do mean rural enough that there would be one designated day for going into town when all the shopping would be done. Rural enough that a person would not stumble through my land without taking serious effort to get there.

@dynamicduo: Sweet. That is my definition of rural, too. I used to live in DeKalb, IL, and yes, while it does lie amongst corn fields, the average commute was between 10 and 30 minutes. Not necessarily rural.

@Les our farm is a small 22 acre honeybee farm and the town of Jupiter is 5 miles east of us. It was just a sleepy beach town when we moved here in 1990 but it is a pretty big town now with WalMart, supermarkets, auto dealers, Home Depot…. they even built a little shopping center out in the Farms area. So we are pretty well set.

Urban, hands down!

@gailcalled over the years we have raised many different animals, llamas included (creful when you hear the clicking cos those dudes have 4 stomachs!) but our favorite were the ‘ladies of the meadow’ Black Angus cows. Over the years we’ve raised, potbelly pigs, nubian goats, moflan sheep, game birds of all kinds and of courses horses and dogs. Best bird: Joey, a chinese goose. He loved classical music and actually danced to it.

I have the choice, and I opted for urban.

Paradise here with 1600 pop. and 57 miles of road. The town (5 miles away has a few organic cafes, shoe store, book store, used book store, several banks, CPA and attorneys, graphic designers, a movie ($5.00/ticket). County seat, DMV, court house 30 minutes away west on Hudson River (with an Amtrak station).

30–45 minutes east in MA is a teaching hospital, terrific medical facilities with. Docs who want to raise their kids in a pretty and safe environment, two museums, Tanglewood, Jacob’s Pillow, Shakespeare & Co., Norman Rockwell Museum, Berkshire Museum, shopping, gourmet and organic food, art movies, and a high chance of bumping into someone you know.

For the mall stuff, there is Albany, (ugh) and a typical strip area outside of the county seat…a 20 minute ride. One does need a car, and the winters are severe.

@SherlockPoems: If Joey the dancing bird wants to relocate and can cohabit with Milo, tell him he is welcome here. I will leave our classical music station on all the time if he wants. How does he like winters with 6’ snow and ice?

Are you able to keep your honey bees from swarming? My bro-in-law, several miles away, is always rushing outside in his hazmat suit to scoop up one of his seven swarms.

@Les I live in a town quite smaller than DeKalb. We are surrounded by woods and parkland. We have a dollar store, tanning salon and one stoplight. It only takes us about ten minutes to get to the local Wal-Mart, so we are far from rural.

We vacation every year near the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and it is our goal to move there some day. The U.P. is about as rural as you can get.

The best compromise between city and rural I’ve experienced was my brief time in Juneau, AK. It’s “city” enough to have all the conveniences (though little in the way of museums or music), but the road we lived on dead ended at a trail that took off through old-growth rainforest. I used to get off work at 4:00, then just walk straight from there up into the mountains, stuffing my face with salmon berries along the way.

Juneau only has about 40 miles of road, as I recall. You can’t drive there from anywhere. When you drive north past the glacier (you know, the one right above the mall) to The End of the Road, you’re at a little sea inlet filled with puffins and sea otters.

Rural. I spent my childhood on Nantucket Island, which might as well be the unexplored prairie plains in the winter months. I can’t even imagine trying to live in a city.

@Les I think Sinks Canyon is one of the most magical places I’ve ever seen.

I live in a rural area with a lake on one side and horse farms across the road. however, walmart and other big box stores are about 15 minutes away (it seems like they’re everywhere nowadays but i do like them). i love the peace and quiet of the area, and fact that stores and stuff are all accessible by car if i need it. i like rural more than city, i like nature – but i do see the appeal of city for those city-dwellers.

I grew up in a small town, 500 pop, store, restaurant, docs, gas. Larger facilities and hospitals about 15–20 minutes away. I loved it. I now live in suburbia, and it’s not bad. My ideal choice would first definitely be rural, followed by heart of the city.

Depends on my job and everyday life. I know most people would say “rural” but I don’t want to have to drive 50 (or even 5) miles to get tea or pick up the kids from school. And I hate the parking problems and noise even in the relatively small town I used to live in.

I’d go for something inbetween. A small village with a big city nearby, or a suburb with good connections to the city centre, or a villa in the middle of nowhere but close to a main road. My last place in Poland was perfect: I lived near a park, on a small quiet street just 2 blocks away from the main road. There was little traffic on my side of the city and my daughter’s kindergarten was a 5min drive away, and we had shops and everything within walking distance. My job was a little further than that, but I worked in the afternoon when there was no traffic and could get back home in 15–20 mins.

I’ve lived in both – a couple of times. Urban in Japan and rural in the US. I pick rural. We live on a dead end road with no city water, gas, lights, sidewalks , or sewers. We have our own well and septic system so we only depend on the grid for electricity.
The night sky is clear, the neighbors are friendly, and area is so quiet you can hear the geese wings flapping as they fly overhead. If I need to get something, I go 5 miles in to town or 20 miles to the nearest city. But, I try keep that kind of travel to a minimum. I figure if it’s not here, I don’t need it.

For now, a big, urban city please. But in reality I’d like to live in a smaller town, that is not too far from a big city. As I age, I figure the perks of living in the city will diminish. The wife and I want to have a ranch when we retire; a place where we can have cows, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats, etc. But I don’t want to be more than an hour from the ocean or the city

where i live it used to be a summer spot only, starting in the 50’s, then these people got older and made it their full time residences. now the area is popular due to excellent school system and proximity to the city. it’s really a great place in the summer – boats on the lake, etc. but in winter it’s like the arctic.

I’m definitely an urbanite as I’ve lived in neighboorhoods right outside of big cities all my life. I like a little hustle and bustle in my lifestyle and having so many different activities and locations to choose from to do things in a city.

A little peace and quiet, now and then, is nothing to scoff at but not to the point where it is so rural that I feel like I’m disconnected with mainstream living. If I want that sensation or reminder, I’ll just take a road trip for a day or two to a smaller town in my state or I’ll go camping for a week and get away from it all. Longer than that though? No way.

I live in NYC, and I fucking LOVE IT. I have practically anything I need or want available to me at (almost) all hours of the day or night. It’s fun to go home to my suburban home in St. Louis and drive around and whatnot, and I can get to more “country” type areas in under an hour, so it’s a good mix. But for the most part, NYC is where it’s at. I never want to (permanently) leave/move.

I guess if I could afford two places that would be the choice.

Populated. I live in a rural area now and I hate it. You NEED a car. It takes forty-five minutes to go pick up milk if you run out. No such thing as delivery if you’re feeling peckish late at night. Dial-up internet SUCKS. Nearby jobs are nearly impossible to find.

@MacBean: I finally bit the bullet and got medium DSL on my side of the river. It was bundled with my local and long distance carrier. It is also true that life is livelier here. Hudson and Chatham provide lots of culture and many stores. Have you gone job hunting here?

@gailcalled Yep. Hudson and Catskill are the only places I’ve ever found work that will keep me in gas to get to the job.

I grew up a city girl, 20 minutes away from Washington, DC. The older I get, the more I long for rural life. Ideally, it’d just be a big patch of land in a town with the conveniences I’m accustomed to: Grocery store, pizza, cable TV, broadband internet, and doctors. I’d like to feel like I’m in the middle of nowhere, but not actually be in the middle of nowhere.

@augustlan: do you long for rural life, or do you long for what you think rural life must be like?

My father is a real estate agent in Maine. He makes a lot of money selling houses to people from away who fantasize about the rural life, and he can predict with a fair bit of accuracy which ones he’s going to make more money on a year later after they’ve figured out what “rural” really means and what a New England winter is like.

@augustlan: Or just ask me. (Yes to grocery store, pizza and doctors…no to cable and broadband internet.) One does need a car and be willing to drive a lot.

One also needs a super-reliable snow plow guy and driveway repair man (for grading and adding gravel), and a sump pump in basement. Soil here is mostly clay and does hold a lot of water, which invariably ends up in the lower level of one’s home.

@cwilbur & gail I should specify… I don’t want to be anywhere colder than here, and preferably somewhere a bit warmer. I also don’t want to farm crops or animals. Basically, I just want peace and quiet. Not too far from some noise. Picky, huh?

@Les – for me, rural was 11 miles to the nearest grocery store. No convenience stores either. It was 28 miles to the nearest town with malls and hospitals. I know in the overall scheme of things (and for people in Wyoming or Montana who live hundreds of miles from civilization) it doesn’t seem like much, but I like being in the midle of things and 30 miles away from town was just not for me.

I live in a small town, not much to do at night, but I am not a partier anymore. We have a small mall here, and a larger one 30 minutes away.
I grew up near L.A. and then moved to a town with about 5000 people! That was tough. We have been here about 9 years. population about 27,000. My little town is the best of both (until the NASCAR race comes to town.) Then we all “Hole Up”! Nothing like a gazillion drunk rednecks coming to town! (nothing against race fans!!) I just can’t stand the traffic anymore! I am on “Southern Time” now!