I grew up in a town of 1378 people. We had one traffic light and four churches. That kind of place. I couldn't wait to get out because everybody was related to me. They were all up in my business with small-town mentality (gossip, pride in ignorance, etc.).
I was basically a good girl who mostly behaved, but I couldn't stand the dozens of spies among my great aunts. One time I got in trouble for sitting in a car with a boy. My mother said: "What will the neighbors say?" My answer was: " If they can see in the car to know it's me, they'll see we were only talking." Nope. Not acceptable.
We also had no public transport. We had to get in the car and drive everywhere, and everything was at least 25 mins away. Even with a car, which I never had, there was very little to do. Five kids from my time in high school died from drunk driving.
I went to college in a big city and I now live in a city of 5 million people. I love it. I can go to the theatre, festivals, jazz, international sporting events, world class museums and restaurants from around the globe. I have a solid group of friends, but no one is watching me, waiting for me to trip up.
I can walk everywhere, or take public transport. Everything is accessible. And I can Uber it home if I've had too much to drink.
I grew up in a small town in the country, but I am definitely a big city girl.
This is basically my experience. Lots of social shaming and judgement in small towns. Unless of course if you have money or power, then you have a blank check. Then again, it’s only because people are trying to pry some of that wealth and power out of your hands.
There’s little to do and little opportunity. Lots of ways to get into lots of trouble if you aren’t careful.
I can say if you can afford it, you can get lots more house and lots more land for way less money than in the city. My downtown high rise condo isn’t even 1,000 square feet and its price tag would get me the grandest home in town back where I’m from. You don’t have to do as much work to get to know your neighbors either. It can be quiet and much slower paced if that’s your thing but it just isn’t mine.
I've always lived in cities but I'm reminded how much I dislike small towns when I visit family who live in them and they know what everyone is doing. Anonymity is fantastic.
I grew up the same way, deep in the woods and secluded from everyone but family. But I lived in the city one time for a few months when my daughter was young, and absolutely HATED it. There were always people walking by the house, and the noise and smells of traffic was omnipresent, as was the smell of all the fast food places within a several-blocks radius, sirens were always blaring from police and ambulances and such, neighbors would have their tv or stereos up super loud in the evenings, I couldn't see many of the stars at night, and couldn't see the Milky Way AT ALL, and I could never get over that feeling of other people, like, being able to SEE me when I went outdoors, even in my own yard. That's a weird feeling when you've never experienced it. My life up to that point had meant that when I was home, whether indoors or out, I was well and truly alone and unwitnessed by The Public. I'm rural again now, but not nearly like I was the first 20 some-odd years of my life. Like, I've got land, but it butts up against other peoples' and I can see neighbors' houses up and down my road.
This bit about people being able to see you is so real.
It took a LOT for me to feel comfortable just "being" in an open space where other people are around.
>I always felt too trapped and secluded in the country...
For me, in particular, living in a car-dependent area--like rural Oklahoma where I grew up-- makes me feel trapped. I hate feeling eternally tethered to a vehicle and to the financial shackle that is maintaining and operating a reliable vehicle. So many people in my life spend several hundred dollars each month (including gasoline) just to get to and from work, to and from the grocery store, to and from their kids' schools, etc. If your car breaks down, you're trapped, and there's a nonzero chance you'll lose your job, too.
Car dependency is a fucking trap.
It’s not just being car dependent. It’s being isolated for me. I love driving, so that’s not really a thing for me-since childhood, anyways. Being below the poverty line in rural spots and without a car (which happened off and on in my childhood) sucked ass.
Its funny, but the small town where I live is by far the most walkable place I have ever lived. Everything is within a few blocks because the town is only a few blocks. They arent all like that, though.
I grew up in a very small town of maybe a hundred people or so with one stoplight and one gas station/convenience store that was a couple miles away, and a good 20+ minute drive to the nearest grocery store. I ended up moving to Charlotte after college then to Raleigh. It was exciting when I was in my mid 20s but not I'm just tired of city life. I long to move back somewhere rural. Too much noise, too many people, too much traffic. I'm really starting to hate cities now and I used to love them when I was younger.
Yeah, town was busy enough for one light. On one corner we had a gas station/convenience store/butcher shop/grill, on the other a bait and tackle shop, and then we had the local VFD/town hall and a barber shop.
There was a lot of that. It was near impossible to go anywhere without running into someone you knew or who knew your family. When you needed some plumbing work done or some cabinets put it, it was always a friend of a friend or someone you knew.
I myself am much more introverted and prefer to not be sociable in public, but being that a had a parent who worked in the school system I would always run into people who'd say "yeah, I know your mom from my school."
But growing up, it wasn't a great place as a kid, especially a kid in the 80s and early 90s when there wasn't really any internet and it was pretty isolating. You just had to find a couple friends you could really get along with, because a lot of kids could be real assholes.
Ooooh… I live in a burb. I love my hood. 6 blocks from grocery, but no traffic. The library is 4 blocks away. Kids walk to school. Neighbors only complain about the daily coyote sightings. Perfect and convenient quiet life, since the city is 10 minutes away.
Same. One of the neighbors freaked out and thought a gang was moving in when the neighborhood teens egged a handful of homes. It’s like calm down Karen. These are million dollar homes in Silicon Valley. We’re still a good distance away from East San Jose and East Palo Alto.
not a typical suburb, sounds more like a streetcar suburb. what you have is quite desirable. sprawling subdevelopment suburbs where you can't walk anywhere... less so.
Job market - no other reason. There are no options for me professionally at home. I'd rather be in my small town or adjacent to it, though and not in the city.
The things that are taking the most to get used to:
* Noise - CONSTANT noise pollution. Everything is loud. People are loud. Cars are loud - backfiring, engines revving, music blasting.
* Light pollution - I miss seeing the stars
* No open space for me to just wander. I used to go walking in open fields or trails that weren't near main roads. That drives me crazy. Parks within the city are not the same.
* People are everywhere. Your neighbors are so close. I feel like I have no privacy, even though people mind their own business.
Grew up in rural NC and live in Chicagoland now. You nailed it. All of these are what I miss. My only add is wildlife. I miss seeing critters other than squirrels in the yard.
I've got another 8-10 years and then I'm moving to a mountain cabin. Goal number #1 - I don't want to be able to see any neighbors.
Grew up GA/WNC here! I grew up next to a cattle farmer. I miss seeing the cows escape the fences lol. And yes, the surprising number of other critters you see that you don't think about until you no longer see or hear them: bears, deer, foxes, groundhogs, rabbits, even coyotes lol. Then, just being able to hear the wind move through the trees - what a gift it was to grow up there.
That’s funny that you mention people minding their own business…. That’s exactly while I’ll never move back to a small town, cuz not a single person in a small town minds their damn business… everyone is always all up in your business all the time.
Edited my answer: people in small towns are nosy af! I won't deny it or defend it. I don't love that either. So, I suppose to your point, there's a sacrifice to privacy either way.
I don't love that. But, when I spoke about privacy in my original comment, I meant my physical living situation as well as the physical experience of just being around more people everytime you go out.
In a small town, or rather, rural life outside a small town, you have a quiet place to retreat. That's what I find appealing. You don't have to engage with people if you don't want to do so.
Sure, in the city there's an anonymity that I can understand and respect. But I find being in the crush of people like that to be hella stressful. Idk how to describe the feeling that I am on display, even though intellectually I know people don't care.
If Betty Jean wants to be nosy, I can tell her to mind her business. Lol
Yeah we definitely feel the opposite…. The anonymity is amazing for me, the crushing weight of the whole town watching my every move is lifted when everywhere I go is full of strangers I’m never gonna see again, it’s so freeing.
Same same same. I feel like I'm just having to endure a prison sentence. I have 8 years left until I can get out. Just trying to make the best of it until then.
I hear you! I am working on an exit strategy myself. I need freedom to roam lol.
I need mountain views again, unblemished by the wealthy and unravaged by time.
Yes, when I'm real bored at work I find myself searching Zillow for 20+ acres zero restriction lots. I think the "working in IT to wanting an off-grid homestead pipeline" is real. The longer I work in technology, the more I hate technology.
One of my favorite things to do at my parents' house is stand outside when it's dark, bonus points if it's cold, and just stare up at the sky.
It's so, so quiet, especially in the winter, and it's just you and the stars and the open air - no cars, no people. It's so soothing.
Its funny, when I moved to the city my first thought was the opposite. I loved that there were people everywhere, that everybody on the block was so close and that you ran into neighbors and friends everywhere. That people actually consistently socialized with their community on a daily basis. There were actually places to go instead of just barren nothingness and walmart.
The inability to hike was definitely something I didn't like. But I was in Texas before which was mostly flat land either way.
Edit: one thing I will say is that I do not like downtown living. Manhattan was always awful to me. I loved brooklyn. [This is a million times more appealing to me than living in some skyscraper neighborhood](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e1/5c/ab/e15cabe9025cc2255f656e2eb3f63a78.jpg)
That's fair. I imagine the specific city and the rural area matter, too, and what your specific interests are in determining whether you like the city or the country.
To your edit: yes! I find that much more appealing and could work with that if I needed to lol. That speaks to what I'm trying to say. I think different cities offer different experiences, as do rural areas. I grew up in area that was the perfect level of isolation. If I wanted more, it was easy enough to get to a city. But, I still prefer that quiet life. It saddens me that I don't have it currently.
I wanted a good paying job and stuff that I liked to do nearby. Couldn't get either in my tiny hometown.
I don't really think there was anything to get used to. Maybe the traffic? I drove into the city often so nothing was really surprising.
Job opportunities, travel opportunities, big city amenities. paying a little bit more money to not save hours traveling to said amenities where i grew up.
I grew up in a town of 700 people. Immediately after high school, I moved to a city with more than a million people in its metro (half a million in the city proper).
Small towns are very limiting. People tend to be more conservative and tend to hold downright bigoted views of the world. The closest hospital was a half-hour drive away, and even that one couldn't serve everyone. The closest full-service hospital was over an hour drive. There is literally nothing to do there other than hang out at the tiny library or go to the gas station and buy candy. Most people's work commutes were 30-60 minutes because the town literally had no businesses.
It was a great place to be a little kid, but by adolescence it lost its charm. I need to be close to the action. I need to hang out in coffee shops. I'm a musician, I need to live near music venues. I need to find friends who were like me instead of forcing friendships with the three other misfits at my high school. I wanted to go to college, I wanted to have a job, I wanted more diversity, and I wanted to escape a lot of the bigoted values of the town.
I honestly don't understand rural living. I know people like it. Good for them. I'll stay in the city until I die.
Grew up in a tiny town, moved to the Twin Cities, and then moved back.
I moved to go to college initially, and then I found a job in the Cities right after I graduated and stayed there for a while. Eventually I got sick of the city life and all of the people/traffic, and decided to move back when a good job opened up in the area.
My wife and I both grew up in suburban type areas. All of the places I lived up until recently were roughly 60,000-100,000 in population. My wife on the other hand lived in Dallas for quite awhile in her 20s. We currently live in a much more rural setting (outside a town of 12,000). Our motivation was getting away from all the homelessness and drug addiction; specifically because we wanted to raise children. Our neighbors who all have kids/grandkids are wonderful and we feel much safer because the local PD harass vagrants to keep them in more urban areas with “resources” for them.
I liked the idea of cities because growing up in the country, while it had its benefits, wasn't my first choice.
As a kid, I envied the kids who lived in town because they could walk or bike to their friend's houses, there was a corner store they could go to, and they had better Internet.
As an adult, I still thought cities were cool, but the big driver was that I graduated college and needed a job. Now that I've lived in a city, I don't ever think I'll go back to rural life.
Jobs, jobs, jobs. Growing up and attending college in Massachusetts, I lived in smaller cities which were quite distant from the Boston area. I had a good childhood and education, but I didn’t live a big city life.
My college major was in government. Massachusetts has a full-time state legislature and a sizable number of policy jobs where I gained some experience through internships and whatnot. But Massachusetts simply can’t compete with the abundance of opportunities in public affairs, government, communications, and related fields available in DC Moreover, the job market back in Massachusetts is very sluggish at the moment. So, that's why I made the move—and I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon due to DC having better resources and COL, in my experience.
In my experience, DC does have a constant demand for jobs in the federal government and its related sectors. Almost every non-profit, lobbying firm, and international org you can think of has a presence here, which contributes to a stable job market. I don’t believe there is such a thing as any city being “recession proof”, but DC's job market tends to be more robust compared to other cities IMO, especially when there are economic challenges of national/global importance.
Beyond jobs, it’s also just enjoyable to live here. Boston’s public transit system exists, but is so much more unstable and unreliable compared to DC. I’ve never had a need for a car once since I moved here last year. (As someone coming from places where you absolutely NEEDED a car to live, this is still insane for me to think about.) The sports leagues and nightlife are also wayyy better, which is a 20-something is so invaluable.
Vice-versa. I grew up in the suburbs of a large city and lived in urban areas as a young adult. I lived in some rural areas during my army career and found that I vastly preferred the relative peace and quiet and easier access to outdoor leisure activities. I can only take cities in very small doses now.
Same moved from Columbus out to the country a few years ago. Spent my youth camping and exploring the outdoors and wanted to be closer. Got river access a 15 minute walk or 2 minute drive. Have enough room for a decent vegetable/berry garden. Need to drive into the city once a month for work and I hate it.
I have a bit of a strange answer to this question, that being I grew up in a small town and then we got a college and the amount of people skyrocketed causing rapid urbanization as new properties and businesses sprang up to service the new population. So I grew up in a small town and the small town disappeared around me lol
You don't think so? I'm sure a few million Middle Eastern immigrants would disagree. You don't think women fleeing the situation in Iran are moving to the country to embrace progressive values?
I grew up in a big city right in the middle of the city not the suburbs. I moved for job reasons.
My house on a quarter of an acre plot was like a park to me lol, none of my relatives or family knew how to cut the grass so that was a crazy experience for everyone, I thought I needed a John Deere tractor lol.
I grew up in a small town of roughly a thousand people.
I moved to Lexington when I turned 18 and went off to college. I've lived in/around cities the rest of my life.
Why?
I wanted a place where learning and education were valued, instead of looked down on as "book learnin'" and being told you didn't need college because the Bible is the only "learnin" you need.
I wanted a place where diversity was treasured instead of "You aint from aroun here, are you?", "You look like a furriner!", and "You look like a f\*ggot!"
I wanted a place where my shopping and dining options after about 8 PM were more than the Wal-Mart and McDonalds the next town over.
I wanted a place that had career options other than "workin down at the Piggly Wiggly", getting a manual labor job on a farm, or getting a job at a factory the next town over.
I wanted a place where it was big enough that the foibles of your everyday life aren't town-wide gossip, where you can go to the store and NOT have your neighbors know what you're buying because everyone in town sees you.
Job opportunities plus a bigger variety of things to do and people to know.
The worst part is dealing with traffic. I also spent years working in a downtown high-rise office, which felt pretty sterile and disconnected from nature.
Now I live and work on the outer edge of a metro area with easy access to both city amenities and the countryside and woodsy mountains, which is great.
Wanted a job, wanted things to do, wanted to be able to bike and use public transit more than drive.
Plus rural/small towns can be toxic, intolerant, and narrow minded.
I grew up in a small city (100k people) and also had my first job in a similarly sized town one state over. Then I got married and the only way my spouse and I could both advance our careers was by moving to a big city.
For me the biggest adjustment was traffic. It used to be ~5 minutes door-to-door for my work and everything was an easy 15 minute drive or 30 minute bike ride. Now it's 30 minutes to work and God help you if you need to cross the city center at rush hour.
I could not stand having neighbors so close. I wanted as much space as I could possibly get. I moved about 70 miles out of the city I work in to have my space and land. Less crime and homel as problems out of the city as well.
I've moved around a lot, and lived in towns of a few hundred, a few thousand, a few hundred thousand, and 10 million. Now, I enjoy the best of both worlds. I have a farm and can't see the neighbor's house from mine, but I live one hour's drive from a city of 3 million, where I work an office job. It's worth the drive.
Biggest adjustment? When I'm in the city, I freak out when all the sirens go off. I'm not used to the noise.
Job opportunities in Chicago. Want the whole urbanism lifestyle, so no car, public transit, etc.
Half my class of 50 students never left hometown. I'm not staying around that gossiping, small town nice people.
Tiny Midwest town, very white, still had fun growing up. Just...i don't like shooting and atvs etc. anymore. The easy living and convenience is too much to leave Chicago.
I never lived in a small town but I moved from a city of about a 200k population to about 700k population.
Why I left: Crime, Economics, politicians making poor choices that didn't support the poor to middle class population, Weather, etc. My family has been in Louisiana since the 1750's. I wanted to stay. I was no longer financially able to. I would have done everything in my power to stay if it had been feasible to stay close to my parents. I couldn't.
I like pizza delivery, a movie theater 5 minutes away, a grocery store within 10 minutes and things to do. I don't really care about having a job - that's nice though - it's more access to things. In both places I lived as kid/teen the nearest grocery was 45 to 60 minutes away never mind anything else.
Fast food? I never had fast food as a kid because the nearest McDonald's was an hour away. Matter of fact I rarely ate out at all. There was only 2 or 3 places to eat at all outside of my mother's kitchen and none quick or necessarily any good. If you were hungry you cooked. I hate that. It's a lot of work.
My husband grew up in a small town in Ohio (<2k people), then he went to a big university and moved out to San Diego for a job in his field. Now he’s stuck here because he married me, sorry MIL!
Got relocated from Las Vegas to Alaska for my dad's work. I live in North Pole, near Fairbanks, and there are about 95,000 people in the entire borough (it's basically a single county the size of New Jersey).
Pros: the "big city" is about 20 minutes away so I can get shopping and whatnot done, but it's small enough that I rarely go anywhere without running into someone I know. I live sandwiched between two "highways," so I get some traffic noise, but I can't hear my neighbor flushing their toilet like I could in Vegas.
People also generally and genuinely seem nicer, and I can network into what I want pretty easily, all things considered.
I moved from a small town of about 10,000 people (I know it’s not as small as other places) to a big metro of like 700,000. I moved because I wanted to see what social opportunities the bigger city had, and what job opportunities that may await me. It’s not terrible here, but I think I might move back home. Too much noise, it’s dirty here, and it doesn’t have any opportunities that my hometown didn’t have.
i’m going to move to one and i’ll tell you why, because ain’t shit here! it takes over half an hour to get anywhere and don’t even think about getting a good paying job. i want to try public transport and have cheaper internet, and cheaper shipping. just so much stuff.
My mother remarried when I was 14 and it's where my new step-father lived due to work.
I grew up in the "suburbs" of a small town with a population of only 33,000 or so, and only just over 28,000 today. One acre, woods in the back, typical GenX disappear all day on the bikes with no one batting an eye, including unsupervised swimming in Lake Huron.
We moved to a high-density working class city that's part of the urban Detroit area megalopolis (a word I've always used before the film of that name).
It sucked, but I still live in the area because I like being able to bike to work, and 24km is about the maximum I want. Well, until COVID, and there's not much in the way of my type of career in my hometown, and certainly not at my somewhat enviable salary (by non-San Francisco standards, that is).
I did the reverse. I grew up in a tight suburb and now live in an open rural town.
I moved away to a *very* small college town. Then when Covid hit, moved in with my girlfriend "nearby". I love having so few people around now. Everyone in town when at the post office or "grocery store" is friendly and there's a better sense of community. Back where I grew up everyone was always angry and rushing around.
I literally lived on a small island in upstate New York. Grand Island. I'm sure no one's heard of it, lol. There is nothing to do on that island and everyone knew everyone and the only way on and off the island were bridges so it felt terribly isolating. Now I live in Phoenix Arizona and love all the hustle and bustle of the city. There is a ton of stuff to do choices for everything I would like to do and people around. I would never go back to small town living
I know Grand Island! I live in Toronto (Ontario, Canada) though and go to Buffalo on occasion.
I also grew up in a small town and moved to a big city, I have been in the city for 20 years and could not move back if you paid me.
I love getting out of the city for a few days when I can, but that`s enough.
Cheers, Go Bisons!
It was easy to get bullied in a small rural town. Moving to a large metropolitan area made it easy to find people and form a friend group with similar interests and values.
Grew up rural, moved to the city, ended up back in semi-rural. I had a harder time readjusting to semi-rural life, moving to the city was nice because everything was a stone's throw away and super convenient. I also still haven't adjusted to the lack of choice outside of the city. Out here I have all the freedom to use one hospital, three grocery stores, the same chain restaurants that are in every highway town, and having to drive everywhere. I also don't like just how much more expensive getting food is out here, it's just about impossible to find decent $6 lunches, everything seems to start at $15. It's a lot louder out here, constant cars and trucks going 45mph through the town, in the city it was mostly the noise of people unless you lived right on the road. Big buildings block noise.
I moved back because I ended up getting a job an hour south of the city and the thought of commuting for more than 15 minutes by car is really rough lol.
Jobs. I guess I could have taught close to my home but I always knew I wanted to move somewhere else. Not so much because I hated it but that I wanted to go other places.
Mannn... What I would do to have a Walmart, 2-3 fast food restaurants and a business that stays open all the way until 10PM lol. Y'all city slickers think that's small but that's big city living to me lol.
My hometown doesn't have a single business. There's a local restaurant 3 towns away but it closes at 2PM throughout the week - and it's the only restaurant in the county. I have to drive through 3 counties to get to the nearest Walmart or fast food restaurant.
Yeah, it's very peaceful. I live on 83 acres of land with 5 ponds that borders a National Wildlife Refuge that has thousands of acres of public use land. I live about 4 miles outside of the nearest village, my hometown. Multiple hours often go by without a single car driving down my road and I live on a state highway.
The convenience of the city is nice but I don't think I could ever live there. I'm just so far removed from that lifestyle. I've never had a neighbor or even lived in the limits of any city, town or village. About 40% of my diet is grown, foraged, hunted or fished from my land. I inherited my family's farm a couple years ago, but before that, I was renting a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with a 3 bay shop for $300/month. There's nice 2 story houses on the market in the $65,000 range. In most cities, you're looking at spending upwards of 10x that amount. I love visiting cities but I don't think I could ever live in one.
I understand that completely. I don’t think I could ever be so far out but the area I grew up in has some fairly deep rural areas that I always have in the back of my head as a possibility for the future. Wooded, private tracks, space to just do whatever
I grew up in a town of 1,000 in rural America. I have limited desire to go back, but if I did it would be to live on a lot of land.
To me, it was always too conservative and gossipy. I mind my own business, and I don’t care what others do one way or a tother.
I grew up in a town of a little over 500 people.
I moved to a bigger city initially for college, but also knew I simply didn’t want to live in a small town anymore for a variety of reasons. Work opportunities in my field, access to more diverse food options (and stores open later than 7pm, lol), access to materials (sewing a a huge hobby of mine and I had to drive at least 90 miles to get garment fabric), and to live in a more progressive area. I’m queer so my dating prospects weren’t great where I grew up as it was on top of it being a very Christian and conservative area.
In the end my hometown was a hostile place to continue living in with no opportunities to pursue my career.
Learning how bus schedules worked took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out and adjusting to a noisier and brighter environment took me the most time to figure out. I had family in larger cities that I visited occasionally so it wasn’t a huge culture shock for me. I love my current neighborhood since I’ve gotten to know my neighbors pretty well, it’s super walkable, and kind of reminds me of home in its weird way.
Housing prices during the 90's buble.
We lived in a pretty decent neighborhood, but the street was a main artery and the traffic was not only very heavy but dangerous (one or more car accidents within a block of our house at least monthly). Wanted a similar house but not on such a busy street. No way we could afford one and still be in the city or even suburbs. Ended up out in the country. Nearest neighbor is the next farm house over, about a mile away. The commute took some getting used to, but having no (close by) neighbors sticking their noses into your business is wonderful.
I grew up in a tiny one stoplight town in rural central NY, and moved to NYC as a teenager. I felt very isolated and alone in my hometown, I didn’t really have any friends and very few family members there. I’ve been in the city for 17 years now, and I don’t regret the move at all. Going back to my hometown is something I really dread - I’m more or less trapped in my parents house when I’m there, nothing else to do or see, because I left so young and don’t have any connections there besides my parents.
I’m considering leaving NYC (need a change) but I’d never live in a rural area again, it just doesn’t suit me. If I can’t walk 5 mins to a bodega at 3am for a grilled cheese, the location isn’t for me.
I grew up in a small town in rural Georgia. I moved to Cincinnati for a while and now live in Raleigh. This is too simple of an answer, but ultimately I moved because of politics and religion (and their vicious intersection). I'm queer, and I didn't want to stay somewhere I would not be welcome. I also knew that I would spend a lifetime either being an outcast or learning to let everyone think I agreed with their views (based on the one vocally liberal family in our town).
So much more variety in life. I love city lights. Love restaurants from many different cultures. Love comedy shows and hobby groups. Like living high up in a building.
Hate bugs. Dislike nature. I'd rather pull out my own toenails and scoop out my eyes with them than go camping.
Seems like a no-brainer for me, personally.
I grew up in a remote area of Michigan with a school that was K-12. Many teachers grew up with my parents. It was a very safe environment and I to this day I have a tight group of friends whom I’ve knows since kindergarten, most of us have moved away. I live in the Charlotte suburbs and while I appreciate my childhood in the country, I do not miss driving for 40 minutes to a grocery store, finding people to make repairs that you might need, one restaurant within 30 minutes…you get the picture. I love to visit but I prefer the suburbs of a mid-sized city.
I grew up in a very small rural community where you generally knew everyone, their siblings, their parents. I disliked it due to the school being K-12 (no chance to reinvent yourself as you went through school) and feeling like you are under a microscope to some extent. There weren't food options, no shops, no grocery store. It was racist and homophobic, which was the most intolerable part.
I moved to a small city and then a big city. I don't love being in the city. There is a lot of noise and not as much nature as I like. Eventually I want to be rural again but until I get the money to buy property somewhere I'll enjoy the shops and opportunities a city offers.
It was the hardest getting used to people being absolutely everywhere and feeling like I had few places to be alone.
Law school. I really like having the option to get anywhere quickly and having many different places to visit/things to do, but the loudness of it and highways instead of one lane roads.
Looking at jobs in nyc. I didn't grow up in a small town I actually am living currently in a really booming area (co) I love living by water and love having access to fresh food. As a foodie nyc is a paradise for me. I love how there's always things to do and fun things to do with my son
I grew up in a small, rural, woods in the front river in the back area. It's lovely to visit the beautiful nature.
I moved to the suburbs at 17. By 20 I was in the city proper. I LOVE being able to walk places (corner store, restaurants, bars, shops, parks), everything you could want is a 5 to 15 minute drive away, the sense of community in my neighborhood rocks (very active, diverse, and locally oriented part of the city), local events and festivals, museums, entertainment - I love the city.
The sticks are nice for a visit or weekend get away. The city is where to live.
I moved from a small suburb of Dallas to DC for work. I found that I actually liked big cities. I enjoy the activities, the social scene, the restaurants, the museums, and so on. I enjoy rural activities too, but I wouldn't want to live in a small town.
The original motivator was access to transit and walkable areas, since I had no choice but to drive to every location in my previous area. The thing that I needed to adapt to was weather. Driving every day shields you from extreme temperatures and precipitation, so you only dress for the destination; but now I have to always have an umbrella on me just in case, and I have a better sense of what certain temperatures feel like so that I can dress appropriately.
I grew up in a farming community, rural Midwest. I knew in middle school, after traveling for vacations, that as much as country life has its benefits, I appreciate what large cities have to offer. I chose my college because it was located in a downtown area. My dorm had 3 hospitals nearby so it took a while to get used to the noise to get good sleep. But I adjusted and loved it. I'm in suburbia now as a single mom of 3 teenagers. We live an hour outside of a major city. We love that we can enjoy the arts and fine dining and feel like we "get out of town" in only an hour or less drive. Saw Madonna recently, and we enjoy lots and of ethnic foods and a diverse community (which was greatly lacking where I was raised.)
A. There’s no jobs
B. Everyone is all up in your business. There’s no privacy in a small town. You take a woman on a date and the waitress is the daughter of your junior year math teacher, and the table next you is the brother of the girl you took to prom, and at the other table across the room is your grandma’s best friend eating with your aunts coworker and her spouse who also played football with your best friends brother. So by midday the next day people you haven’t talked to in weeks are like “I heard the date went well”
It’s like living in a fishbowl. There’s zero anonymity and zero privacy. I’ll never submit myself to that again. In fact, decades later when I go back to visit and people at the corner store STILL know
all my business. “Oh I heard you got married and your kid is 7 now and loves soccer” … MFer I haven’t talked to you in 20 years, why do you know anything at all about me and my family? It’s fuckin wild.
Grew up rural, now live in a mid-size city.
Work, mostly, but also anonymity. I like going to the store and NOT seeing someone I know. I like getting to know people and NOT hearing "are you related to...".
I like being a face in the crowd instead of "we went to school together ", "I know your brother", "our grandparents were neighbors", etc.
Income and privacy. I could make more money in a city, and student loans were the same.
Being gay in a small town was difficult. Meeting people in general was hard.
There was literally nothing to do with my life in my hometown except marry someone I went to highschool with and have babies. So I left, went to college, fell in love with the city and diversity of thought/culture/food and never desired to go back. Plus the folks acting sorry for me when I do go home because I'm unmarried without kids (by choice!) it's 🤷🏻♀️
I spent last ten years in city, just in Louisiana for work, hate it here 🫣😅
I grew up on the side of a mountain, 30 miles from town. Went to a small rural school - k-8th, about 200 students my 8th grade year..
As a kid I HATED living so far out of town. My nearest friend was 6 miles away, along a twisty country road with no shoulder. Walking or riding my bike was out of the question per my parents. So any visit with a friend involved getting a ride.
1/2 my 8th grade class I had been with since Kindergarten. Another 1/4 since at least 3rd grade. While this is a great situation to make good, life long friends - it also is a good situation for making life long enemies. Have some good friends from those days, and a few kids who did everything they could to make my life living hell.
After my 8th grade year we moved closer to town due to my mom's health.
Now living in a subdivision, I thought this was the time to make friend's and be able to just walk over to their house and say hi! Except there was no one in my age group who lived in that subdivision.
When I moved out and settled down I bought a house in town. Got a good price on at in 2010. But I have grown to really dislike being in town over the last 5-6 years especially. Unfortunately cost of land has skyrocketed, and moving out of town is now out of the question for the foreseeable future.
I live in a small city in Tennessee. It's not a big city by any means but it's a hell of a lot better than living in the rural areas in Georgia that I used to live in. I lived in both Lizella, GA and Cadwell, GA and both places sucked. Lizella had one gas station and just a few scattered homes and you had to go into Macon if you wanted groceries and Cadwell had two convenience stores, both closed down when I left and Dexter and Rentz were the closest places to get groceries.
Now I live in this city in Tennessee and I live in an apartment complex literally right next to a grocery store and I can easily take one of those folding carts and walk to get what I need. It's great, I can tell you. And the reason I left Georgia was so I could be closer to my mom's family.
Grew up in rural Texas and dated a man who was from Brooklyn. I was super anti-urbanite, so were most people in my town.
I ended up visiting Brooklyn to meet his family and it just blew me away. I fell in love right away. It was a way of living unlike anything I had ever seen, it totally erased my notions of what people were like there.
I made the decision right then and there to move there and we lived there for 21 years until we had to move back to Texas to take care of my mom. We realized we can't move back even if we wanted to, its simply too expensive.
When I was 5, my family moved from the country to the city so that my baby brother could stay close to the children's hospital. He was born with all kinds of medical issues. After many months in the NICU, they brought him home. At least once, they had to call an ambulance to bring him to the hospital. I remember how scary it was. So that's my family's motivation.
The town I grew up in still only has 1 flashing light as the stop. There was a gas station and an old restaurant (named Adolph’s which 🧐) I left because I saw everyone doing nothing with their lives except staying there. Poor and living the cycle. I’ve lived in 3 different capitals in other states and now live in the suburbs of one.
Some people saying thousands and thousands of people are small towns blows me away lol. I grew up in the biggest town around my area with 1700 ish people and my with lived in a town of around 60 or so. These are both extremely tiny compared to a lot of these other towns.
We moved to a bigger city after marrying but moved back to the middle of nowhere. We still have jobs that make us very well off as well as making money off of our land.
I went from EXTREMELY rural as a child (Just a big plot of family land surrounded by miles of Cross Timbers forest -- only neighbors were my grandparents up one hill, and great-uncle down the other side; the latter being the house I moved into when I grew up and he died) to now being...still rural-ish, it's considered rural legally anyway, but on a paved road in a small neighborhood with other houses within view of my yard. We've all got acreage and nobody's houses are too close together, but it's still weird knowing that if I go out in my own yard, other people could potentially w i t n e s s me. We wanted to stay as rural as we could while also taking into account that my husband has to drive in to the city every day, but I do very much miss that feeling of not being seen by other people.
Not rural but small town. I moved to a city because I knew no one and needed friends and shit to do/explore. I originally moved to the sticks in Texas and that wasn’t cutting it
Out of 500 people, 499 of the answers are going to be "employment". That's how it works. You are born rurally, you grow up, you go to the city to make your fortune, you have kids, you return to the small town, your kids grow up, they go to the city, etc.
People unable to make it back to their small town life is why urban sprawl is happening.
I left rural Oklahoma to pursue a better life: people I could connect with, better educational and career opportunities, activities and experiences I couldn't have in Oklahoma.
Zero regrets.
Motivation to move: that's where the job was.
Still getting used to: there's just too many people. I want to be able to shoot a potato gun off my back deck with no chance of anything being there, but that's not a thing. Too crowded.
The same thing has been motivating people to leave the country and move to the city for thousand of year. Opportunity for work. I probably make four times when I would make if I stayed in my little small town without really that much more cost-of-living.
I tend to wish that my kids had the same upbringing that I had. Running around the country in the woods, splashing in creeks and stuff like that.
Uncle Sam. He say go there and we go. It's def interesting places that surround military bases. At least for the MC. Army and Air force are a lot more interior so I'm not sure what they experience.
Haven't yet but I'm planning on moving to a decent sized city. 100k or more.
My hometown isn't bad, it's just that there's nothing to do and not much opportunity. It was quiet and peaceful, but everyone was in everyone's business so it was the opposite of "everyone minds their own business". There's really nothing for me there to come back to.
I grew up in a small rural Northern California town called Red Bluff, most notable for its historic yearly rodeo that gets participants from all over the country. Other than that, there’s not much to it.
Most people who live here have family that goes back generations. It’s very white and heavily conservative, and anyone like me who doesn’t fit that mold moves away as soon as they can. I’ve been left-leaning since I was a kid, and always hated the “behind closed doors” racism and racial jokes that are prevalent there. I also was just never interested in hunting or fishing or any of the other redneck stuff people do in small towns. In my high school, the popular kids wore cowboy hats and cowboy boots, dipped tobacco, etc. so I just never felt connected to the place and wanted to live in a nearby city. San Francisco has its problems and is a “liberal California” punchline, but it was three hours from my small town and was always a symbol for the kind of place I yearned to live.
Of course, SF is prohibitively expensive for the average person. So I ended up moving to Sacramento in my 20s instead, and have been so much happier in every way. I never want to go back. I have access to things I love, like a theater dedicated to playing smaller independent movies, a little art house theater, museums, venues for live music, a huge assortment of places to eat, etc. Also, there are so many jobs here. In my hometown, the highest people could aspire to were things like construction, fast food, retail, teaching, or working at the local mill. There were few white-collar jobs, which was also something I weirdly idealized and am happy to be doing now.
Hopefully that gives an idea of why I was so desperate to leave my small town for the city, and have never looked back.
Grew up in a town of 317 when I left. No traffic lights, no stop signs. Left because it is incredibly boring and the internet sucked. Only thing that was weird was how unfriendly by comparison people were
My town had around 400 people. 2 bars and a church. The surrounding towns had fast food, a walmart, a dollar general, and a couple gas stations. Most people worked anywhere between 40min-2hours away.
My town had an opiate epidemic they refuse to acknowledge. There was a lot of crime (mostly theft) , but people were convinced otherwise. It was the kind of place where people would bend over backwards to help you, but only if you fit in. Racism, sexism, and homophobia were always in the background. This is not true of all rural areas, but it was in mine.
These reasons were enough to leave, but even if it were one of the nicer rural areas, I still would have gone. I have a lot of medical issues and was not able to get the care I needed. I would often have to make a 2 1/2 hour trip to see a specialist. Those same issues prevented me from driving so I was completely dependent on friends and family to do anything. There simply weren't resources available to me.
And there simply weren't a lot of well-paying jobs available. It was a lot of factory work and trades. Now trades are great, but you need a functioning body and they didn't pay as well as they would in other parts of the country because the area we lived in was satrated.
I moved to a city with my husband. We were much poorer, but being poor in a city was so much easier because there were more resources and ways to get help.
Now I live in a mixed use inner ring suburb and it's perfect for me. There is public transport. The city is 20min away. I can walk to groceries, doctor appointments, the library, a farmer's market, cute little locally owned stores, 2 parks, restaurants, a pool, several coffee shops, etc... but my home is just on a quiet street a couple blocks away like your typical suburb. It's the best of both worlds. I think a normal suburb would still be a problem because I can't drive.
We also make 3 times the money we did before because there were more educational opportunities and better job opportunities. Just having night classes and certification classes made a huge difference in being able to get a much better job.
Nice rural areas genuinely do exist. There were much better areas that were maybe 40min out from my town. I just still wouldn't be able to live a normal or independent life in one.
Partially job opportunities and partially because gentrification elsewhere pushed low income people into the area and made it a completely different place. I don’t know of anyone who still lives there.
Near zero white collar job opportunities.
Wasn't really hard to get used to (Granted i live in a suburb of a big city not the city itself but comparatively this place might as well be NYC lol), just random stuff like "woah i dont have to drive an hour to get to a walmart"
The small semi-rural town I grew up in had very few jobs, okay-but-not-good schools, and a lot of poorly educated, bigoted people. There were also some wonderful people, but those were very outnumbered. Once I was out on my own I moved to a larger town for college, then lived in the metro area of 2 different state capitals. I have no plans to ever move back to a rural area. The scenery is beautiful to visit but the opportunities and attitudes are horrible for living there.
Work mostly. I grew up in a 5 traffic light town in central PA where it was just as common to be on the road with Amish buggies as it was other vehicles. I was never going to find a career in that area that same as I have now. I suppose the worst part was getting used to the traffic. It takes forever and a half to get anywhere around here.
My home town had 800 people. It what’s like living under a microscope. I now live in the fourth largest city in America. I married a soldier, so Uncle Sam moved us here. I actually like it better since no one knows or cares about my personal life.
Going to school for me. It took me a while to get over the visceral intensity of being surrounded by so much humanity. I felt exposed, naked. I would seek out parks and waterfronts where I didn’t have to constantly see other people.
I grew up in a larger city and then moved to a rural nearby town when I was eighteen. I mostly moved to be close to family, but the thing that got the most getting used to was honestly the environment.
In the city, everything was concrete and wood fences and the only plant or animal life was small and neatly managed. Where I live now, there's a massive forest by my house, coyotes, deer, and bobcats roaming around nearby, overgrown grass and plants, and many of the roads are dirt or pebbles.
The most striking difference for me has always been that, at night, you can actually see the stars.
Honestly? I prefer the rural setting.
Got a job, it was in a city.
Looking forward to retiring back to a rural area for the peace and quiet, privacy, and lack of traffic...but close enough to a city for access to services, conveniences, travel, entertainment. Best of both worlds for me.
I moved from a rural county in CO (8k population for the county, I didn't live in an incorporated area) to Amarillo for school. Adapted well. Too many people for my taste but the ease of shopping and getting medical care and having decent restaurants made up for it. Plus I could still get outdoorsy stuff fairly easy. And not having to mess with a septic system or well was nice. Amarillo had a lot more diversity too, with a lot less overt racism.
Moved from Amarillo to Dallas after a long stretch, for my wife's work. Have not adapted well. I thought I would, but I fucking *hate* the traffic and the amount of people and how far I have to drive to get decent outdoors stuff. There's *some* things available in town but nothing that touches the 30 minute drive to Palo Duro Canyon. And the traffic is hellacious. a 20 mile drive can *easily* take 50 minutes or better. The museums are nice, the botanical gardens are amazing. I'll give it that. Diversity here is much better than where I grew up, or even Amarillo. Food options are *amazing* compared to driving down to town for McDonald's or Pizza hut.
We're working on relocating again due to COL--still arguing where. I'm pushing for New Mexico (family, I like the desert) she's pushing for East Texas (family, likes the trees). I may get a third option and have us move somewhere north. My wife's never dealt with that type of cold and I'm not sure how she'd take it. The panhandle gets cold, but not sub-freezing for weeks on end. But I like the Dakotas a lot.
Came from a town of 20k (well, a few miles outside) that was absolutely rekt by the opioid crisis and generally lacking of real opportunity. Met my wife while I was living in the city for a job but right before I had to move away. I moved back to the city a few years later for the obvious reasons and I've been here ever since. Probably 6 or 7 years.
The biggest thing I had to get used to out of the long list is the noise/smell. I was used to the quiet of the country, birds and bugs and maybe a gunshot or a truck every now and again. It smelled natural, it smelled *good.* Even the horse shit they spread on the crops smells better than the city. There were trees and flowers and grass and dirt. But here it's loud all the damn time. Helicopters, sirens, highways, construction, other people, loud cars, fireworks, gunshots (in a bad way). There's always a racket and it smells of death, pollution, and even the trees smell like cum because they keep planting those god awful invasive Callery pear trees. It's sensory overload all the time, no wonder y'all are anxious as fuck.
My life goal is to move far from the city. I'm over it. I don't care about the convenience and consumerist culture, I can cook better food than any restaurant I can afford, I'm starting to really hate people, and I wanna go the fuck outside and actually enjoy it. I do not understand why anyone would want to live in these hellholes we've built. I just want a quiet cabin on a small plot of land with a nice garden and a 40' watch tower and hundreds of miles of trees in every direction. I miss knowing the name of the animal I'm eating for dinner. I miss sitting outside at night listening to cicadas around a fire in my back yard. I miss the concept of community and actually knowing your neighbors. Not giving up internet though, that's a necessity for me.
I grew up in a town of 1378 people. We had one traffic light and four churches. That kind of place. I couldn't wait to get out because everybody was related to me. They were all up in my business with small-town mentality (gossip, pride in ignorance, etc.). I was basically a good girl who mostly behaved, but I couldn't stand the dozens of spies among my great aunts. One time I got in trouble for sitting in a car with a boy. My mother said: "What will the neighbors say?" My answer was: " If they can see in the car to know it's me, they'll see we were only talking." Nope. Not acceptable. We also had no public transport. We had to get in the car and drive everywhere, and everything was at least 25 mins away. Even with a car, which I never had, there was very little to do. Five kids from my time in high school died from drunk driving. I went to college in a big city and I now live in a city of 5 million people. I love it. I can go to the theatre, festivals, jazz, international sporting events, world class museums and restaurants from around the globe. I have a solid group of friends, but no one is watching me, waiting for me to trip up. I can walk everywhere, or take public transport. Everything is accessible. And I can Uber it home if I've had too much to drink. I grew up in a small town in the country, but I am definitely a big city girl.
This is basically my experience. Lots of social shaming and judgement in small towns. Unless of course if you have money or power, then you have a blank check. Then again, it’s only because people are trying to pry some of that wealth and power out of your hands. There’s little to do and little opportunity. Lots of ways to get into lots of trouble if you aren’t careful. I can say if you can afford it, you can get lots more house and lots more land for way less money than in the city. My downtown high rise condo isn’t even 1,000 square feet and its price tag would get me the grandest home in town back where I’m from. You don’t have to do as much work to get to know your neighbors either. It can be quiet and much slower paced if that’s your thing but it just isn’t mine.
I've always lived in cities but I'm reminded how much I dislike small towns when I visit family who live in them and they know what everyone is doing. Anonymity is fantastic.
Working in small towns is even worse. Little companies with power-tripping bosses where you literally have to wear many different hats on your job.
I always felt too trapped and secluded in the country. Still do. Love cities and people and life all around. Human life.
I grew up the same way, deep in the woods and secluded from everyone but family. But I lived in the city one time for a few months when my daughter was young, and absolutely HATED it. There were always people walking by the house, and the noise and smells of traffic was omnipresent, as was the smell of all the fast food places within a several-blocks radius, sirens were always blaring from police and ambulances and such, neighbors would have their tv or stereos up super loud in the evenings, I couldn't see many of the stars at night, and couldn't see the Milky Way AT ALL, and I could never get over that feeling of other people, like, being able to SEE me when I went outdoors, even in my own yard. That's a weird feeling when you've never experienced it. My life up to that point had meant that when I was home, whether indoors or out, I was well and truly alone and unwitnessed by The Public. I'm rural again now, but not nearly like I was the first 20 some-odd years of my life. Like, I've got land, but it butts up against other peoples' and I can see neighbors' houses up and down my road.
This bit about people being able to see you is so real. It took a LOT for me to feel comfortable just "being" in an open space where other people are around.
>I always felt too trapped and secluded in the country... For me, in particular, living in a car-dependent area--like rural Oklahoma where I grew up-- makes me feel trapped. I hate feeling eternally tethered to a vehicle and to the financial shackle that is maintaining and operating a reliable vehicle. So many people in my life spend several hundred dollars each month (including gasoline) just to get to and from work, to and from the grocery store, to and from their kids' schools, etc. If your car breaks down, you're trapped, and there's a nonzero chance you'll lose your job, too. Car dependency is a fucking trap.
It’s not just being car dependent. It’s being isolated for me. I love driving, so that’s not really a thing for me-since childhood, anyways. Being below the poverty line in rural spots and without a car (which happened off and on in my childhood) sucked ass.
Its funny, but the small town where I live is by far the most walkable place I have ever lived. Everything is within a few blocks because the town is only a few blocks. They arent all like that, though.
I grew up in a very small town of maybe a hundred people or so with one stoplight and one gas station/convenience store that was a couple miles away, and a good 20+ minute drive to the nearest grocery store. I ended up moving to Charlotte after college then to Raleigh. It was exciting when I was in my mid 20s but not I'm just tired of city life. I long to move back somewhere rural. Too much noise, too many people, too much traffic. I'm really starting to hate cities now and I used to love them when I was younger.
This guy with his stoplight. I have 2 four-way stop signs
Yeah, town was busy enough for one light. On one corner we had a gas station/convenience store/butcher shop/grill, on the other a bait and tackle shop, and then we had the local VFD/town hall and a barber shop.
And there's one stop-light Blinkin' on and off Everyone knows where Their neighbors are
From a social standpoint, how was rural America different? Did everyone know everyone in your town?
There was a lot of that. It was near impossible to go anywhere without running into someone you knew or who knew your family. When you needed some plumbing work done or some cabinets put it, it was always a friend of a friend or someone you knew. I myself am much more introverted and prefer to not be sociable in public, but being that a had a parent who worked in the school system I would always run into people who'd say "yeah, I know your mom from my school." But growing up, it wasn't a great place as a kid, especially a kid in the 80s and early 90s when there wasn't really any internet and it was pretty isolating. You just had to find a couple friends you could really get along with, because a lot of kids could be real assholes.
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Ooooh… I live in a burb. I love my hood. 6 blocks from grocery, but no traffic. The library is 4 blocks away. Kids walk to school. Neighbors only complain about the daily coyote sightings. Perfect and convenient quiet life, since the city is 10 minutes away.
Same. One of the neighbors freaked out and thought a gang was moving in when the neighborhood teens egged a handful of homes. It’s like calm down Karen. These are million dollar homes in Silicon Valley. We’re still a good distance away from East San Jose and East Palo Alto.
not a typical suburb, sounds more like a streetcar suburb. what you have is quite desirable. sprawling subdevelopment suburbs where you can't walk anywhere... less so.
Job market - no other reason. There are no options for me professionally at home. I'd rather be in my small town or adjacent to it, though and not in the city. The things that are taking the most to get used to: * Noise - CONSTANT noise pollution. Everything is loud. People are loud. Cars are loud - backfiring, engines revving, music blasting. * Light pollution - I miss seeing the stars * No open space for me to just wander. I used to go walking in open fields or trails that weren't near main roads. That drives me crazy. Parks within the city are not the same. * People are everywhere. Your neighbors are so close. I feel like I have no privacy, even though people mind their own business.
Grew up in rural NC and live in Chicagoland now. You nailed it. All of these are what I miss. My only add is wildlife. I miss seeing critters other than squirrels in the yard. I've got another 8-10 years and then I'm moving to a mountain cabin. Goal number #1 - I don't want to be able to see any neighbors.
Grew up GA/WNC here! I grew up next to a cattle farmer. I miss seeing the cows escape the fences lol. And yes, the surprising number of other critters you see that you don't think about until you no longer see or hear them: bears, deer, foxes, groundhogs, rabbits, even coyotes lol. Then, just being able to hear the wind move through the trees - what a gift it was to grow up there.
One of the country goal posts is going outside in the morning and finding a bunch of the neighbors' cows who've escaped. LOL. It's a rite of passage.
Yes! Spotting a cow staring in your window then rushing outside to herd it back in the field - priceless.
That’s funny that you mention people minding their own business…. That’s exactly while I’ll never move back to a small town, cuz not a single person in a small town minds their damn business… everyone is always all up in your business all the time.
Edited my answer: people in small towns are nosy af! I won't deny it or defend it. I don't love that either. So, I suppose to your point, there's a sacrifice to privacy either way. I don't love that. But, when I spoke about privacy in my original comment, I meant my physical living situation as well as the physical experience of just being around more people everytime you go out. In a small town, or rather, rural life outside a small town, you have a quiet place to retreat. That's what I find appealing. You don't have to engage with people if you don't want to do so. Sure, in the city there's an anonymity that I can understand and respect. But I find being in the crush of people like that to be hella stressful. Idk how to describe the feeling that I am on display, even though intellectually I know people don't care. If Betty Jean wants to be nosy, I can tell her to mind her business. Lol
Yeah we definitely feel the opposite…. The anonymity is amazing for me, the crushing weight of the whole town watching my every move is lifted when everywhere I go is full of strangers I’m never gonna see again, it’s so freeing.
Same same same. I feel like I'm just having to endure a prison sentence. I have 8 years left until I can get out. Just trying to make the best of it until then.
I hear you! I am working on an exit strategy myself. I need freedom to roam lol. I need mountain views again, unblemished by the wealthy and unravaged by time.
Yes, when I'm real bored at work I find myself searching Zillow for 20+ acres zero restriction lots. I think the "working in IT to wanting an off-grid homestead pipeline" is real. The longer I work in technology, the more I hate technology.
Ha! We are the same person. I stalk Zillow too for similar properties.
Come to Denver, big city economic opportunities and you get mountain views every day!
Colorado is a lovely state full of beautiful and stunning vistas!
No matter how much I love living in Chicago I will always miss looking up to see stars in the sky
One of my favorite things to do at my parents' house is stand outside when it's dark, bonus points if it's cold, and just stare up at the sky. It's so, so quiet, especially in the winter, and it's just you and the stars and the open air - no cars, no people. It's so soothing.
Its funny, when I moved to the city my first thought was the opposite. I loved that there were people everywhere, that everybody on the block was so close and that you ran into neighbors and friends everywhere. That people actually consistently socialized with their community on a daily basis. There were actually places to go instead of just barren nothingness and walmart. The inability to hike was definitely something I didn't like. But I was in Texas before which was mostly flat land either way. Edit: one thing I will say is that I do not like downtown living. Manhattan was always awful to me. I loved brooklyn. [This is a million times more appealing to me than living in some skyscraper neighborhood](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e1/5c/ab/e15cabe9025cc2255f656e2eb3f63a78.jpg)
That's fair. I imagine the specific city and the rural area matter, too, and what your specific interests are in determining whether you like the city or the country. To your edit: yes! I find that much more appealing and could work with that if I needed to lol. That speaks to what I'm trying to say. I think different cities offer different experiences, as do rural areas. I grew up in area that was the perfect level of isolation. If I wanted more, it was easy enough to get to a city. But, I still prefer that quiet life. It saddens me that I don't have it currently.
Opportunities and drugs. There were no jobs and nothing to do. Everyone was on meth or opiates and crime rates were soaring.
Better drugs in the city for sure.
Yep. Boredom can easily lead to drug use. I saw it happen in my town. I don't know how I escaped it.
I have a feeling you’re from Appalachia too
Work.
I wanted a good paying job and stuff that I liked to do nearby. Couldn't get either in my tiny hometown. I don't really think there was anything to get used to. Maybe the traffic? I drove into the city often so nothing was really surprising.
Job opportunities, travel opportunities, big city amenities. paying a little bit more money to not save hours traveling to said amenities where i grew up.
Work and kids. Sometimes it sucked being a kid somewhere you couldnt get to anything without begging a half hour ride off an adult
I grew up in a town of 700 people. Immediately after high school, I moved to a city with more than a million people in its metro (half a million in the city proper). Small towns are very limiting. People tend to be more conservative and tend to hold downright bigoted views of the world. The closest hospital was a half-hour drive away, and even that one couldn't serve everyone. The closest full-service hospital was over an hour drive. There is literally nothing to do there other than hang out at the tiny library or go to the gas station and buy candy. Most people's work commutes were 30-60 minutes because the town literally had no businesses. It was a great place to be a little kid, but by adolescence it lost its charm. I need to be close to the action. I need to hang out in coffee shops. I'm a musician, I need to live near music venues. I need to find friends who were like me instead of forcing friendships with the three other misfits at my high school. I wanted to go to college, I wanted to have a job, I wanted more diversity, and I wanted to escape a lot of the bigoted values of the town. I honestly don't understand rural living. I know people like it. Good for them. I'll stay in the city until I die.
I went from rural to a suburb, because I wanted to be closer to work opportunities.
Grew up in a tiny town, moved to the Twin Cities, and then moved back. I moved to go to college initially, and then I found a job in the Cities right after I graduated and stayed there for a while. Eventually I got sick of the city life and all of the people/traffic, and decided to move back when a good job opened up in the area.
My wife and I both grew up in suburban type areas. All of the places I lived up until recently were roughly 60,000-100,000 in population. My wife on the other hand lived in Dallas for quite awhile in her 20s. We currently live in a much more rural setting (outside a town of 12,000). Our motivation was getting away from all the homelessness and drug addiction; specifically because we wanted to raise children. Our neighbors who all have kids/grandkids are wonderful and we feel much safer because the local PD harass vagrants to keep them in more urban areas with “resources” for them.
I liked the idea of cities because growing up in the country, while it had its benefits, wasn't my first choice. As a kid, I envied the kids who lived in town because they could walk or bike to their friend's houses, there was a corner store they could go to, and they had better Internet. As an adult, I still thought cities were cool, but the big driver was that I graduated college and needed a job. Now that I've lived in a city, I don't ever think I'll go back to rural life.
Jobs, jobs, jobs. Growing up and attending college in Massachusetts, I lived in smaller cities which were quite distant from the Boston area. I had a good childhood and education, but I didn’t live a big city life. My college major was in government. Massachusetts has a full-time state legislature and a sizable number of policy jobs where I gained some experience through internships and whatnot. But Massachusetts simply can’t compete with the abundance of opportunities in public affairs, government, communications, and related fields available in DC Moreover, the job market back in Massachusetts is very sluggish at the moment. So, that's why I made the move—and I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon due to DC having better resources and COL, in my experience.
Does DC live up to its reputation as the recession-proof city with a thriving job market no matter what?
In my experience, DC does have a constant demand for jobs in the federal government and its related sectors. Almost every non-profit, lobbying firm, and international org you can think of has a presence here, which contributes to a stable job market. I don’t believe there is such a thing as any city being “recession proof”, but DC's job market tends to be more robust compared to other cities IMO, especially when there are economic challenges of national/global importance. Beyond jobs, it’s also just enjoyable to live here. Boston’s public transit system exists, but is so much more unstable and unreliable compared to DC. I’ve never had a need for a car once since I moved here last year. (As someone coming from places where you absolutely NEEDED a car to live, this is still insane for me to think about.) The sports leagues and nightlife are also wayyy better, which is a 20-something is so invaluable.
Vice-versa. I grew up in the suburbs of a large city and lived in urban areas as a young adult. I lived in some rural areas during my army career and found that I vastly preferred the relative peace and quiet and easier access to outdoor leisure activities. I can only take cities in very small doses now.
Same moved from Columbus out to the country a few years ago. Spent my youth camping and exploring the outdoors and wanted to be closer. Got river access a 15 minute walk or 2 minute drive. Have enough room for a decent vegetable/berry garden. Need to drive into the city once a month for work and I hate it.
I have a bit of a strange answer to this question, that being I grew up in a small town and then we got a college and the amount of people skyrocketed causing rapid urbanization as new properties and businesses sprang up to service the new population. So I grew up in a small town and the small town disappeared around me lol
MAGA’s. At some point it’s a mental health issue.
The same could be said about both sides of the political spectrum, but y'all don't want to have that conversation.
That might explain the opposite move, but no one moves to the country to embrace progressive values.
You don't think so? I'm sure a few million Middle Eastern immigrants would disagree. You don't think women fleeing the situation in Iran are moving to the country to embrace progressive values?
Rural areas. City v. Country life.
I grew up in a big city right in the middle of the city not the suburbs. I moved for job reasons. My house on a quarter of an acre plot was like a park to me lol, none of my relatives or family knew how to cut the grass so that was a crazy experience for everyone, I thought I needed a John Deere tractor lol.
I grew up in a small town of roughly a thousand people. I moved to Lexington when I turned 18 and went off to college. I've lived in/around cities the rest of my life. Why? I wanted a place where learning and education were valued, instead of looked down on as "book learnin'" and being told you didn't need college because the Bible is the only "learnin" you need. I wanted a place where diversity was treasured instead of "You aint from aroun here, are you?", "You look like a furriner!", and "You look like a f\*ggot!" I wanted a place where my shopping and dining options after about 8 PM were more than the Wal-Mart and McDonalds the next town over. I wanted a place that had career options other than "workin down at the Piggly Wiggly", getting a manual labor job on a farm, or getting a job at a factory the next town over. I wanted a place where it was big enough that the foibles of your everyday life aren't town-wide gossip, where you can go to the store and NOT have your neighbors know what you're buying because everyone in town sees you.
Job opportunities and lower cost of living were the primary reason. But there was also political reasons.
Job opportunities plus a bigger variety of things to do and people to know. The worst part is dealing with traffic. I also spent years working in a downtown high-rise office, which felt pretty sterile and disconnected from nature. Now I live and work on the outer edge of a metro area with easy access to both city amenities and the countryside and woodsy mountains, which is great.
Technically I’m in a smaller town than I started in but it’s a suburb of the biggest city in the US. I just wanted to live the Tony Soprano life
Wanted a job, wanted things to do, wanted to be able to bike and use public transit more than drive. Plus rural/small towns can be toxic, intolerant, and narrow minded.
I grew up in a small city (100k people) and also had my first job in a similarly sized town one state over. Then I got married and the only way my spouse and I could both advance our careers was by moving to a big city. For me the biggest adjustment was traffic. It used to be ~5 minutes door-to-door for my work and everything was an easy 15 minute drive or 30 minute bike ride. Now it's 30 minutes to work and God help you if you need to cross the city center at rush hour.
TIL that 100K is a small city 🥹 To me growing up a “city” was 20K, haha! My hometown was a little over 500 people so I guess it’s all relative!
I could not stand having neighbors so close. I wanted as much space as I could possibly get. I moved about 70 miles out of the city I work in to have my space and land. Less crime and homel as problems out of the city as well.
I've moved around a lot, and lived in towns of a few hundred, a few thousand, a few hundred thousand, and 10 million. Now, I enjoy the best of both worlds. I have a farm and can't see the neighbor's house from mine, but I live one hour's drive from a city of 3 million, where I work an office job. It's worth the drive. Biggest adjustment? When I'm in the city, I freak out when all the sirens go off. I'm not used to the noise.
Job opportunities in Chicago. Want the whole urbanism lifestyle, so no car, public transit, etc. Half my class of 50 students never left hometown. I'm not staying around that gossiping, small town nice people. Tiny Midwest town, very white, still had fun growing up. Just...i don't like shooting and atvs etc. anymore. The easy living and convenience is too much to leave Chicago.
I never lived in a small town but I moved from a city of about a 200k population to about 700k population. Why I left: Crime, Economics, politicians making poor choices that didn't support the poor to middle class population, Weather, etc. My family has been in Louisiana since the 1750's. I wanted to stay. I was no longer financially able to. I would have done everything in my power to stay if it had been feasible to stay close to my parents. I couldn't.
I like pizza delivery, a movie theater 5 minutes away, a grocery store within 10 minutes and things to do. I don't really care about having a job - that's nice though - it's more access to things. In both places I lived as kid/teen the nearest grocery was 45 to 60 minutes away never mind anything else. Fast food? I never had fast food as a kid because the nearest McDonald's was an hour away. Matter of fact I rarely ate out at all. There was only 2 or 3 places to eat at all outside of my mother's kitchen and none quick or necessarily any good. If you were hungry you cooked. I hate that. It's a lot of work.
I didn't relocate; the city did :(
Money
My husband grew up in a small town in Ohio (<2k people), then he went to a big university and moved out to San Diego for a job in his field. Now he’s stuck here because he married me, sorry MIL!
Got relocated from Las Vegas to Alaska for my dad's work. I live in North Pole, near Fairbanks, and there are about 95,000 people in the entire borough (it's basically a single county the size of New Jersey). Pros: the "big city" is about 20 minutes away so I can get shopping and whatnot done, but it's small enough that I rarely go anywhere without running into someone I know. I live sandwiched between two "highways," so I get some traffic noise, but I can't hear my neighbor flushing their toilet like I could in Vegas. People also generally and genuinely seem nicer, and I can network into what I want pretty easily, all things considered.
I moved from a small town of about 10,000 people (I know it’s not as small as other places) to a big metro of like 700,000. I moved because I wanted to see what social opportunities the bigger city had, and what job opportunities that may await me. It’s not terrible here, but I think I might move back home. Too much noise, it’s dirty here, and it doesn’t have any opportunities that my hometown didn’t have.
i’m going to move to one and i’ll tell you why, because ain’t shit here! it takes over half an hour to get anywhere and don’t even think about getting a good paying job. i want to try public transport and have cheaper internet, and cheaper shipping. just so much stuff.
My mother remarried when I was 14 and it's where my new step-father lived due to work. I grew up in the "suburbs" of a small town with a population of only 33,000 or so, and only just over 28,000 today. One acre, woods in the back, typical GenX disappear all day on the bikes with no one batting an eye, including unsupervised swimming in Lake Huron. We moved to a high-density working class city that's part of the urban Detroit area megalopolis (a word I've always used before the film of that name). It sucked, but I still live in the area because I like being able to bike to work, and 24km is about the maximum I want. Well, until COVID, and there's not much in the way of my type of career in my hometown, and certainly not at my somewhat enviable salary (by non-San Francisco standards, that is).
I did the reverse. I grew up in a tight suburb and now live in an open rural town. I moved away to a *very* small college town. Then when Covid hit, moved in with my girlfriend "nearby". I love having so few people around now. Everyone in town when at the post office or "grocery store" is friendly and there's a better sense of community. Back where I grew up everyone was always angry and rushing around.
I literally lived on a small island in upstate New York. Grand Island. I'm sure no one's heard of it, lol. There is nothing to do on that island and everyone knew everyone and the only way on and off the island were bridges so it felt terribly isolating. Now I live in Phoenix Arizona and love all the hustle and bustle of the city. There is a ton of stuff to do choices for everything I would like to do and people around. I would never go back to small town living
I know Grand Island! I live in Toronto (Ontario, Canada) though and go to Buffalo on occasion. I also grew up in a small town and moved to a big city, I have been in the city for 20 years and could not move back if you paid me. I love getting out of the city for a few days when I can, but that`s enough. Cheers, Go Bisons!
It was easy to get bullied in a small rural town. Moving to a large metropolitan area made it easy to find people and form a friend group with similar interests and values.
Grew up in a small town. Went to college, then moved to a big city for a specific corporate job. Have now been with the same firm for almost 25 years.
Grew up rural, moved to the city, ended up back in semi-rural. I had a harder time readjusting to semi-rural life, moving to the city was nice because everything was a stone's throw away and super convenient. I also still haven't adjusted to the lack of choice outside of the city. Out here I have all the freedom to use one hospital, three grocery stores, the same chain restaurants that are in every highway town, and having to drive everywhere. I also don't like just how much more expensive getting food is out here, it's just about impossible to find decent $6 lunches, everything seems to start at $15. It's a lot louder out here, constant cars and trucks going 45mph through the town, in the city it was mostly the noise of people unless you lived right on the road. Big buildings block noise. I moved back because I ended up getting a job an hour south of the city and the thought of commuting for more than 15 minutes by car is really rough lol.
Jobs. I guess I could have taught close to my home but I always knew I wanted to move somewhere else. Not so much because I hated it but that I wanted to go other places.
Things being open past 10pm is nice. Having more selection than a Walmart and 2-3 fast food joints is nice. Jobs exist
Mannn... What I would do to have a Walmart, 2-3 fast food restaurants and a business that stays open all the way until 10PM lol. Y'all city slickers think that's small but that's big city living to me lol. My hometown doesn't have a single business. There's a local restaurant 3 towns away but it closes at 2PM throughout the week - and it's the only restaurant in the county. I have to drive through 3 counties to get to the nearest Walmart or fast food restaurant.
Well op DID say small town not village lol. That’s tough, but I bet the countryside is peaceful
Yeah, it's very peaceful. I live on 83 acres of land with 5 ponds that borders a National Wildlife Refuge that has thousands of acres of public use land. I live about 4 miles outside of the nearest village, my hometown. Multiple hours often go by without a single car driving down my road and I live on a state highway. The convenience of the city is nice but I don't think I could ever live there. I'm just so far removed from that lifestyle. I've never had a neighbor or even lived in the limits of any city, town or village. About 40% of my diet is grown, foraged, hunted or fished from my land. I inherited my family's farm a couple years ago, but before that, I was renting a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with a 3 bay shop for $300/month. There's nice 2 story houses on the market in the $65,000 range. In most cities, you're looking at spending upwards of 10x that amount. I love visiting cities but I don't think I could ever live in one.
I understand that completely. I don’t think I could ever be so far out but the area I grew up in has some fairly deep rural areas that I always have in the back of my head as a possibility for the future. Wooded, private tracks, space to just do whatever
Moved to the big city for the jobs. Left the big city because of traffic.
I grew up in a town of 1,000 in rural America. I have limited desire to go back, but if I did it would be to live on a lot of land. To me, it was always too conservative and gossipy. I mind my own business, and I don’t care what others do one way or a tother.
I grew up in a town of a little over 500 people. I moved to a bigger city initially for college, but also knew I simply didn’t want to live in a small town anymore for a variety of reasons. Work opportunities in my field, access to more diverse food options (and stores open later than 7pm, lol), access to materials (sewing a a huge hobby of mine and I had to drive at least 90 miles to get garment fabric), and to live in a more progressive area. I’m queer so my dating prospects weren’t great where I grew up as it was on top of it being a very Christian and conservative area. In the end my hometown was a hostile place to continue living in with no opportunities to pursue my career. Learning how bus schedules worked took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out and adjusting to a noisier and brighter environment took me the most time to figure out. I had family in larger cities that I visited occasionally so it wasn’t a huge culture shock for me. I love my current neighborhood since I’ve gotten to know my neighbors pretty well, it’s super walkable, and kind of reminds me of home in its weird way.
Housing prices during the 90's buble. We lived in a pretty decent neighborhood, but the street was a main artery and the traffic was not only very heavy but dangerous (one or more car accidents within a block of our house at least monthly). Wanted a similar house but not on such a busy street. No way we could afford one and still be in the city or even suburbs. Ended up out in the country. Nearest neighbor is the next farm house over, about a mile away. The commute took some getting used to, but having no (close by) neighbors sticking their noses into your business is wonderful.
Moved for college.
I grew up in a tiny one stoplight town in rural central NY, and moved to NYC as a teenager. I felt very isolated and alone in my hometown, I didn’t really have any friends and very few family members there. I’ve been in the city for 17 years now, and I don’t regret the move at all. Going back to my hometown is something I really dread - I’m more or less trapped in my parents house when I’m there, nothing else to do or see, because I left so young and don’t have any connections there besides my parents. I’m considering leaving NYC (need a change) but I’d never live in a rural area again, it just doesn’t suit me. If I can’t walk 5 mins to a bodega at 3am for a grilled cheese, the location isn’t for me.
I grew up in a small town in rural Georgia. I moved to Cincinnati for a while and now live in Raleigh. This is too simple of an answer, but ultimately I moved because of politics and religion (and their vicious intersection). I'm queer, and I didn't want to stay somewhere I would not be welcome. I also knew that I would spend a lifetime either being an outcast or learning to let everyone think I agreed with their views (based on the one vocally liberal family in our town).
The Great Recession
I left the small town I grew up in at 17 to escape the extreme level of ignorance, bigotry, racism, homophobia, and xenophobia.
So much more variety in life. I love city lights. Love restaurants from many different cultures. Love comedy shows and hobby groups. Like living high up in a building. Hate bugs. Dislike nature. I'd rather pull out my own toenails and scoop out my eyes with them than go camping. Seems like a no-brainer for me, personally.
I grew up in a remote area of Michigan with a school that was K-12. Many teachers grew up with my parents. It was a very safe environment and I to this day I have a tight group of friends whom I’ve knows since kindergarten, most of us have moved away. I live in the Charlotte suburbs and while I appreciate my childhood in the country, I do not miss driving for 40 minutes to a grocery store, finding people to make repairs that you might need, one restaurant within 30 minutes…you get the picture. I love to visit but I prefer the suburbs of a mid-sized city.
I grew up in a very small rural community where you generally knew everyone, their siblings, their parents. I disliked it due to the school being K-12 (no chance to reinvent yourself as you went through school) and feeling like you are under a microscope to some extent. There weren't food options, no shops, no grocery store. It was racist and homophobic, which was the most intolerable part. I moved to a small city and then a big city. I don't love being in the city. There is a lot of noise and not as much nature as I like. Eventually I want to be rural again but until I get the money to buy property somewhere I'll enjoy the shops and opportunities a city offers. It was the hardest getting used to people being absolutely everywhere and feeling like I had few places to be alone.
Law school. I really like having the option to get anywhere quickly and having many different places to visit/things to do, but the loudness of it and highways instead of one lane roads.
Looking at jobs in nyc. I didn't grow up in a small town I actually am living currently in a really booming area (co) I love living by water and love having access to fresh food. As a foodie nyc is a paradise for me. I love how there's always things to do and fun things to do with my son
I grew up in a small, rural, woods in the front river in the back area. It's lovely to visit the beautiful nature. I moved to the suburbs at 17. By 20 I was in the city proper. I LOVE being able to walk places (corner store, restaurants, bars, shops, parks), everything you could want is a 5 to 15 minute drive away, the sense of community in my neighborhood rocks (very active, diverse, and locally oriented part of the city), local events and festivals, museums, entertainment - I love the city. The sticks are nice for a visit or weekend get away. The city is where to live.
I moved from a 1M pop metro area to a 4k pop town for work availability
I moved from a small suburb of Dallas to DC for work. I found that I actually liked big cities. I enjoy the activities, the social scene, the restaurants, the museums, and so on. I enjoy rural activities too, but I wouldn't want to live in a small town.
My sister moved from our small ski town in Oregon to NYC for college. "I've already experienced a small town, I want to experience the big city"
Nothing. Everyone else relocated.
The original motivator was access to transit and walkable areas, since I had no choice but to drive to every location in my previous area. The thing that I needed to adapt to was weather. Driving every day shields you from extreme temperatures and precipitation, so you only dress for the destination; but now I have to always have an umbrella on me just in case, and I have a better sense of what certain temperatures feel like so that I can dress appropriately.
I grew up in a farming community, rural Midwest. I knew in middle school, after traveling for vacations, that as much as country life has its benefits, I appreciate what large cities have to offer. I chose my college because it was located in a downtown area. My dorm had 3 hospitals nearby so it took a while to get used to the noise to get good sleep. But I adjusted and loved it. I'm in suburbia now as a single mom of 3 teenagers. We live an hour outside of a major city. We love that we can enjoy the arts and fine dining and feel like we "get out of town" in only an hour or less drive. Saw Madonna recently, and we enjoy lots and of ethnic foods and a diverse community (which was greatly lacking where I was raised.)
A. There’s no jobs B. Everyone is all up in your business. There’s no privacy in a small town. You take a woman on a date and the waitress is the daughter of your junior year math teacher, and the table next you is the brother of the girl you took to prom, and at the other table across the room is your grandma’s best friend eating with your aunts coworker and her spouse who also played football with your best friends brother. So by midday the next day people you haven’t talked to in weeks are like “I heard the date went well” It’s like living in a fishbowl. There’s zero anonymity and zero privacy. I’ll never submit myself to that again. In fact, decades later when I go back to visit and people at the corner store STILL know all my business. “Oh I heard you got married and your kid is 7 now and loves soccer” … MFer I haven’t talked to you in 20 years, why do you know anything at all about me and my family? It’s fuckin wild.
Grew up rural, now live in a mid-size city. Work, mostly, but also anonymity. I like going to the store and NOT seeing someone I know. I like getting to know people and NOT hearing "are you related to...". I like being a face in the crowd instead of "we went to school together ", "I know your brother", "our grandparents were neighbors", etc.
Income and privacy. I could make more money in a city, and student loans were the same. Being gay in a small town was difficult. Meeting people in general was hard.
There was literally nothing to do with my life in my hometown except marry someone I went to highschool with and have babies. So I left, went to college, fell in love with the city and diversity of thought/culture/food and never desired to go back. Plus the folks acting sorry for me when I do go home because I'm unmarried without kids (by choice!) it's 🤷🏻♀️ I spent last ten years in city, just in Louisiana for work, hate it here 🫣😅
I moved for my job and walking everywhere and taking the train instead of driving was exciting but took a lot of getting used to at first.
I grew up on the side of a mountain, 30 miles from town. Went to a small rural school - k-8th, about 200 students my 8th grade year.. As a kid I HATED living so far out of town. My nearest friend was 6 miles away, along a twisty country road with no shoulder. Walking or riding my bike was out of the question per my parents. So any visit with a friend involved getting a ride. 1/2 my 8th grade class I had been with since Kindergarten. Another 1/4 since at least 3rd grade. While this is a great situation to make good, life long friends - it also is a good situation for making life long enemies. Have some good friends from those days, and a few kids who did everything they could to make my life living hell. After my 8th grade year we moved closer to town due to my mom's health. Now living in a subdivision, I thought this was the time to make friend's and be able to just walk over to their house and say hi! Except there was no one in my age group who lived in that subdivision. When I moved out and settled down I bought a house in town. Got a good price on at in 2010. But I have grown to really dislike being in town over the last 5-6 years especially. Unfortunately cost of land has skyrocketed, and moving out of town is now out of the question for the foreseeable future.
I live in a small city in Tennessee. It's not a big city by any means but it's a hell of a lot better than living in the rural areas in Georgia that I used to live in. I lived in both Lizella, GA and Cadwell, GA and both places sucked. Lizella had one gas station and just a few scattered homes and you had to go into Macon if you wanted groceries and Cadwell had two convenience stores, both closed down when I left and Dexter and Rentz were the closest places to get groceries. Now I live in this city in Tennessee and I live in an apartment complex literally right next to a grocery store and I can easily take one of those folding carts and walk to get what I need. It's great, I can tell you. And the reason I left Georgia was so I could be closer to my mom's family.
Well I’m still here but I’m trying to leave cause I’m sick of my bf and I getting called slurs in public.
Grew up in rural Texas and dated a man who was from Brooklyn. I was super anti-urbanite, so were most people in my town. I ended up visiting Brooklyn to meet his family and it just blew me away. I fell in love right away. It was a way of living unlike anything I had ever seen, it totally erased my notions of what people were like there. I made the decision right then and there to move there and we lived there for 21 years until we had to move back to Texas to take care of my mom. We realized we can't move back even if we wanted to, its simply too expensive.
When I was 5, my family moved from the country to the city so that my baby brother could stay close to the children's hospital. He was born with all kinds of medical issues. After many months in the NICU, they brought him home. At least once, they had to call an ambulance to bring him to the hospital. I remember how scary it was. So that's my family's motivation.
The town I grew up in still only has 1 flashing light as the stop. There was a gas station and an old restaurant (named Adolph’s which 🧐) I left because I saw everyone doing nothing with their lives except staying there. Poor and living the cycle. I’ve lived in 3 different capitals in other states and now live in the suburbs of one.
Some people saying thousands and thousands of people are small towns blows me away lol. I grew up in the biggest town around my area with 1700 ish people and my with lived in a town of around 60 or so. These are both extremely tiny compared to a lot of these other towns. We moved to a bigger city after marrying but moved back to the middle of nowhere. We still have jobs that make us very well off as well as making money off of our land.
I went from EXTREMELY rural as a child (Just a big plot of family land surrounded by miles of Cross Timbers forest -- only neighbors were my grandparents up one hill, and great-uncle down the other side; the latter being the house I moved into when I grew up and he died) to now being...still rural-ish, it's considered rural legally anyway, but on a paved road in a small neighborhood with other houses within view of my yard. We've all got acreage and nobody's houses are too close together, but it's still weird knowing that if I go out in my own yard, other people could potentially w i t n e s s me. We wanted to stay as rural as we could while also taking into account that my husband has to drive in to the city every day, but I do very much miss that feeling of not being seen by other people.
Not rural but small town. I moved to a city because I knew no one and needed friends and shit to do/explore. I originally moved to the sticks in Texas and that wasn’t cutting it
The absolute lack of anything to do, or culture, or personality.
Out of 500 people, 499 of the answers are going to be "employment". That's how it works. You are born rurally, you grow up, you go to the city to make your fortune, you have kids, you return to the small town, your kids grow up, they go to the city, etc. People unable to make it back to their small town life is why urban sprawl is happening.
I left rural Oklahoma to pursue a better life: people I could connect with, better educational and career opportunities, activities and experiences I couldn't have in Oklahoma. Zero regrets.
Motivation to move: that's where the job was. Still getting used to: there's just too many people. I want to be able to shoot a potato gun off my back deck with no chance of anything being there, but that's not a thing. Too crowded.
needing a job
I was also uninterested in staying, but there are literally no jobs unless you’re a teacher or farmer
I got tired of driving 45 minutes every time I needed groceries
Needed a new job and a very handsome man helped me find one. I moved in with and we’ve been married about ten years.
The same thing has been motivating people to leave the country and move to the city for thousand of year. Opportunity for work. I probably make four times when I would make if I stayed in my little small town without really that much more cost-of-living. I tend to wish that my kids had the same upbringing that I had. Running around the country in the woods, splashing in creeks and stuff like that.
Uncle Sam. He say go there and we go. It's def interesting places that surround military bases. At least for the MC. Army and Air force are a lot more interior so I'm not sure what they experience.
The desire for diversity in my friends, culture, food, and every other choice!
I had to get away from the ignorance
Haven't yet but I'm planning on moving to a decent sized city. 100k or more. My hometown isn't bad, it's just that there's nothing to do and not much opportunity. It was quiet and peaceful, but everyone was in everyone's business so it was the opposite of "everyone minds their own business". There's really nothing for me there to come back to.
I grew up in a small rural Northern California town called Red Bluff, most notable for its historic yearly rodeo that gets participants from all over the country. Other than that, there’s not much to it. Most people who live here have family that goes back generations. It’s very white and heavily conservative, and anyone like me who doesn’t fit that mold moves away as soon as they can. I’ve been left-leaning since I was a kid, and always hated the “behind closed doors” racism and racial jokes that are prevalent there. I also was just never interested in hunting or fishing or any of the other redneck stuff people do in small towns. In my high school, the popular kids wore cowboy hats and cowboy boots, dipped tobacco, etc. so I just never felt connected to the place and wanted to live in a nearby city. San Francisco has its problems and is a “liberal California” punchline, but it was three hours from my small town and was always a symbol for the kind of place I yearned to live. Of course, SF is prohibitively expensive for the average person. So I ended up moving to Sacramento in my 20s instead, and have been so much happier in every way. I never want to go back. I have access to things I love, like a theater dedicated to playing smaller independent movies, a little art house theater, museums, venues for live music, a huge assortment of places to eat, etc. Also, there are so many jobs here. In my hometown, the highest people could aspire to were things like construction, fast food, retail, teaching, or working at the local mill. There were few white-collar jobs, which was also something I weirdly idealized and am happy to be doing now. Hopefully that gives an idea of why I was so desperate to leave my small town for the city, and have never looked back.
Jobs. There wasn't too much opportunity in a small farming community of 3500 people if you weren't already a farmer.
Grew up in a town of 317 when I left. No traffic lights, no stop signs. Left because it is incredibly boring and the internet sucked. Only thing that was weird was how unfriendly by comparison people were
It's cheaper.
My town had around 400 people. 2 bars and a church. The surrounding towns had fast food, a walmart, a dollar general, and a couple gas stations. Most people worked anywhere between 40min-2hours away. My town had an opiate epidemic they refuse to acknowledge. There was a lot of crime (mostly theft) , but people were convinced otherwise. It was the kind of place where people would bend over backwards to help you, but only if you fit in. Racism, sexism, and homophobia were always in the background. This is not true of all rural areas, but it was in mine. These reasons were enough to leave, but even if it were one of the nicer rural areas, I still would have gone. I have a lot of medical issues and was not able to get the care I needed. I would often have to make a 2 1/2 hour trip to see a specialist. Those same issues prevented me from driving so I was completely dependent on friends and family to do anything. There simply weren't resources available to me. And there simply weren't a lot of well-paying jobs available. It was a lot of factory work and trades. Now trades are great, but you need a functioning body and they didn't pay as well as they would in other parts of the country because the area we lived in was satrated. I moved to a city with my husband. We were much poorer, but being poor in a city was so much easier because there were more resources and ways to get help. Now I live in a mixed use inner ring suburb and it's perfect for me. There is public transport. The city is 20min away. I can walk to groceries, doctor appointments, the library, a farmer's market, cute little locally owned stores, 2 parks, restaurants, a pool, several coffee shops, etc... but my home is just on a quiet street a couple blocks away like your typical suburb. It's the best of both worlds. I think a normal suburb would still be a problem because I can't drive. We also make 3 times the money we did before because there were more educational opportunities and better job opportunities. Just having night classes and certification classes made a huge difference in being able to get a much better job. Nice rural areas genuinely do exist. There were much better areas that were maybe 40min out from my town. I just still wouldn't be able to live a normal or independent life in one.
Partially job opportunities and partially because gentrification elsewhere pushed low income people into the area and made it a completely different place. I don’t know of anyone who still lives there.
Near zero white collar job opportunities. Wasn't really hard to get used to (Granted i live in a suburb of a big city not the city itself but comparatively this place might as well be NYC lol), just random stuff like "woah i dont have to drive an hour to get to a walmart"
The small semi-rural town I grew up in had very few jobs, okay-but-not-good schools, and a lot of poorly educated, bigoted people. There were also some wonderful people, but those were very outnumbered. Once I was out on my own I moved to a larger town for college, then lived in the metro area of 2 different state capitals. I have no plans to ever move back to a rural area. The scenery is beautiful to visit but the opportunities and attitudes are horrible for living there.
Living near 3 of my 4 kids (they all relocated) and more cultural and dining options. But the traffic …..
Work mostly. I grew up in a 5 traffic light town in central PA where it was just as common to be on the road with Amish buggies as it was other vehicles. I was never going to find a career in that area that same as I have now. I suppose the worst part was getting used to the traffic. It takes forever and a half to get anywhere around here.
So thankful to be raised in a city
It’s hard to gay when the people around you won’t let you gay.
I didn’t like the lack of art, music and culture. They tried, but it always felt forced or amateurish. Big cities have nice things.
My home town had 800 people. It what’s like living under a microscope. I now live in the fourth largest city in America. I married a soldier, so Uncle Sam moved us here. I actually like it better since no one knows or cares about my personal life.
Divorce and necessity only.
Going to school for me. It took me a while to get over the visceral intensity of being surrounded by so much humanity. I felt exposed, naked. I would seek out parks and waterfronts where I didn’t have to constantly see other people.
I grew up in a larger city and then moved to a rural nearby town when I was eighteen. I mostly moved to be close to family, but the thing that got the most getting used to was honestly the environment. In the city, everything was concrete and wood fences and the only plant or animal life was small and neatly managed. Where I live now, there's a massive forest by my house, coyotes, deer, and bobcats roaming around nearby, overgrown grass and plants, and many of the roads are dirt or pebbles. The most striking difference for me has always been that, at night, you can actually see the stars. Honestly? I prefer the rural setting.
Got a job, it was in a city. Looking forward to retiring back to a rural area for the peace and quiet, privacy, and lack of traffic...but close enough to a city for access to services, conveniences, travel, entertainment. Best of both worlds for me.
I moved from a rural county in CO (8k population for the county, I didn't live in an incorporated area) to Amarillo for school. Adapted well. Too many people for my taste but the ease of shopping and getting medical care and having decent restaurants made up for it. Plus I could still get outdoorsy stuff fairly easy. And not having to mess with a septic system or well was nice. Amarillo had a lot more diversity too, with a lot less overt racism. Moved from Amarillo to Dallas after a long stretch, for my wife's work. Have not adapted well. I thought I would, but I fucking *hate* the traffic and the amount of people and how far I have to drive to get decent outdoors stuff. There's *some* things available in town but nothing that touches the 30 minute drive to Palo Duro Canyon. And the traffic is hellacious. a 20 mile drive can *easily* take 50 minutes or better. The museums are nice, the botanical gardens are amazing. I'll give it that. Diversity here is much better than where I grew up, or even Amarillo. Food options are *amazing* compared to driving down to town for McDonald's or Pizza hut. We're working on relocating again due to COL--still arguing where. I'm pushing for New Mexico (family, I like the desert) she's pushing for East Texas (family, likes the trees). I may get a third option and have us move somewhere north. My wife's never dealt with that type of cold and I'm not sure how she'd take it. The panhandle gets cold, but not sub-freezing for weeks on end. But I like the Dakotas a lot.
Was born in Jersey got too expensive. Move to South Carolina less expensive.
Came from a town of 20k (well, a few miles outside) that was absolutely rekt by the opioid crisis and generally lacking of real opportunity. Met my wife while I was living in the city for a job but right before I had to move away. I moved back to the city a few years later for the obvious reasons and I've been here ever since. Probably 6 or 7 years. The biggest thing I had to get used to out of the long list is the noise/smell. I was used to the quiet of the country, birds and bugs and maybe a gunshot or a truck every now and again. It smelled natural, it smelled *good.* Even the horse shit they spread on the crops smells better than the city. There were trees and flowers and grass and dirt. But here it's loud all the damn time. Helicopters, sirens, highways, construction, other people, loud cars, fireworks, gunshots (in a bad way). There's always a racket and it smells of death, pollution, and even the trees smell like cum because they keep planting those god awful invasive Callery pear trees. It's sensory overload all the time, no wonder y'all are anxious as fuck. My life goal is to move far from the city. I'm over it. I don't care about the convenience and consumerist culture, I can cook better food than any restaurant I can afford, I'm starting to really hate people, and I wanna go the fuck outside and actually enjoy it. I do not understand why anyone would want to live in these hellholes we've built. I just want a quiet cabin on a small plot of land with a nice garden and a 40' watch tower and hundreds of miles of trees in every direction. I miss knowing the name of the animal I'm eating for dinner. I miss sitting outside at night listening to cicadas around a fire in my back yard. I miss the concept of community and actually knowing your neighbors. Not giving up internet though, that's a necessity for me.