>>86985
Well, I can't speak for other anons but I live in a "small city" (population of about 500,000 people) that's about an hour or two (70-100ish miles depending on where you're going) away from a "big city" (population of a little under 3 million). I've vacationed, worked, and temporarily lived in small cities/large towns & rural areas, but I've never lived in them for more than a month or so. Here's what I can tell you about a few things that I've found that have made my preference in the direction of cities even though I prefer the "atmosphere" of rural places:
>Hours of operation
Decent sized cities have hours of operation of about 6 or 7AM to about 9 or 10PM, and then when those hours are up, you still have access to goods/services, but your options are limited. Virtually everything is open on Saturday (except a few asian places and Jewish places) and most storefronts are open on Sunday. Only the really big cities pretty much operate 24/7. In comparison, in most of the towns I visited the operating hours were basically 10AM to 5PM, and you had to physically visit a service to see if they're open or not since most of them would open late, close early, sometimes decide to close up shop for the day, have strange hours of operation like "closed every other tuesday" etc. If you wanted to do something on a weekend you might as well forget it. The only shops open on weekends were gas stations, the one Wal-Mart in the entire county, that one convenience store owned by the town's token minority, maybe the ma' and pa' video rental service (at reduced store hours), and if you're lucky, MAYBE an auto parts store or auto shop. Sometimes you'd be lucky and find a theater opened from about 4PM to 9PM on Saturdays, but they'd be showing movies that have been out on DVD for like two months now.
>Options
In a decent sized city (but not a big city) I have the option of about 5-15 grocery stores all within about 10 minutes of driving. In a big city I've got more options but I've gotta drive further to reach them, but in a town there's, as I stated above, usually like one Wal-Mart for the entire county (and it's usually the reduced size Wal-Mart). I can kiss my Men's Warehouse goodbye (you have to drive to the city if you want formal-wear), I can kiss my Harbor Freight goodbye, my Bass Pro Shop goodbye, etc. There might be local ma' and pa' equivalents around, but they're only open for like three days a week at specific times, and their prices are almost always jacked up compared to the brand-name store, and their selection is always absolute shit-tier with anything that's not the lowest common denominator being a part you have to custom order from their catalog they get from their vendor (with that costing extra). Don't get me started on online ordering- I can have stuff delivered usually by the first date on a "between X and Y" shipping date for an online purchase. In a town, it takes about a week longer than the later date shown for it to arrive.
>Jobs
Simply put, unless you're from that local town, you're buddies with someone from that town, or you're a government worker, you won't find a job. Period. I can work in either manufacturing or as a technician (if I'm doing a skilled labor job). For manufacturing I usually have one choice and its whatever manufacturing plant the town was built around (usually some sort of sugar refinery or crop processing plant). As a technician my options are almost zero in towns unless I take a government position like wastewater works. I can't start my own technician business because I haven't lived there my whole life so no one will trust me to fix their shit, and if I work for a company, I can get hired, but at wages that even after adjusting for the cost of living in the town and such, are waaaay below market value. At least in cities I have options, even if I choose to live on the outskirts of said city.
I mean there's other shit, but basically at the end of the day I'm not really saving anything living in a town because I have to drive to the city every time I want/need to do something anyways. Yeah the laws are less strict in a town, but you still have shitty neighbors (they're just assholes to you in ways other than partying on a week night at 2 in the morning), you still have shitty municipal governments breathing down your neck (especially if they find out you don't like the government, since your vote might actually matter in the election and they will make your life a living hell to keep you from voting them out of their job), and because you're in a small town, the government and your neighbors can get away with shit that would get them into a ton of trouble in a city (and if you retaliate you're still just as fucked).