living in places

[boreal_cryptid]

village, town, city, or mixed?

what place are you more used to? what matches your life pace more? where do you wish to live? (realistically or not).
...and everything else you wish to share about this topic!
hello to fellow villagers and townfolk! european village kid here.
lived half of my life (and most of my childhood) in the village, near small historical town (colonized, but at least some history left).

i feel at ease in the fields and forests, at the village roads. i used to soothe myself well with all of it. climbing up the trees, cyclings on the bike kilometers (miles) one way or the other - in familiar places or far far into the less explored. 

we've had many Romani neighbors, and it taught me how important is the connection with one's roots and culture. it helps me immensely with my own reconnection now! (not Romani, but still). we were growing vegetables, and they were keeping farm animals, so we exchanged often.

i knew many (if not all!) village kids, and our adult neighbors always watched over us. we'd greeted each other if we'd stumble upon on the sidewalk, always. 

even though i had a traumatic childhood (other reasons), i'm grateful for this particular village experience. nature helped me to survive, really. i had some air to breathe, some place to feel safe and free. i'd end badly without it for sure.

small (historical) town felt good too. i knew many corners of it, all the green parts of it (there are plenty of them!). i'd even walk it around from one end to the other sometimes (for 5-6 hours on the slow pace). quiet historical parts of it were comfortable to walk for hours without getting bored.

i moved to the big city (due to many reasons outside of my control), and i feel like i'm slowly dying here. there are the river, park and a small forest-like patch of land nearby, but... it feels artificial.
people are everywhere. stores and businesses are everywhere. cars are everywhere (thank gods part of the traffic is lighter because of the buses, trams and metro). noises, eyes, faces, asphalt, dust, artificial lights.

only after moving i realized how much i dislike the cities. ...not even dislike, i hate them. this pace is so overwhelming.
i hope one day i will move back. not to my village - it's barely possible, but somewhere else. i miss it all so much. 
P.S. will probably make a post for my website out of it lolz.
P.P.S. please don't doxx yourself.

[Melooon]

I've lived in a lot of places! From truly big cities like New York, to smaller Irish cities like Dublin, Galway etc - I've lived in medium towns (6000 people) and truly small towns (50 people).

What I've found is that it's really not the population size that matters; its the spirit of the place and what it inspires in you. New York was exhausting, but everyday I'd go to work and look up at the Empire State Building and say "wow look at that!" And I knew that so many people around me were thinking something similar.

With smaller towns, there are a lot of grim and claustrophobic towns in Ireland, but there are also a lot of really fun towns that are tourist hubs, or arty hubs etc. Galway is technically a city here, but its more like a tourist town ~ My first time away from home I lived in a semi-squat there, and there was an old man who used to invite me over for mint tea; we were talking about the noisy street outside, and he pointed out that every morning he wakes up to the sound of laughing and people enjoying a holiday and that made the noise worth it.

I've lived in a lot of places since, but I've always looked out to see if people are laughing and enjoying themselves around me or not; I don't like to participate in the noise making too much, but I would not want to live in a place without that sound. How can life not be good when your awoken every morning by a tour group outside of people who've traveled thousands of miles to see the street you happen live on That seems like a happy situation to be in all things considered, and it always makes me want to create things that capture that feeling too!

[anotherautumn]

I was born in a tropical medium-sized city (not small, but not something like NYC). I definitely had a good childhood there and I'm glad things happened how they did, but seriously my life changed so much for the better when we moved to a smaller and more mountainous town/city nearly a decade ago!!

I've lived in a few large cities and even visited larger ones like Chicago or Atlanta, and have super mixed thoughts on them. I'm always thinking of the experiences of people going on around me and the history/future of the places we inhabit. Cities are really great for this sondering and anytime I'm in one I'm astonished by the sheer amount of human experience happening! There's many physical and social quiet places and little nooks and crannies you can find and appreciate, which I love, but I think I'm definitely much more built as a town/small city type of person. I'm not asocial, but I definitely am more introverted than not. It takes a lot of energy to be out on the streets and keeping tabs on everything going on around you. Of course, a lot of this is from genuine interest and joy in imagining the happenings around you, but it is still a lot of brainpower that I don't really know how to stop using when I'm there LOL

I will likely need to learn to adjust to city life though. As someone who dreams of an art career there's a huge chance I'll be moving to numerous big cities in my life, but it's all right! I have plenty of time to learn to love city life. That's an exciting experience for future me :)

Long ramble short, I really love big cities and I find a lot to enjoy about them, but as a person I think I'm wayy more in tune with daily life in a town or smaller city. Taking subways or meeting many strangers is awesome, but I'd more often prefer sitting in grass on a windy day or exploring a forest. Just a different state of mind really!!

[Gizmo]

My family moved fairly often when I was younger, but always within the same type of middle / upper-middle class suburb where you needed a car to get anywhere. Looking back, they were really safe and quite beautiful aesthetically, but also made it very easy to become sheltered and isolated (moving frequently also a number on my ability to retain friendships, so I mainly relied on YouTube and video games for entertainment). Even now living in the center of a mid-sized city for college, it's taken a lot of active effort to reform my habits and explore / socialize. My ultimate goal is to try and eventually move to NYC while I'm still young. Hopefully for medical school or residency if I can get into a program in the area.

[ValyceNegative]

Oop, after looking up some research on what actually distinguishes a town from a city, I discovered that in my country there's no real rule to tell them apart and safe for capitals or turistic areas that have grown exponentially, cities and towns look pretty much the same. My personal metrics have always been "if there's a lot of countryside nearby instead of an industrial area, it's a town not a city" but if I apply other countries' standards to my own places, looks like I've been living in cities. Odd :(

[GhostGrrl]

I live in a really big city, one of the ones you've heard of (you don't get to know which one I'm staying safe on the internet    ) I'm still young so I have never lived anywhere else. I can't really stay how I would like living somewhere else. I do love my city to a certain extent, or at least the places in it. I love my local library, and game store, and most of the people I love are here. I actually want to live in a city-er city for at least a bit, Where I live is giant but not very dense, the public transit could be better and I don't drive.

I'm actually kind of scared of living in a small town, I'm worried that It would be like middle school. Like I would know most of the people around me but even more so, know that we wouldn't really click as friends. 

[musicobsessed107]

I was born in and spent the first 6 years of my life living in a major city before my folks and I moved into a suburb right outside of it a few minutes away (where we currently live) a few days after my 6th birthday in August 2012.

I feel like the burbs around here are the sweet spot where you still have decent public transportation into the big city between several bus routes and a public train system (even if it is still quite underdeveloped compared with the train systems in and around most other major cities) but your area isn't generally too loud and housing isn't so expensive, either.

With that being said, though, there are times where I do miss my old apartment in the big city, though it's for nostalgia reasons. Unfortunately though, that building, along with many others that surrounded it, are long gone and have since been demolished and turned into some sort of stupid parking lot.

[echogecko]

i grew up in small suburbs. maybe its just where im from, but cities scare me. theyre so lonely.

even though the area i stayed in was small no one rlly knew each other, i kinda wish sometimes i grew up in an even smaller town lol

[littlelum]

I grew up in a moderately sized city. (~65,000 when I was born, ~90,000 when I left for college). One shopping mall, one university, two colleges, four public high schools. I never considered it "big", since there were a lot of big city stuff that simply weren't in town (subways, skyscrapers, escalators, etc.). There were a lot of stuff that I didn't notice until I moved away, like how HUGE it feels now whenever I think about it. I never really noticed that as a kid, but now that I think about it, there are so, so many places that were there, one could never explore them all. If I wanted to go anywhere, I had to convince my mom to make a 20 minute drive each way. Another thing that I didn't notice is that they banned street lights. I never realized how dark it was until I went back about three years later.

There were a lot of parks, both artificial and natural. I never really felt isolated from nature. In fact, now that I live in a small town, I feel further from nature than when I lived in the city. (It could also be the fact that I moved from a wet coastal forest environment to a desert-like shrub-steppe biome.)

I was in a neighborhood that was just outside the city limits. It was like a suburb, but for people who didn't have as much money. So it wasn't a good idea to leave the house alone. I didn't have any one to be with, outside of my family. We were close enough where I could just walk over to the other townhouse if I wanted.

I currently live in a small city that has been very, very successful in deliberately making in seem like a small town. Since I rarely leave the house, the only major difference is the traffic.

[sloth_army1]

I grew up in the suburbs, but I much prefer cities now that I've lived in one for a while. It's so nice being able to walk everywhere. I'd like to pretend that there's other reasons, but honestly it's pretty much just that. Being able to just get up and walk to a store when I need something is so convenient that it has entirely overridden any fond childhood memories that are specific to suburbs. Youth is fake, memory is unimportant, walking is forever.

Okay it also helps that I hate yards.

[whim]

I’m in London, and I don’t know a damned soul. To be clear, I do enjoy the company of others, and don’t mind it at all when strangers talk to me (mostly older women in supermarkets so far), but I kinda like the feeling of anonymity here, just walking around.

I’m from a fairly typical, smaller post-industrial UK town, originally. There are some good people, but there can be this dark energy, and you can get negative reactions for being so bold as to wear a shirt with more than three buttons, even as a pretty unremarkable dude.

[NoxidKin]

I live in an industrial town where the industry has died.  Next to a commercial town where the commerce has died.  It's not great.

But, then again, it's not the worst.  The people mostly try their best.  There are flashes of creativity and culture and community all over the place.

I also have a good bus route to at least one major city which I quite like.  I should use it alot more often.

Ideally, though, I think I'd prefer to live in the city.  I don't drive and I don't really want to.  I have been thinking again about getting my license, obviously it's pretty useful.  But if I lived in the city I probably wouldn't have to.

Plus I like the idea of being surrounded by people to meet most of the time.  Even more opportunities for creativity and culture and community.  It's weird reading the other comments saying how lonely it is in the city.  Obviously it can be, but it can be lonely anywhere, I'd be lonely anywhere.  But at least in the city you have hypothetically infinite possibilities for meeting people.  It does help that the city I live near is a cultural center, I wouldn't want to live in just any city.

Where I am is not so bad though, like I said.  The downside to the city of course is you're surrounded by people whether you like it or not.  At least things are a bit more spacious here.

Mind you, at this second my downstairs neighbour is playing bad music too loud, and I'm reminded that I do have to share a building with people I'd rather not.  But on the other hand my flat is pretty spacious and comfortable.

Swings and roundabouts innit.  It's all the same in the end.

[Dequake]

This is a really interesting topic. I feel that a lot can be said about someone depending on where you wish to live. I grew up in a big city , the capital of my country. I grew fatigued from living there for an odd twenty years, so I fell out of love. Following two years in the smallest of shitholes in the coldest parts of the world (winters would reach minus 30 celcius on a good day. Smoke breaks were as short as a cigarette could possibly last, though even shorter I would reckon), I started to appreciate my birthplace a bit more. I still love my old hood, and I love riding the subway. Buses just aren't the same thing. Growing up in a very mixed neighbourhood I got to meet many cultures and varying class and income differences at a very young age, the experiences of which I treasure still.

I don't live there anymore. I live in a city now about two hours away, a small, though lively, old industrial town connected to the textile industry, with strong roots and history of worker and socialist movements. I've lived here with my girlfriend since august. I'm a little lonely, and the winters carry with them a terrible feeling of gloom, but I'm making some friends despite it all. I don't smoke as much anymore, I drink even less. Things are feeling good.

However my heart still remains in my old hood. I want to return some day, when I'm older. My roots, it's where I belong. But separation makes the heart grow fond, so where's the rush?

[grilledmint]

I was born in a big city (1 million+) and for the most of my life I was okay with it. I am used to it, I like the service, I like that I can find anything that I need and if it's some event I don't need to go anywhere. But then I lived in a smaller one (> 200.000) and actually it was really nice. Now I again live in a big city and kind of missed the smaller one lol. I actually liked that I can actually walk it and everything is pretty close to each other.
In the future me and my partner have a plan to build a house near to the town, but out of it, closer to nature. So no more big cities hehe

[MrsMoe]

I lived the majority of my life (all the way until I graduated high school) in a small city in the suburbs, and although I miss parts of it, I wouldn't call it a good place to live. There were more stuff to do than where I'm currently living, but all the kids were either abused or huge assholes or acted like huge assholes because they were abused. I couldn't tell you much about the culture because my experiences in school made me want to be a shut-in and stay in my room 24/7, but the whole town has always had a trashy vibe to do. Things have apparently gotten way worse over the course of the pandemic, with a shit ton of homelessness, unemployment and drug addicts littering the streets, so I don't know if I'd feel safe if I was still living there to this day.

Anyone who's been keeping up with my diary on neocities knows that I've been spending four years in a small mining town. And when I say small, I really do mean SMALL. No grocery stores, no convenience stores, and only one library that's the size of a tiny apartment. It's more of a row of houses than it is a proper town, and living there has arguably been the most depressing era of my life. Just no friends, no life progress, and barely any opportunities to establish independence. Luckily, we bought a house in the closest proper city and I'm living there now. It's only been about two weeks, but my life there is already so much better. Still an incredibly small town compared to where I used to live, but I've already been establishing myself there as part of the community. I've found a friend I've done some volunteer work, and I finally have a reason to walk outside on my own