Town . City, Village, Rural... where do you prefer to live ?

jim_slim said:

I live in a small town 32k population……but I would love to live in the middle of a 50 acre wooded land, but I have a wife…..enough said…lol

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I was considering northeast Washington state where we could have purchased 100's of acres of mixed forest, built a house, and been done w society, but my wife would not have been happy.

These are great descriptions of where you all live and where you'd prefer to live...


I was born and raised in a large city... but have lived out of the city for the last 50 years .


I live on the very edge of a small market town on the edge of woodland, where we have all sorts of small wildlife, game mainly and munjaks ..it was countryside, until they started building using half of the woodland about 3 years ago. and suddenly 400 houses sprung up in less than 2 years .. here rural doesn't mean off grid, there's not enough land in the Uk for that.. and only royalty or billionaires own acres of land...

It's always been a dream of mine to own acreage and not have neighbours cheek by jowl... but that will never be realised...

However I live within a short driving distance from 2 smallish supermarkets... and a doctors' sugery and a small hospital ( which only treats out patients)... the small town has a lively cafe/bar life... very popular with visitors..

Central London is just 20 miles away but due to our heavy traffic and road grid system it can take anything from an hour and a half to 3 hours to drive into the city depending on the time of day.... we do however have a direct commuter train station nearby with trains into the city every 30 minutes which take just 1/2 an hour to get there

I live on the edge of the city and a hospital nearby. It’s kind of country or maybe suburban, but ideal for us. Close to everything, yet also kind of in the country.

I live in an upscale suburb not far outside New York City. The town I live in was primarily owned by the Rockefeller family and it has a village feel to it as well.

For me, it's rural.
A nice small country town.

I live in a suburb of the City of Bankstown. I have everything I need here - local shops, local doctor, dentist, podiatrist and pharmacy. One bank that I use still has a local shop front and the other bank has one at Bankstown where there are bigger shops, a university and a public hospital. My specialist surgeons have rooms in Bankstown.

It is a short train ride to the City of Sydney and Kingsford Smith Airport for national and international flights. The train also takes me to Circular Quay where I can ride the ferries on our magnificent harbour or enjoy the Botanic Gardens where I will be in 10 days time having a free lunch as a guest of the gardeners who are interested in my church's community garden.

I will have lived in the same street, same house, come February next year for 60 years. The modest brick veneer cottage has served Hubby and I well over the years and I have no intention of leaving it any time soon. It goes on being a home for myself, a daughter, her daughter, Katie the elderly cat and four old silkie hens named Betty, Ginger, Goldie and Ruth. I have daily visits from a variety of wild birds that I feed. The neighbours are friendly and when needed, helpful.

The garden is well established with a mix of indigenous and exotic trees and flowering plants. The back garden is secluded and the front has no fences. Anyone can walk up to the front door or through the carport to the back of the house at any time.

I reckon that I am already in paradise.

I like living in a small, rural setting. Lots of elbow room, most residential properties here are 2-1/2 to 20+ acres. On Saturday nights sometimes you can here someone's having a party-music, but it's so far away it's not a bother.

I prefer somewhere between rural and suburb but not over 20 miles to the nearest city. I live in a subdivision where houses are an acre or more apart. Houses are far enough away for privacy but close enough if you need something like in an emergency.

I grew up in the best years to be a kid in L.A. were happening.
Having my own kids made me observe the environment around me with different eyes.
Moved to a rural area in another state to raise our sons in 1979 and not had one twitch of wanting
to go back.
I love the peace and quiet out of a busy city.

Imogene said:

I have been told a radio should be playing the theme from Deliverance coming up my 1-1/2 lane road. It has no winter maintenance, so when the hairpin curve at the top of the hill full of trees ices over, one had better know how to drive.

One year we had such a horrendous ice storm, my deputy sheriff neighbor had to drive through his field to get to the road further down, and husband didn’t go to work. I shut the horses out of the main pasture for a week because it was a skating rink. We lost power off/on for 106 hours that week. Thank goodness for the generator.

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That pretty much describes the place we had in Arkansas.
While I now live just outside of a small city, I'd be back in the sticks if it was up to just me.
That ice storm you described might have been the January 2009 North American ice storm, which brought 1–3 inches of ice accumulation across the region, toppling trees and power lines. It left over 2 million people without power across multiple states, including severe impacts in northeast Arkansas (that would be us) where residents were isolated for weeks. (13 days with no power, but, at least we had a wood stove for heat and cooking and a spring for fresh water).
While it was a bit of a pain, it had it's moments of beauty such as watching the sunrise shining on that sparklin ice.

For the past 4 years I live in a town of about 40,000 that’s in an agricultural area and I love it. I have grocery store I can walk to, a medical center with all my doctors and the lab, plus a hospital about a mile away. I have everything I need but can go to the “big city” of about 400,000 people when I want other shopping or for fun. The entire state has less population than the county I used to live in in Southern California!

IrishEyes said:

I grew up in the best years to be a kid in L.A. were happening.
Having my own kids made me observe the environment around me with different eyes.
Moved to a rural area in another state to raise our sons in 1979 and not had one twitch of wanting
to go back.
I love the peace and quiet out of a busy city.

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I miss the old days of Los Angeles area. It’s far too crowded and expensive these days.

squatting dog said:

That pretty much describes the place we had in Arkansas.
While I now live just outside of a small city, I'd be back in the sticks if it was up to just me.
That ice storm you described might have been the January 2009 North American ice storm, which brought 1–3 inches of ice accumulation across the region, toppling trees and power lines. It left over 2 million people without power across multiple states, including severe impacts in northeast Arkansas (that would be us) where residents were isolated for weeks. (13 days with no power, but, at least we had a wood stove for heat and cooking and a spring for fresh water).
While it was a bit of a pain, it had it's moments of beauty such as watching the sunrise shining on that sparklin ice.


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The storm I am referencing was February 2021. The ridge is about 1200 feet from the house & the barn, to the south. It literally sounded like a war zone up there with the tree limbs breaking. My horses were diehard trail horses, and not much of anything bothered them, but the constant breaking of tree limbs with the heavy ice on them had them spooked for a good part of the night.

It cost us several hundred dollars to clean all that mess up and we did a lot of the work ourselves. I don’t have a front loader like you have but I do have a subcompact John Deere with a front loader on it. We used that, several chainsaws, and a lot of labor to clean up that tree line.

this was not on our property. This was somewhere else along my road.

A village is great but not practical unless you have a car. Went there to go hike. You have to wait ages for a bus.

There was a time when I'd easily be able to answer this, but not today.

Whilst I don't want to live in a crime hotspot, the most important thing to me is inside my home, and the things directly around me. That home can be rural, in a town, or in a city. As long as I have the space I need, and daily basics (such as walking my dog) is easily accessible without using, say, a vehicle, then I'm good.

I know there was a location I was very interested in moving to before I came here. I loved the location in general, but dog walking was going to be a real problem. I had to let it go, because it didn't fit this criteria.

I would rather live in a rural area and watch the wildlife. I love watching deer and that's d-e-e-r not d-e-a-r. I wouldn't get to do that in city or in a village.

It's a small town. There's a hospital within walking distance, and Walmart is less than 2 miles away. An old fashioned courthouse square has a few antique shops and other (overpriced) shops. We have some decent restaurants, but no theater, entertainment, night life, or such. It's inconvenient to drive 35-40 miles for anything like that, or to buy clothes or products that Walmart doesn't sell, but I plan other things around those trips so they double as a a day "outing." I wouldn't have been okay living here when I was young, but it's okay in retirement.

hollydolly said:

Do you live in a small town, with all the small town gossip.. where everyone knows each other..or knows someone who knows someone who knows all your business..?

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Yes, that describes this town, but I seriously doubt that anyone is interested in what I do, how I live, or where I go. There isn't much newsworthy to report.