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For the future, I'm thinking that a place like Minneapolis, Nashville, or Richmond might offer what I need in terms of food options, shopping, and bike culture.
Interesting question OP and one I have pondered a few times myself.
For certain I am a "city" person and could not live way out in the suburbs or in a small town. Still big city living comes with a price: As another poster said, you have to deal with the daily grind of traffic, etc. yet I don't do enough to enjoy the "big city" amenities like museums, etc.
Minneapolis is terrific. I just can't do the cold winters so that one would not be on my list. Since you are in Chicago the adjustment might not be so difficult for you.
It is mostly the type of people that the city attracts that keeps me here. You get a very diverse, worldly kind of person who is attracted to the city that you rarely (if ever) find in smaller areas. I could go just about anywhere with my job and find comparable salaries, much less stress, and a much lower cost of living. But I choose to stay here, in Philadelphia, and a big part of that is because I finally feel like I am around my kind of people.
Plus you can't beat the convenience of having literally everything and anything at your doorstep.
One thing I will add is this: It is difficult to go from a huge metro like Chicago to a smaller or even mid sized city. I mean, you know what a "city" is supposed to be, what it can be. Anything else...
I am a born and raised Chicagoan who now lives elsewhere. If Chicago could get its act together - crime, violence, budget, taxes - well, you know. We'd all move back I suspect.
I moved from a small town of 30K in Missouri to the DFW area in Texas. I honestly don't think I could live in a city smaller than Richmond, Raleigh, or St Louis ever again. I love having an airport with non-stop flights to different countries, having good ethnic restaurants, cool shops, and shopping. However, I can still find most of these things in a place like Richmond.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MB1562
It is mostly the type of people that the city attracts that keeps me here. You get a very diverse, worldly kind of person who is attracted to the city that you rarely (if ever) find in smaller areas. I could go just about anywhere with my job and find comparable salaries, much less stress, and a much lower cost of living. But I choose to stay here, in Philadelphia, and a big part of that is because I finally feel like I am around my kind of people.
Plus you can't beat the convenience of having literally everything and anything at your doorstep.
Same here. I'm a world traveler and consider myself fairly open minded. I don't have anything in common with most people in small towns, so I find it hard to make friends. Some of the people I worked with in a small town in Missouri had never left the state. Also, there aren't a lot of millennials in small towns, so that makes it even harder to make friends.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg10556
I was unaware that Chicago & Seattle were tiny cities...
Even going by population only, Chicago isn't much smaller than LA... Hmm.
Chicago actually feels more like a big city to me than LA. LA is similar to Dallas or Houston in that it's just endless suburbs and expansion.
I feel like my biggest mistake in my adult life (well, one of them) was not sticking it out during the brief 6 months I lived in the Chicago area. I wasn't finding the type of work I wanted, and so, even though I had gotten accepted into a graduate school for the career field of my choice, I moved back down to the South. In hindsight, I should've stuck it out and took a crap job, even retail, while I worked my way through school. I love a lot of scenery in the South, but the politics and religion everywhere is not a good fit for me. That's what appeals to me so much about cities, other than public transit - the diversity, and the anonymity;down here, you sneeze and everyone in town knows it. I'm a social worker, and I can't even go to the local hotspot restaurant without running into clients. It's like I have to be in "professional" mode all the time.
I moved from a small town of 30K in Missouri to the DFW area in Texas. I honestly don't think I could live in a city smaller than Richmond, Raleigh, or St Louis ever again. I love having an airport with non-stop flights to different countries, having good ethnic restaurants, cool shops, and shopping. However, I can still find most of these things in a place like Richmond.
It's true that Richmond has Carytown and lots of great restaurants but our airport sucks hard lol and we have a Nordstrom but somebody needs to inform me any other real big city shopping here. Unless you're referring to grocery stores. God blessed Richmond with 3 grocery stores on every corner.
I would move to a tiny city like Chicago or Seattle or Vancouver.
There's no way you actually mean what you just said haha. Even if you're going off of just population, the difference between LA and Chicago isn't big enough to jump from "big" to "tiny." Not to mention that Chicago and even parts of Seattle/Vancouver feel way bigger than most of LA.
I grew up in the SF Bay Area, moved to smaller towns after high school, but I keep coming back. I'm back for good this time.
The thing is, even if you don't utilize the amenities all the time - they're always there when you want them. And you really miss that when you move somewhere without them.
There are other things you can take for granted, too, such as better health care in a big city, better police and fire response, just so many things you get in a big city that has more money for services, etc.
Everyone mentions the positives of the big city but are they worth the crime, homeless population, rudeness, and slummy old neighborhoods?
I live in a smaller town with all of these things. Maybe population is relative, but 160k isn't a big city atleast not to me, yet we still seem to have big city problems.
Why not go abroad and try a big city, or even medium-sized city, abroad? A lot of inner city issues seem on the whole a bit more prevalent in the US than in other developed countries. We sort of went through a long period of disinvestment in cities for a long while, and while there's been a lot of reinvestment now, the backlog is still pretty long in some places.
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