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Okay, so you moved from the city to escape crowds, traffic, and noise, to a place way out in the country and now you want to move back to city--what changed your mind?
We moved from the city to the country 13 years ago (though we keep one foot in the city - until a few months ago my husband's business was there and we still own a rental property there). Before we moved, we did our due diligence regarding what we might expect, and decided that any surprises that came up were to be expected and we'd just cope with them. There have been surprises, some good, some not so good, but that's the case anywhere you live and we have no intention of moving back. (Plus, I don't think they'd like the cows and chickens and donkeys and horses on our city lot.)
We ended up in rural western Tennessee because my husband got a job offer there, and it was majorly not a good fit for us. You had to drive 45-60 minutes one way if you wanted to do anything other than go to church or Walmart- a better grocery store, book store, or even a decent park. And we were in our early-mid 20s and didn't have kids in the school system, which seemed to be the main social outlet for everyone. Add in how I couldn't find a job that paid more than $7 per hour (I've got a good master's degree) and how spouse (college professor) was going to be lucky to be making $35K a year five years later, and we bailed as soon as we could.
He got a job offer in small metro Florida, (county has about $200K people) and things have worked out well in terms of opportunities and quality of life- lots of access to good and affordable food, bookstore right across the toll bridge and more conservation/public land in my county alone than in all of NW Tennessee.
I'm not a big city person. Tried the DC thing for part of college, and ended up feeling like great place to spend a semester but wouldn't want to live there permanently. I also learned that I'm just not a small town person, and that my ideal place to live is a small metro that's a day/weekend trip to a big city.
I grew up in a rural/small town area that attracted a decent number of Chicago/suburban Chicago transplants (particularly those who thought a hobby farm/keeping horses might be fun), because it's close enough to the city to be driveable for weekend jaunts. Consequently, I knew a lot of families that had relocated from urban to small-town/rural. The main complaints were lack of shopping options and lack of a variety of jobs paying above standard minimum wage and/or agriculturally based.
I don't know. I was raised rurally, went to high school and college in small towns, and have since lived in the heart of one of the largest cities in the country (metro of 9 million at that time, now it's bigger), a small town, in the city center of a midsize city (metro of 2 million), and now in an adjacent suburb of that midsize city, so I've experienced living in a wide range of community types and sizes. I've found every single one of them to enhance my quality of life in various ways, if different ways. I'm not any more a country person than small-town person (though those two represent the largest part of my life), a city person or a suburban person...I thrive where I land.
The people in small towns are closed minded and clannish-if you are not from here and don't work at the school, your children don't get treated as well.
The people in small towns are closed minded and clannish-if you are not from here and don't work at the school, your children don't get treated as well.
All in all, I like living here. But from my experience, I think there is a lot of truth to that even though I hate to say so.
I've done the urban to rural thing. Rural areas have strengths and weaknesses. For the most part, these isms can be hard for the former urban dweller to embrace: fatalism, familialism, conservativism, individualism, nationalism, etc.
Okay, so you moved from the city to escape crowds, traffic, and noise, to a place way out in the country and now you want to move back to city--what changed your mind?
We recently moved from an urban, central city in CA to a very rural area in SW Missouri. We wouldn't go back if you paid us. Instead of corner stores and supermarkets minutes away we now have to drive eight miles to the nearest gas station/convenience store, 18 miles to the nearest supermarket and Lowe's and almost 25 miles to other major shopping. The closest town has a population of about 3,800 and the next largest has about 6,500. It's well over an hour to the nearest real city.
We love it. What we've gained is peace, quiet, tranquility, and abundance of nature and critters. What we've left behing is traffic, noise, crime, overcrowding, sirens, ghetto birds and the homeless roaming the streets.
No contest!
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