Just the title
Seen lots of people moving to big places , but im from a small town and id go back there in a heartbeat if i had WFH option (not possible with current job)
To clarify, im a European and its a question for everyone , not just americans!
No modern housing due to NIMBYs here in the UK. A smaller community means renting a tiny attic, basement or god forbid house sharing a room in a partitioned victorian mcmansion for £1k a month or more. In my experience you will also have absolutely psycho neighbours over and over and over.
Trains will be dog shit in the south and you won’t get anywhere fast or reliably and you will pay £50 for the pleasure, the cars are too expensive to have, and nobody wants to sit in traffic. If you’re LGBTQ it’s only a matter of time if you get hatecrimed.
If you talk to anyone you’ll get the cops called on you because talking to strangers is very weird in those communities.
There are insane cliques on Facebook filled with elderly with too much time on their hands who will conspire to attack specific street buskers or Starbucks baristas for being overly “gormless”.
Having a nice hill to stare into fields at is okay, but most likely it’ll be filled with dogs and all those fields and beautiful “”“nature”“” will be privately owned as well.
I live in a small rural community (up North) and don’t find any of this to be true, except for the trains bit (I drive so don’t really use trains) and maybe the Facebook bit as I’ve never used it. The housing is cheaper than it is in the nearby cities and towns. My village has queer people, young, old, ethnic minorities, and pretty much everyone gets on. The whole cops thing isn’t true at all; small communities by and large have friendlier and more welcoming people than cities in my experience. And countryside is objectively a nicer environment than urban sprawl, and better for you to boot. The view from the back of mine is fields with cows and woods, and I’d take that over a train line or tower block any day of the week.