Cities are largely a hellscape because of capitalism. Call me a reductionist if you will, but consider - what makes cities in the west hard to live in? Poverty, shitty public services (such as transport), lack of nature - all goes back to the profit motive of the system.

All fun and games until you need to get medical attention, also words in small villages spread like a bushfire on concrete, you mess up? Everyone in the village knows, they mess you up? Nobody in the world would know.

I’m as much as a city person as you can get. I need to be around people to feel normal. Even suburban areas aren’t enough for me I gotta be right downtown. Can’t even sleep at night without the sounds of cars, trains, people rummaging through trash ect.

I’m thoroughly cosmopolitan. Being away from people, away from the hustle and bustle—all makes me deeply uncomfortable. I recently went on a trip with my wife to a small hotel about 2 hours outside the city. I couldn’t sleep with the silence, and the darkness felt oppressive. Seeing stars was cool though. I haven’t seen the night sky that well in the city since I was a young kid during the 2003 NE US blackout.

I grew up in an unincorporated community or whatever they call it with about 20 people in it, abu 20 minutes away from civilization, a town with 350 people in it, by car. The political landscape in Amerika makes it very difficult for someone with divergent political views, or trans people, or nonwhite people in the type of rural I’m from to appreciate the nature and beauty it can hold. It was miserable to grow up in, but I think the area is beautiful.

My thoughts about Amerikan rurality are complicated. The vibe much of it exudes is one that says “this is where the federal government ends.” There are still police, of course, but they answer to no one. Infrastructure becomes nonexistent, there is no maintenance or road repair – potholes are eternal. If there’s extreme beef between people or families, murder is a perfectly viable solution for many of them, and they will never be caught. “Drive-bys” and “gang violence” are only used by the Amerikan MSM in reference to “inner city”, or more honestly, black community violence. But I assure you, seemingly random acts of violence are a scourge on rural Amerika. None of this is to say that the federal government respects peoples’ rights or the bourgeois state having iron-fisted control over these areas would be a good thing, but the legalist illusion is shattered, along with the perhaps naive sense of safety that comes with it.

Apologies for taking your rather sweet observations and twisting them dark. Just my experience. I’ve never experienced true city life, largest city I’ve lived in has about 150,000 pop. I can’t say whether I’d like big city life or not, but I do think that after the destruction of the bourgeois state is complete, I’d love settling down somewhere near a river and away from industry, especially if I can get places relatively easily by rail.

Ah man. The cabin sounds really nice.

I live in one of the villages in the Northern part of Hong Kong. It might count as city for most people, but compared to the actual city parts of Hong Kong it’s extremely villagey. You can kind of see the difference on satellite maps. Shenzhen is extremely urbanized right up to the border with Hong Kon and then suddenly there’s a lot of green, partly due to hills and mostly due to the New Territories having a lot of undeveloped land, but keep going South and the urban sprawl builds up again.

The effect of this is that I’m 20 minutes by metro away from one of the most densely populated places on Earth, but there’s trees and hills out my window, and birdsong in the morning. It’s great.

I’d live right in the middle of a big city if I could. Short of that, the closer to the centre, the better.

I’ve lived in inner city flats, suburbs, housing estates, and in a rural village, in terraced, semi-detached, and detached houses. Christ, housing in capitalism is a shitshow, isn’t it?

My favourite is the inner city flat, but that means no pets and the landlord gets to decide if you’re allowed a partner or children or visitors, so it’s not sustainable unless you’re young, single, and always at work, I don’t think.

Noisy neighbours are a pain. But that’s something that could be solved with higher building standards.

Most housing is not really built to be habitable, but to let the proles have somewhere to sleep, eat, and wash.

I do like being in the countryside, but I hate living in it. But where I live, only the cities have infrastructure. Public transport is rare or infrequent in the villages. As is the internet, which is slow and cuts out. There are very few shops or cafes and the ones that exist tend to have terrible opening hours. There are pubs in rural areas, but they’re usually chains and charge a premium. Plus they’re only accessible via car, which makes it hard to just wander or for a quick drink or to meet friends (if there are any that live anywhere nearby).

Smaller towns inside the boundaries of bigger cities can be good.

I suppose I would be tempted to live in a village if there was anything other than a petite bourgeois ‘community’ and decent infrastructure. As it is, you tend to mostly find racist, snobby, reactionary dick heads in villages. It could be ideal, but in the current set up, give me a city populated with people from everywhere.

I feel like I love the Soviet model of people having an apartment in the city, and also a small countryside Dacha at the same time. It allows people to center around economic, industrial, governmental, medical, and educational centers, driving the economy of the country, maximize the effectiveness of policies like public transport, and made making human connections very easy.

But come the beginning of June, everyone retreats to their countryside dacha in rural communities, thus giving people a chance to escape the chaos of life and the city, be in nature, recharge, relax, and the chance to focus on their physical and mental health. Before packing up and heading back to the city come mid-August.

Best of both worlds!

I live in big city but on the outskirt municipality near the forest, I always kind of hated the center part of the city.

I’ve grown to enjoy city life, but I think at this point I genuinely don’t mind one way or another. Provided it isn’t so rural so as to make travel by foot impossible

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I currently live in a small village/town and I prefer it that way. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I’m autistic, but I could never imagine living in a current Western city. I love the peace, nature and darkness at night outside.

That said, the village/town was a lot more lively back in the day. We did have many local stores here that you could just walk to on foot but over time they all closed down for a more profitable location somewhere else. Also the dirty local bourgeois scum who buys up all the land around here keeps upping the rent. This made even the very last tiny store close forever.

Honestly I can agree with some liveliness. But city center level liveliness would be way too much for me.

I wouldn’t mind living in a big city if the transport didn’t suck, losing 2-3 hours of your day being stuck in traffic because there is no efficient public/private transport is INSANE. After moving back to my small childhood city i started appreciating being able to get anywhere in the city in a matter of 10 minutes.

Small Village. The only downside for me would be slow WiFi.