I spent three miserable months living in a big city (one semester) and couldn't get out fast enough. I was originally from a smallish town of around 10k that was nearish a small city of ~100k, so I am not from a desolately rural area or anything, but certainly not a large urban area. I would not have chosen to go to a university in a city except I got a good scholarship through the chemistry department of that university, and initially I was excited about experiencing city life.

The only way I can describe it is that everything about living there just felt deeply wrong for me on every level.

Concrete everywhere. Constant, inescapable noise, 24/7. Just the sheer quantity of humans packed together like sardines was horrible and made my skin crawl constantly. I could never rest or get peace. The constant aura of threat and danger, people warning you not to go to this neighborhood or that. I grew up in the sort of place where you don't think about anything like that in terms of safety, people don't even bother to lock their doors and they aren't afraid of people they run into. The whole "keep your head on swivel" thing is just... not a thing where I'm from, people don't act like that.

Every aspect of daily life was somehow far more difficult and inconvenient, which was the biggest surprise. Everyone acts like cities are convenient but it definitely wasn't my experience at all. There's sort of a weird curve: for basic stuff, the city stores are smaller with a WAY worse selection because floor space is so much more precious... unless you are going to a specialty store where they sell stuff you can't get at a normal supermarket/retail type store. So if you're looking for something hyper-specific/special you can find it far more easily in the city, but basic everyday stuff is so much worse.

If you drive, traffic and parking is a nightmare; if you take some other route, you have to figure out how to get your stuff back to where you live. Many stores have everyday stuff like laundry detergent locked up behind glass which I'd never seen before. This was in the "good" part of the city, too. Despite things being physically closer together, it actually took way longer to do basically every task or chore in daily life, like picking up a prescription, grabbing groceries, whatever. There are just so many people all doing the same thing. I'd never had to wait in line to pick up a prescription before that!

I am not the sort of person who goes and hangs out at a coffee shop, I think it's a waste of money and I make my own at home. So for me being within walking distance of a coffee shop just means I'm not going there but still dealing with the noise/smells/hubbub living near one entails.

Public transit is wildly inconvenient, loud and unpleasant, but driving in that environment is even worse. It's not like driving around a normal town where you don't have traffic, don't have to pay for parking, can come and go as you please etc. at all.

It was exhausting and depressing. The constant noise and grime was the big thing. I had to transfer universities because I knew I'd never be able to tolerate that environment long enough to finish my degree.

Of course there are some aspects of large cities that are cool - availability of different restaurants, museums, large-scale city parks, events, etc. But those are things I don't want to do daily, so living in misery day to day just to be close to a museum I go to twice a year doesn't make any sense at all for me.

I now live in more of a suburban/exurban environment in a nice small township that's close enough to a city for all the conveniences with none of the drawbacks. I will absolutely never live in a large city ever again.