Americans who grew up in small towns but now live in big cities (or vice versa) — what’s something that genuinely surprised you about the other lifestyle that no one warned you about?

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Innuendo64_@reddit

If you live in a town with 1 bar, date one of the regulars or bartenders in that town and the relationship ends badly, you now live in a town with zero bars. Ask me how I know

That's not a problem in a bigger city. One neighborhood have like 8 bars

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It gets really weird when half the regulars in that one bar have dated, banged, fought, cheated over or cheated on the other half and now everyone must exist within the miasma of their and each other's life choices

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PineappleCharacter15@reddit

This is so true!

I briefly lived in a place that probably had less than I would say 200 to 300 people in town, and it was a tiny Town - that also had rural people, with another 100 - 150 that had farms right outside the tiny city limits.

It had one bar and one ice cream stand; a little store, a gas station and a pizza place. Oh, and back then it had a video rental place. And the post office. That was it.

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mrmniks@reddit

This is a lot to have in a town of 200 people lmao, almost like a city

Where I’m from, towns with 200 people have a grocery store. Maybe. Sometimes it’s just a truck coming every few days and selling food. Maybe there’s a postal office open like 2h a day three days a week.

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PineappleCharacter15@reddit

Where are you?

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mrmniks@reddit

Belarus :) although what I’m describing isn’t called a town usually, they’re villages. Since the fall of the USSR there’s been mass exodus from them, and only elder people stayed.

The village my grandparents bought a house in for summer vacations had about 200 people back in 70s, there was a stationary store (just one) and that’s it. By the time I was born (90s) this store was still operational, but just a few days a week. Now there are less than 50 left, most people died and nobody moved to it. It’s basically just one street about a mile long with houses on both sides. In my childhood there were maybe 3-4 abandoned houses, now there’s maybe 20 houses with people still in them.

There’s a small town right next to the village with 500 people, and it has a school, a a post office, a store and that’s about it. No bars or cafes. But people there are mostly farmers or elderly. Everyone who’s of working age has moved to bigger places.

I grew up in a midsize city, and it has everything a city can offer. We just don’t have any activity in rural areas, they’re dying out, and rapidly.

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PineappleCharacter15@reddit

This is both fascinating, yet sad at the same time.

3% of the population are still farmers. In the US that's nearly 11M people. With farm consolidation a farm could be thousands of acres. With automation the number of people required to run the multi thousand acre farm could be 2-3.

The towns are where they get their services, but if the supporting population is low enough then there aren't going to be many services to sell them.

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bloobityblu@reddit

Okay, you know what small is, then. See my above reply. They're practically in a city in comparison!

At least you have internet somehow.

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Saltpork545@reddit

Rural fiber initiative. The power company is the ISP. Hung it on the same lines. I've worked remotely since 2011 and don't ever expect to go into an office again.

What made it viable for me to move out to semi-bumfuck was rural fiber. I am happily living in a county of 20,000 people where 15,000 of them are in the main town 20 miles south of me. I have 1 neighbor I can see from my front porch and that's only in winter when the underbrush isn't green and blooming.

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Royal_Success3131@reddit

That's an astonishing amount of stuff for such a small town. I grew up in a town of 1400 that had 2 gas stations and a greasy spoon, and that's it

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bloobityblu@reddit

When I was a kid, I lived in the town "center" of a similar sized, maybe smaller town.

professor-ks@reddit

Small towns where you just wait your turn

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greenmtnfiddler@reddit

everyone must exist within the miasma of their and each other's life choices

This is a really great sentence, thank you!

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MichaelSarvis@reddit

Miasma - love that word choice.

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pseudonym7083@reddit

I joke about the small town I grew up in being a bunch of cousin fuckers since the town is that small. Place is like Rock Ridge in Blazing Saddles.

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cherry_monkey@reddit

This sounds like my friends group.

Friend dated girl 1. Friend sister becomes bff with girl 1 who was already bff with girl 2. Friend sister starts dating friend bff. Friend cheats on g1 with g2 and is now dating g2. Fs breaks up with F bff. G1 starts dating (and eventually married) Other guy who is in the Air Force.

I meet friend through a mutual friend and am at his house for a party. In walks G1, friend sister, and G1 sister. I join the fray and start dating friend sister. Friend and G2 decide to join the Air Force and get married. Just kidding, G2 decided she was lesbian (distinctly didn't say bi) and calls off marriage. G2 starts dating female by the time friend ships out. While friends is in training, G2 married male technical sergeant.

Things settle down, G1 is married to Other guy. I join Marine Corps and marry friend sister. G1 sister has lung term bf and has kids. Friend finds love and gets married. Friend bff finds gutter slut and gets married.

Fast-forward, G1 and other guy separate, friend bff and gutter slut separate (because of being a gutter slut) and now friend bff is dating G1 sister.

Only 8? I bet Lakeview in Chicago has 200

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scothc@reddit

if you live in a town with 1 bar

This doesn't exist in WI

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You also get used to driving much further in rural areas. I drive between 30 minutes and an hour to complete various tasks from shopping or getting to work. When I lived in a city I would count 20 minutes as a long drive. I also walked a lot more and frequented small businesses much more often.

I think there's a sense of instant gratification and variety I really miss from cities. Where I am there's like 1 or 2 options for food and they all kind of suck. If I wanted a nice meal in the city or to go out for breakfast on a whim I could. Now my life is much more planned. Even if it's something like grocery shopping it's like a 17 minute drive to the grocery store. My last apartment it was like a 4 minute walk.

I also notice old timers just hanging out at the local gas station all morning drinking coffee and sitting around chatting. People are much more consumed with what their neighbor is doing. Even the smallest event sparks massive town wide drama. It's tedious how involved other people are in their neighbors lives.

But the opposite is kind of true too. I like how slow it is and I can trust that my daughters can just be outside and not have to deal with needles on the floor, unhoused people on the curb, violent fights breaking out on the street and them just getting to be kids in the woods and do a lot of the stuff I did when I was a kid.

I think I prefer the city by a lot but the idea of raising children in a city makes me uncomfortable.

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Alternative-Put-3932@reddit

I am always confused by people saying small towns are gossip city with everyone in others business. Its the exact opposite in my experience. Nobody gives a shit unless they personally know you in my town.

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Ok-Energy2771@reddit

Just curious, I was raised in the suburbs and really grew to resent the isolation from about the age of 12 or so. Once I tried out city living during university I never looked back and I plan on raising my kids in an urban area. Why do you think the idea of raising kids in an urban environment make you uncomfortable?

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ReturnMetoEarth@reddit

Definitely realizing that I could do what I want and no one I knew would ever know. I can go to the store and not see everyone I went to school with and have to stop "catch up". Its nice having things not close as early like when I need to pick up something after 6pm.

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aracauna@reddit

I think one of the biggest surprises to me since I work in education was how little support kids get from their communities. At my hometown school where I taught for 12 years, our football team sucked, but the stadium was packed every Friday night even though the county only has one high school and only about 700 students. In metro Atlanta I'll go to games of schools more than twice the size of the one I taught at will have fewer people in the stands than at my hometown. They travel too. You'll see a couple hundred in the away stands at rural games.

And it's not limited to football. Girls softball has hundreds at their games. People would wait for our marching band to finish playing before they went to the concession stands.

This is probably what annoys me about funerals too. In my hometown, you never mourn alone. If there's a death or serious illness in the family, food is already on its way. There will probably be too much. Funeral processions are LONG and everyone pulls over to the side of the road out of respect when they pass even on a divided highway.

When my father in law died recently, it really hurt to see how they had none of that. You seem to know your neighbors less in cities and suburbs and families are usually scattered so my family drove up 4 hours (and my sister flew in from out of state) to make sure the food was there and my wife and mother-in-law had the support they needed. (My family is definitely not why I left my hometown either of the two times I left. They're genuinely good people.)

But I also left for a reason. Infant mortality in that county is similar to Botswana (at least it was 15 years ago), which isn't the worst in the world, but it's definitely way higher than the national average. Same for life expectancy, partly from the drug problem that affects rural areas more and partly for the lack of health care. My older relatives often have to travel hundreds of miles for medical treatments. We even had to drive 40 miles to the closest hospital that delivered babies when my kids were born. I mentioned the extreme poverty levels and lack of good jobs already. My home county has a really good school system. Families in neighboring counties actually pay tuition (or used to, the rules may have changed) to send their kids to the better schools there than the one in their county. That's not true of most rural schools though.

But I was surprised at how much more isolated you'd be in a larger city. I actually like that. I'm an extreme introvert and I kind of hated seeing people I knew in public but I can go to the grocery store next to my house now and not see a damn person who wants to talk to me. It's really nice.

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HashSlingingstonks@reddit

I grew up in a small town of 1700. I now live in a metro area of 4 million. In a small town you were judged by how you dressed, what clothing brands you wore, and what brand of car you drove. In a big city, no one really cares. I can wear what I want and drive whatever I like.

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Rough_Air_1318@reddit

The diversity within the cities. Living in a small town from the ages of 7-17. One thing I found fascinating was how many of the local people were related to each other. And I'm not trying to be sarcastic or humorous. Families stay for generations, even centuries, and become intertwined. At 18, I moved to a suburb of DC. "Where did all these people come from?"

straight_trash_homie@reddit

I grew up in the south and moved to Chicago and was pretty shocked at how segregated Chicago is. I genuinely think most of my white friends up here have never been on a first name basis with a black person. They’ll be from some small town in Ohio with a 90% white population, and then move to the north side of the city and just literally never come in contact with black people. Similarly, I live on the south side and am very frequently the only white person in the room/in the bus/in the restaurant.

Racism in the south is still very prevalent, but that said I was almost never in places that were all white or all black, whereas that’s the standard up here.

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Odd-Permission2310@reddit

The racism in the south is terrible, and I'm saying that as a white person and the racism came from black people. I was "that little white bitch" nobody wanted them to help them at the music store on Sunday after they just came from the church wearing their Church outfits.

I came from the melting pot of Southern California where it doesn't matter what race you are, unless you're in a gang. The military moved me and my husband to North Carolina and that was my first dose of racism, and it was against me, the white girl who did nothing to them.

Nobody ever wants to acknowledge my story though. Whatever.

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MissionSuccess9576@reddit

Southern California the melting pot?? 👀 Anti-Blackness is rampant in out there, and it doesn’t only come from white people. (hint: Google Nury Martinez).

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ABSOFRKINLUTELY@reddit

It's true. The south is a lot less homogeneous than places like New England.

Being from Miami FL diversity was so normal. I get culture shock visiting places like NH, MN. Hell I even found San Diego to be white as hell.

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do_something_good@reddit

San diego is pretty segregated. If you stayed on the coast or in touristy nicer areas, definitely more white. Also North County is very white. If youre more central or south county, its much more diverse.

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Senior_Coyote_9437@reddit

They're more subtle in Chicago, but it's much more pervasive than a lot of white Chicagoans like to admit.

My mom was the same way. Rural Canada, never saw a Black person until she moved to Calgary in her 20s.

JuryOk2662@reddit

A lot of people also move to Portland from other parts of the northwest and mountain west that are even less diverse.

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Which-Bit6563@reddit

Oh I'm VERY aware of that history. Parents toyed with moving to Portland throughout my childhood and every time they'd get serious about my dad would remember that we're black and also that he has bad SAD even in SoCal winter

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Accomplished-witchMD@reddit

My friends had a vacation house in a VERY racially homogenous area in VA. I would visit once or twice a year in summer and after 2 years I was recognizable. Weird.

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Brief-First@reddit

It is even city to city too. I grew up in a Jewish area of Cincinnati, and in Cincinnati, in general, the population is 51% white. I thought all major cities were super diverse; even on TV, a lot of shows showed cities as diverse.

They liked to spit on me and hit me from behind as they got off the bus.

Luckily there was an ongoing beef between the rednecks and the Greek kids nd they spent most of their time fighting each other.

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TheLordDrake@reddit

Same here! Moved from NH to NN, completely different vibe.

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xjulesx21@reddit

I feel this going back to the rural midwest where I’m from. I also notice wayyyy more offensive/racist/sexist jokes bc of it. I’m always like “yeah, I’m glad I left this place…”

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AnUnexpectedUnicorn@reddit

My small town was not very diverse, but those who were something other than WASP were not treated much differently by our fellow students. It has affected my opinions my whole life, even though I now realize my experience in my Midwestern high school was more the exception than the rule.

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mst3k_42@reddit

I grew up in the rural Midwest. We only had white people. I didn’t see black people in person till we went on a trip to Cincinnati. We had one family in town that was half white American and half middle eastern. What fascinated me was that they still willingly participated in Ramadan in high school. I had ditched Catholicism waaaaay before that.

I just checked and as of the last census, my town was still 97.8% white.

I always knew that we were the weirdos because there was diversity in TV shows and movies. As in, people who weren’t just really, really white.

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axiom60@reddit

I would get asked all the time “are you actually american?” living in a homogenous area, because there are so few 2nd gen immigrants that people just can’t grasp the concept of “American born to foreign parents”. Wouldn’t call it racism but more xenophobia and it definitely does make you feel unwelcome because they’re basing it off just skin color/appearance.

Never gotten that since moving to a city, even though it’s still majority white, people have interacted with minorities enough that they know.

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Frequent-Spinach9357@reddit

I moved out of the concord area in 2015 to Jacksonville fl and it was so eye opening. I moved back a couple years ago and it’s more diverse than when I left but still not like any big cities I’ve been to.

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venturashe@reddit

How slow and familiar small town life is. From LA where we ignored each other to the grocery shop girl who,knew you whole family history

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Visible_Apricot1163@reddit

I don’t think city dwellers (American or otherwise in the western world) realize how bad the internet situation is in rural America. I work remotely for a company that I joined when living in a large city in California. I still work for them after moving back to rural Appalachia, and have to explain why my video quality is junk and ability to download things quickly is nonexistent.

I was also genuinely surprised by the fact that in a lot of the country, you can get things delivered within an hour or two.

I will say, in the last couple years both of these have changed a lot and now a lot of rural America has some sort of option for decent internet, whether via starlink or new fiber lines being placed in rural areas. Amazon hasn’t quite gotten the same day delivery down in the more rural areas, but Walmart is picking up the slack for a lot of these communities.

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OldDogWithOldTricks@reddit

I never fully grasped how bad traffic is in a big city.

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Disastrous-Series880@reddit

I grew up rural and have lived near cities. I used to be a corporate flight attendant so I’ve had to opportunity to spend some time in the much larger cities. What baffles me is the different perspectives of independence and lifestyle norms. When I was a kid, I was riding my bike 5+ miles sometimes only seeing trees and driving a car well before 15. While traveling seeing kids, some just barely hitting double digits navigating large cities alone and riding public transport on the daily is terrifying. I have friends from the military who were raised in the big city life and never had a reason to drive a car until they were in their 20’s and riding a bike wasn’t ideal when you have to worry about getting hit every few feet or your bike stolen.

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Ok-commuter-4400@reddit

My mom’s farm had neither broadband internet nor cell service until 2021. Internet was dial-up modem only, so it didn’t work when someone was on the phone or the weather was stormy.

What I didn’t get is how much this affects people. They still say “I wonder…” and then don’t look up the answer. They have the attention span for playing cards (no gambling). They read—a lot. Even their dumb-as-a-rock neighbor who married his second cousin reads more than most urban kids today.

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pizzaazzips@reddit

I grew up in a pretty small rural town, then lived in 2 different large cities for 10 years, then moved to a different, even smaller rural town in a different state (where I currently live).

There are a lot of differences. The main thing I noticed moving to my first big city was how great the anonymity was. I purposely didn’t make any friends for like 6 months because it was SO nice to know that I wouldn’t run into 15 people I knew at the grocery store. There’s a lot of freedom in nobody knowing who you are.

The two cities I lived in were on opposite coasts and VERY different from each other. I now live in a very tiny town (4500 people) that is 2 hours from the nearest Walmart, and 4 hours from the nearest large city. I notice that my shopping problems are much worse since moving to a small town, because it’s so difficult to find so many things. Living in a big city, I never had to worry about finding the things I needed so I didn’t feel such a strong compulsion to hoard things when I find them.

Ironically, in my 30s living in a small town, I mostly love that I see people I know all over. I notice that people (myself included) make a conscious effort to talk things out with people they disagree with, and give each other more grace than the people did in big cities—because we know we’ll have to see them around town, so we better make an effort to get along. It’s been really good for me personally, because I have a tendency to assume negative intent and cut people off too soon. You can’t make too many enemies when you’re going to run into them when you go to the grocery store every week!

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bravenewchurl@reddit

I discovered there were adults of all ages from major cities that didn't have driver's licenses. That shocked me coming from the Midwest where it's like a right of passage, like the secular equivalent to a bar mitzvah.

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kbreezy21111@reddit

100% plus your license is the key to fun in a small town. You can’t even make it to Walmart without it.

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huazzy@reddit

Colleague of mine grew up in Manhattan. Not only did he not have a driver's license but he didn't know how to swim or to ride a bike. Said, he never got the opportunity to learn.

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WafflePeak@reddit

Driver's license I understand but never had the opportunity to swim or ride a bike is just false.

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huazzy@reddit

From the New York Times

Approximately one in four (25%) children and a similarly high proportion of adults in New York City cannot swim, a dangerous disparity in a city surrounded by water. Water safety skills are notably lower in communities of color, with surveys indicating roughly one-third of Black and Asian students in NYC lack swimming ability.

Zappagrrl02@reddit

The quiet can be a bit unnerving when you aren’t used to it. You get used to a constant background of noise and it can be startling when it’s removed. But then you get to spring peeper season and wish you were back with traffic sounds instead😂

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Commercial-Lack6279@reddit

Peeper season?

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Zappagrrl02@reddit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_peeper

They are this tiny little frog that’s sound is quite loud compared to its size and you get a bunch of them together it can be cacophonous

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Zappagrrl02@reddit

Here’s the sound: https://youtu.be/UwVEI5M-948?si=vW_ROnxHPHp1Uxpz

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sadrice@reddit

I love frogs! Out on the west coast we have three of the same genus, mine is the Sierra Tree Frog/Chorus Frog. They are ridiculously common in the right environments. There is one living on my mom’s plants another sink, and another in the plants by the kitchen table. They just come in. Ours can get pretty loud too., but I love the sound, they are the loudest frogs in the area most of the time, sounds like spring. That call is perhaps familiar to you, because it is the default frog sound in media produced in Southern California, since a related species with the same call is down there.

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Zappagrrl02@reddit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_peeper

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kygirl27@reddit

I've never lived in a suburb so I can't really compare there. I went from growing up out in the woods a mile from our closest neighbor to then living in Manhattan. It was quite the adjustment!

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LunarVolcano@reddit

I’d take the peepers over the traffic! I miss hearing them

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OldTurtle-101@reddit

How about long stretches of silence randomly punctuated by gun shots and nobody even thinks about calling the cops.

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joshbudde@reddit

The REAL startlingly thing is how noisy animals are. They're not the silent graceful creatures of the stage and screen--they're bumbling, rustling, jerks that'll chew on anything and scratch everything else.

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RustyVandalay@reddit

You're not, "ruining their high." You're sending them into precipitated withdrawal. Which is extremely painful both physically and emotionally. Like transporting them instantly to day three of kicking a habit cold turkey.

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TSells31@reddit

It’s pretty common for dope fiends to get angry about Narcan. They often don’t realize they are overdosing and they feel like you just killed one of the best highs they have ever had. And of course, dope fiends are often poor, and drugs aren’t cheap. So there’s that factor.

Of course it is ridiculous, but what can ya do. Addiction is a bitch.

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Saltpork545@reddit

Yeah and going in and getting training to carry and administer Narcan I didn't realize that. Most of my medical training has been around trauma/emergency medicine aka stabilize them to get their ass to a hospital so they don't die.

Being as rural as I am I figured one of the most common forms of drug death in the world is a good idea since I carry medical kit with me everywhere I go and having free Narcan on me might just save a life as well.

Going in I didn't even think about the fact that I'm ruining the high that would be their last, but you absolutely fucking are.

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vulkoriscoming@reddit

This is not uncommon and every EMT has at least one story like it.

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OldTurtle-101@reddit

I tell people that if you want to save lives on the streets, don’t bother with CPR just get (and train) Narcan…. Sad but true.

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aka_hopper@reddit

I did the opposite and would say it’s even worse in rural places.

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One of the biggest things I've noticed in rural areas is that people just don't talk about personal problems like abuse and drugs with others in the community very openly. I wish I could tolerate it as the nature and quiet is genuinely healing but most human problems same and people just pretending that those issues couldn't be in their back yards drove me nuts when I was out there

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TSells31@reddit

It’s funny honestly, I remember my pre addict days. If you’ve never been an addict, it can be difficult to spot it. So you think it’s not very prevalent, you only notice the most obvious of cases. Once you’ve been an addict, you can spot it from a mile away. Every little addict behavior sticks out like a sore thumb. You start to realize how prevalent it truly is once you can spot it so plainly.

DaneLimmish@reddit

Same here, yeah. Living nut to butt in a row home there becomes this sort of necessity to acknowledge your neighbors as people.

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Seismofelis@reddit

I have had a similar experience. I went from a very large U.S. city to what I would call a "small city", about 50,000, that's also the largest city for more than 200 miles in any direction. It wasn't just the smugness, although there was plenty of that, but what really surprised me has been the dishonesty. Maybe it's the isolation or maybe it's the city's size, but the people here think nothing of lying, cheating, and exploiting anyone or any situation they can.

Small business owners and employers seem to have an attitude of "where else are you going to go?" so they lie, cheat, and don't keep their word. But it goes beyond that. Organizations I've volunteered and contributed to for years have suddenly ripped me off the first chance they got. Of course I saw dishonesty while living in a large city, but here it's odd and counter-intuitive. I've had people rip me off when it's in their long term best interest not to, and then a year or two later come back expecting me to 'forgive and forget'. It's as if they don't understand the concept of a reputation. Even after years of living here, I can still get surprised.

AdministrationTop772@reddit

When I was living in Miami Beach I saw bars/clubs that didn't even open until 11 pm or midnight.

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davidm2232@reddit

That would be great for second shift workers. Around here you get out at 11 and the whole city is closed.

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TSells31@reddit

That’s kinda weird your bar closes early. I’ve lived in rural Iowa for a good chunk of my life, and I’ve never seen a bar that closes before 2 AM (state cutoff) even in small towns. I have seen bars close early a few times because there was nobody there, but never seen one with listed hours that close before 2 AM.

The town I grew up in had 1 Home Depot. If I needed something they were out of, I wasn’t finishing my project that week.

Now I live in a large metro area and if the Home Depot in my city is out of something I can go a couple miles further to one of the two each in the neighboring towns. If they are out I can go to any of the 20 or so Home Depots in a 20 miles radius.

Growing up fairly rurally, we had well water pumped via our electrical so if the power went out that meant no water as well. For a long time after I moved to into a city I didn’t realize water towers have a purpose to provide pressure. In my brain, having running water required having power.

I can remember after moving in with my now spouse, there was a day we were expecting the power might go out due to a big storm and I mentioned we should fill up some pitchers for drinking water and consider filling up the bath tub. They looked at me like I had two heads when I told him that if we lost power I thought we wouldn’t have water.

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Sudden_Nose9007@reddit

From a rural area and now live in a city and the amount of options is hard to get used to! Options for everything, food, hobbies, stores, etc.

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Chance_Ad_2132@reddit

From rural Alabama to Beijing. Public transport is a real thing and I can go anywhere. There’s even sidewalks, which are like these concrete slabs you can walk places on them it’s wild

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Beijing is so great. The trains are so efficient and it’s so easy to get everywhere

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kjlsdjfskjldelfjls@reddit

I heard the pollution is finally under control there, would love to get back and check it out again. Remember this one day where it completely cleared up back in 2012, and it felt like a different city

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Mother_Marzipan5846@reddit

as a native shanghaier born and raised that moved to beijing for work, pollution is VERY hit or miss. spring is typically the worst season pollution wise because we get a lot of winds from the west that bring over dust and smog from the western plains. pollution treatment has improved a lot in the tier 1 cities but it’s still very spotty in ways that will probably only clear up once the cities are not so intensely overpopulated.

I find it slightly hilarious that you're asking this from Madison, WI, a very walkable city with reasonably good* public transport.

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Chance_Ad_2132@reddit

I was originally from Arab (non Alabama readers no, not the Middle East), but grew up in Hybart/Coy between Monroeville and Camden.

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BigmacSasquatch@reddit

Aw hell yeah! (You and I are probably the only people here getting the southern twang just right on that one lol). My veterinarian is out in Arab.

I grew up in a rural sea town in Texas.

I always thought I wanted to raise my kids in a small town. They’d have their shared community, peace and quiet, safety, and be familiar with the land (coastline preservation efforts, local fish and wildlife, weather phenomena and how it affects us).

Since moving to Houston 6 years ago—and certainly with the country the way it is— my perception has changed. The most important things to me now are: 1. my children are raised in a diverse community with opportunities to access other cultures.

They have the best education I can give them, if it’s private schools or international or what have you, I will not send my kid to a school where the teachers are so underpaid and overworked that they are ok with using AI to teach, and they encourage kids to use AI to learn. I would sacrifice a lot from my personal lifestyle to give them this.
Somewhere they can become fluent in a second language.

Cities check these boxes obviously. As far as shoreline preservation, there’s marine biology camp in the summer and I can teach my kids how to cook, line dance, and pass stories relevant to our own southern culture.

Also piggybacking off what another redditor said about dating someone at the one bar in town—this is a real problem. Ask me how I know.

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NeitherBee69277@reddit

This may be more of a me problem than a big city problem. I grew up and frequently visited family in a rural area. Not dirt roads small, but 1.5-2 lane mountain roads and town was about 4 streets. All my adulthood has been spent in a large suburb outside a major metropolis.

I have NEVER gotten comfortable with how many cars are on the road in the city. It’s complete information overload and the other drivers are so bad they feel intentionally hostile. Meanwhile, if I miss a turnoff in the country I can probably just reverse mid-road and try again.

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auntlynnie@reddit

I grew up 7 miles (about 11.25km) outside of a town with a single traffic light. Back then, the population was \~1200 people. We lived in the same house my dad grew up in. Almost everyone knew who I was and who my parents were, so I was always polite, even if I didn't know them. When I went to a large university (current enrollment is 27,000), I was known as the girl who smiled and said "hello" to everyone I walked past on the path to/from the dormitories. LOL

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Altruistic_Bed_2656@reddit

I lived in a big city for a while. While there I didn’t need a car. When buying groceries I usually walked home so I would balance myself with bags in my left hand the same weight as bags in my right hand. So- public transportation and walking- and- challenges surrounding groceries. But I could get just about anything at any time of night. I lived in a tiny apartment with no laundry, no central air, no elevator (4th floor). There were plenty of doctors/ healthcare available. I was surrounded by people of many races/ ethnicities/ nationalities speaking many languages There were 4 seasons

I lived in a suburb for years. There- we needed a car. My house was small for an American house- 2500 square feet. Most major stores were closed by 8 pm. A car was necessary. But I had central air and there was green everywhere. Healthcare was available. People were white and Asian again- 4 seasons

Now I’m in a small town. Everything is closed early evening. It’s hard to find doctors- this requires a drive. There are fields of crops which is a novelty for me. My neighbor has goats! (So cute) There are horses. Everyone’s white and English speaking. There is summer and spring basically. Major bands do not have concerts here. There are no nearby major league sports teams

I liked the variety and excitement of the city. I appreciated the comfort of the suburb. I like the open spaces in my small town. I don’t like the lack of diversity- things are more boring and the food isn’t as great

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These-Ad5332@reddit

I don't have to ask someone what their great grandma's name was to see if we're related.

If you do something stupid in the city chances are someone isn't going to call your mom and tell her about.

Your love life and life choices aren't town gossip.

If you go to school in the city you'll probably have different teachers. If you go to school in the country you'll probably have the same teacher as your parents and siblings. Or the same teacher for multiple grades.

One thing which a lot of people don’t realize is that there is another divide which is every bit as great, that between the low population density places and the high density places. In low density places it is possible to live far from other people, travel long distances for groceries, know you need to keep as full a rank of gas in your vehicle as possible when going somewhere because you can find yourself an hour or more away from the nearest gas station, while high density areas you may be able to walk to a grocery store and you are likely seldom more than a couple miles from a gas station.

This affects how both rural and urban people live.

I live in a high population density state that is both highly rural and highly urban. This means a large amount of small towns, but fairly close together. Large farm communities with many 4H Clubs, drive your tractor to school days, County Fairs in every County, a large state fair, and most of the trappings of traditional rural America still exist such as many churches, lodges, square dancing clubs, etc.

And in both rural areas and urban areas you are never far from another house, or barn, gas station, police station, firehouse, or even a Hospital. Our most isolated rural County is only an hour away from a major Urban Center with several full service Hospitals.

It means our rural areas don’t match what is talked about regarding rural America in regard to a lack of Medical care, educational opportunities or isolation.

And our urban areas largely do not feel like isolated cities as for the most part they are part of a nearly never ending blend of properties dedicated to commerce, manufacturing, government, religion, education and agriculture.

Honestly you can for the most part walk from one end of the state to the other without ever being out of the sight of some structure. This is very different from low population density places.

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BosoxZach@reddit

Sidewalk traffic

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seanofkelley@reddit

Grew up in southern NH and now I live in Chicago. I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s and was really, really led to believe that cities were decaying/full of crime and violence and I was genuinely shocked by how nice a city can be. Like Chicago is a CITY but it's also full of nature. There are huge, beautiful parks. There are bunnies all over the place. Also there's so much of sense of community in some places- I know way more of my neighbors living in an urban place than I EVER did in a small town. We have block parties and watch out for each other's kids. It's not like cities don't have their problems. It's not like there's NO violence and NO urban decay but man living in a city can be so fucking NICE.

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UnusualFruitHammock@reddit

There are bunnies all over the place

The most unsettling part for me at first was the knowledge that there were other people within, like, speaking distance to me as I tried to fall asleep at night. I've more or less gotten used to it now, but I still despise the lack of privacy. Can't step outside my door without being seen by someone any hour of the day or night. But the tradeoff is being closer to my friends and not having to drive an hour to do stuff. Idk if it's worth it tbh

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Odd-Permission2310@reddit

From 500k to 2k

The lack of convenience, grocery stores closing at 8 pm inconveniece. Everything closed Sunday inconveniece. Boredom cos I don't bar hop and that's all there was.

Was delighted at friendliness in the small town this. People are accountable for their friendliness cos you bump into each other every other day. In big cities you can be a bitch and never see them again. So everyone's inconsiderate like with door holding in big cities.

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Jake_Corona@reddit

If you make small talk in a large city people think you’re weird, but in my rural town you’re considered impolite if you aren’t capable of making small talk.

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ColoradoWeasel@reddit

From close in suburbs of DC and then Denver to rural Colorado. You can see the stars and the Milky Way at night. Also, there really is a different smell to country air. Mostly just cleaner and crisp.

Empty_Difficulty390@reddit

Rural CO, here. All I smell is Greeley

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ColoradoWeasel@reddit

That would be the horribly foul part. I feel sorry for you if where you are that never goes away. Maybe move where the wind blows the other direction.

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RawbM07@reddit

I’m curious how unique to the US this is. I would imagine most countries with a relatively large population has similar differences between the major cities and small cities.

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icantgetoverthismoon@reddit

I’m basing this on what I remember from school right now, not hard data, but I think the majority of countries we think of as developed are primarily urban. The US has way more people living in rural areas than any country Americans would consider their peer. It’s both a space thing (not many countries are as large and spread out) and an efficiency thing, it can get difficult and expensive to serve remote areas, it often just doesn’t make sense to spend 10x per person on a service that you then have to both set up and maintain across long distances when the cost is way smaller in a denser place.

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FailFastandDieYoung@reddit

That's an excellent point. The only real big developed countries that can be compared to the US are Canada and Australia. Maybe if you stretch "developed" you can include China, Russia, and Brazil.

Of those, the US have the largest percentage living in rural areas. The others have \~90% in cities.

Not only are they in cities, their urban population density is generally high enough that it's assumed all cities are walkable with plenty of public transportation.

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Secure-Reporter-5647@reddit

I grew up rural, moved to a large metropolis for many years, and I'm rural again now. I didn't have much culture shock from rural to city, maybe I spent enough time as a kid going into the city so I was pretty well prepared for what to expect? Also I grew up well aware of the realities of my small town (all the same shit happens, you just know people personally).

Biggest culture shock moving back has honestly been how you GOTTA say hello to your neighbors and the people you pass by on the sidewalks/trails. Be ready to smile and wave at all times.

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plantbased98@reddit

I remember when I was 20 and I just moved to dc from rural Appalachia and was mind blown you could just take a bus home when you were out drinking to get home safely

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WordsAreGarbage@reddit

I had to learn that you have to use the cold water tap and not the hot one even if you’re about to boil it because the pipes are typically old and full of gunk. Grew up with well water so that was interesting!

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Itzagoodthing@reddit

How loud it is at night--which, seems obvious yeah? But you don't think about it until you EXPERIENCE it.

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blockuh9089@reddit

I grew up in a small town but often went to Manhattan with my family so I wasn't kept that much away from it but I was genuinely shocked by homeless people. This was decades ago when it wasn't as common as it is now but still I remember seeing people sleeping outside and it surprised me.

A bigger shock was years later after living in the city for most of my life going to an even smaller town where everyone knows each other- the prom queen marries the starting quarterback type place.

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tag8833@reddit

I grew up in the country on a farm. I interacted with someone in some form of government probably every other day. At least twice a week. The government is very interactive with American agriculture.

Living in a major city. I might see someone involved in government. But it's pretty common that I go 2 weeks or more between an interaction with someone in government.

When you see rural communities voting for these big expansions of the size of government and how much it interacts in people's lives. They are just used to that sort of thing. They meet people from the government all the time. But in a city, it's much less common, and people are more resistant to giving government more power over their lives. They basically prefer a government that maintains safety nets and boundaries to one that picks economic winners and losers.

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dixie_girl_w_secrets@reddit

While growing up in a small town, everybody that knew me or my family would come up to me and talk to me. I learned how to have a whole conversation with someone whether I actually knew them or not. People were also generally nicer and friendlier and more willing to help their fellow neighbor. There wasnt as much crime to worry about bc everybody knew everybody so we knew who the "bad eggs" were and even when there was something more serious happening (there was a guy who pulled a gun in the Walgreens bc they were out of his meds, he didnt hurt anybody just wanted his meds) it's usually big news and everyone usually knows the reason why. Also, since everybody knew everybody (and since we lived in an even smaller community about 10 miles away from said small town), my mother would have me dress up just to go to town just on the off chance we ran into someone we knew and she didnt want them to know we were struggling. You know, all about appearances. Not dressed like we were going to church, but like a dressy casual. Like going out to a normal restaurant with friends u aint seen since college.

However I moved to the big city about 10 years ago and one thing I definitely liked was there's a greater sense of privacy. Nobody knew me or cared who my mother was or my grandmother or my great grandmother or whomever. I saw people go to the grocery store in pjs and at first I'll admit, I judged them silently, but I definitely came around to it and since I lived so close to the stores, it didnt seem like any reason to be casually dressed or even put on makeup just to go a quarter mile down the road and pick up maybe 1 or 2 things. It was so much easier and definitely a load off my mind. I'll admit, I've since tested these limits with what im comfortable with (which involved not much more than shorts above my knee and either tank tops or a t shirt w no bra and in winter just whatever was warmest usually pjs and a sweater) and I dont get looked at any different as anybody else. It's probably a bit trashy and im sure somebody has silently judged me as well, but I find that I no longer care what other people think. I've had the freedom to explore myself a lot better.

Also, the crime was definitely jarring after moving to and living in a big city. I grew up watching the news and everything seemed scary but it usually only seemed to happen to other towns and places I didnt go so I never really paid much attention, now I dont even watch the news for my own sanity. It seems like every other day there's some tragedy going on. I also learned what the term "newsworthy" meant. It meant they only reported bad stuff happening if it was enough to stir up the masses. They didnt even report most of the crime that happened in the neighborhood I was living in. For example, there was a guy that was trying to buy a phone off Facebook marketplace from this girl and she got the guy in the car w her boyfriend and drove around for a while til they got to my street and then I don't know if boyfriend or the guy got shot (not fatal, he got shot in the leg), but the girl and the victim drove off in the car and the shooter took off running and actually got caught on my ring cameras running between my house and my neighbor's holding the weapon in one hand and his pants in the other while he jumped my neighbor's fence. I didnt even witness it since i was at work and didnt even know about it until i kept getting a notification that somebody was at my door and i checked and it was local police department searching the area. Also definitely jarring hearing gunshots going off during the day and even worse at night. In the small town, if u heard gunshots it was usually just hunters in the woods so I stayed out of the woods during hunting season or just wore brighter clothes, but in the city its different. In the city, it almost sounds like fireworks. One night I did hear gunshots along with tires screeching and I just jumped on the floor. No bullets came through my house but I didnt wanna chance it. I was alone and a little frightened. But since I tend to keep to myself, I usually dont find myself in any of that kind of trouble. I have moved but no matter which neighborhood I move to, it seems trouble is all over the place. Just a few months ago, my husband had the window broken out of his pickup by a bunch of kids looking for guns (thankfully he didnt have any in the truck) and we've also had our garbage can stolen, and no its not a joke, we left the cans out on the wrong day and rather than bring them back in, we left them out by the curb for the next pickup and day before pickup, someone came and drove off with our half full garbage can.

I would love to move back to the small town if only to be close to my family again, but there just isn't the same job opportunities that there is in the city. And I have a good job, my husband has a good job, and that so far has outweighed all.

TL;DR:

Small Town Living: Pros: everybody is willing to help you out at any given moment, not much crime. Cons: not enough jobs, no sense of privacy.

Big City: Pros: more privacy, more jobs. Cons: crime.

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Admirable_Bus5827@reddit

What was so exciting? Seeing a deer in the wild. It was so unremarkable to me I was staring right in the general direction she was pointing and still asking "....what are you looking at?", they're basically just background scenery/garden nuisances to me.

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velociraptorfarmer@reddit

One of my most wild experiences of living in a small town was almost hitting a herd of deer on the main drag in the middle of "downtown" while on the way home from getting groceries after work at 5pm in broad daylight.

You all knew each other at least to the degree you know a coworker who you don't really ever have a reason to talk to. It creates some weird interactions that I would never have imagined. For example, my local sandwich shop added me to their invoicing group. I forgot my wallet one time close to closing time and they offered to add me to the binder. Every month after that, I'd get a hand written invoice mailed to me. No contract, no worries, just a line of credit with a sandwich shop. They didn't even know my name.

But once you start getting too small, things become eery. There's nothing to do so they just start doing something. Drinking is problematic, it's pockets of space where drunk driving is still normalized because how else do you get to and from the one bar? People know too much about each other that judgement and bitterness become a veiled standard. Everyone is a little jumpy, like a baby that got too used to falling asleep in complete silence. Everyone just seems miserable but also refuses to leave because everywhere else is "expensive" and "dangerous" despite never going anywhere else.

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Fit-Bluebird-9449@reddit

Gunshots.

If you’re not an American I’m not sure how much you can relate to this post but definitely something I had to unlearn.

I grew up in the country in a small town, where it’s very secluded and not a whole lot to do besides be outside. During summer, and especially fall, you’d hear shot guns echo through the trees from sunrise to sunset. You have different hunting seasons, deer, turkey, bow season, etc… so hearing gunshots growing up was never scary, out of ordinary, or something you even thought about. It was most likely just Billy Joe and his friends doing target practice while sipping shitty beer from red solo cups and wife beater tank tops, or a hunter shooting at deer.

When I moved to the city, one of my first weeks a friend was over and we heard gunshots. We were mid conversation and I’m continuing on with the conversation but she just stopped. I didn’t even register the gunshots. I looked back and she had a bit of a panicked look. Another shot rang out quickly followed by a few more. I put the pieces together rather quickly and had to remember, gunshots in the city are not just some hillbillys or hunters. It’s someone shooting at someone else.

Not to mention the sounds the guns make are different and I learned what smaller guns and automatic ones sound like vs the ones I grew up hearing, usually one loud boom, if anything followed with another loud boom 5-10 minutes later.

So yeah, gunshots mean very different things depending on where you live. Could mean the Millers will soon have deer jerky to sell, or there’s gonna be a body bag.

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Fit-Bluebird-9449@reddit

Not seeing stars.

Gold_Telephone_7192@reddit

Anything. 99.99% of people you see in a city are strangers. You know literally nothin about them. Not their name, not where they went to high school, not who their parents are, not who their ex is, no where they work, etc. In a small town, the percentage of people who you know that stuff about is way higher, just because there are way fewer people and you grew up with lots of them.

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abaacus@reddit

Ok but that isn't what I was talking about, and I'm not sure how you got here.

This conversation was originally about your perception that small town people are more likely to "get into other people's business" than people in the city.

Are you arguing that because you don't know 99% of people in the city, it's proof small town people are more likely to get in other's business?

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Yeah, and the city feels lonelier, despite having a larger population. I have friends and family all over the city but they're not nearby, and trying to get people together even casually takes weeks or even months of planning in advance. And neighbors aren't friendly, or at best just ignore you.

Whereas coming from a small town, folks would have get-togethers at the drop of a hat, because no one is more than 10 minutes away and there isn't much else to do anyway. And your neighbors smile and wave, and shovel each other's driveways and swap produce from their gardens, etc.

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Wooden-Astronaut8763@reddit

I’ve lived in five different states throughout my life and in NJ/NY folks there often don’t know their neighbors.

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82ndoc@reddit

This.

It's a rate v. exposure issue.

Rural areas have a much higher crime rate, but you have encounters with many fewer people.

So if your town has 1,000 people and 5% violent crime rate, there are 5 people committing all the violent crimes.

If your town has 100,000 and a 1% violent crime rater, there are 1,000 people comitting violent crimes.

So if you're in a crowd of 1k-2k people, someone in that crowd IS a serious threat to their community. You don't know who, but someone in the crowd is. Whereas in the small community you could probably have some success avoiding specific people if you wanted to.

That being said the safety is really simple in urban spaces, and it's why people familiar with them get creeped out in rural places, if other people are around, you're safe. If you find yourself alone in a big city, can't see anyoneon else looking up or down the street, that's a bad place to be.

It's the same reason that you're expressing unease by the number of people in the hypothetical city scape. You feel safe by knowing people and how they behave. In even medium size towns that's not physically possible way of regulating safety.

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StandardAd7812@reddit

Depends on the city and town but overall life expectancy is higher in cities where I am. Better medical care, less dangerous life overall.

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tarheel_204@reddit

I’m sure health/fitness culture is the biggest factor there. From my experience, people in urban areas care much more about their health than the people I grew up around.

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Dry_Albatross5298@reddit

my ex-wife is from a very rural part of our state. Out driving, they wave at people driving in the opposite direction. I'm midwest born and raised and so used to The Nice but that's a different level

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MWH1980@reddit

Being outside of suburbia for so long, there are some things in the big city I hadn’t considered.

I was surprised to see places like banquet halls, let alone people told me about discount theaters where films went after their theatrical first-run.

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O_livia@reddit

I live in a big city now and am from a very small town.

Things I miss: [1] No light pollution, you could see every star. [2] Cruising down the road. No traffic, no traffic lights, just empty stop signs. [3] Knowing the neighbors you do have even if you couldn’t throw a stone and hit their house.

Things I don’t miss: [1] Undereducated, underpaid systematic issues that I’m privileged not to know in the city. [2] Everyone being white and not understanding what people of color experience. [3] Driving 30 minutes to get to a restaurant/grocery store/anywhere with activity.

Sounds like small town Oklahoma.

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Hour_Mall_1746@reddit

I'm an introvert but city life is incredibly isolating. I can go to Dollar General in my hometown and have a random positive interaction every day while living out in the middle of nowhere, but now I have lived in a city suburb and literally don't know any of my neighbors. Also understand that cities offer more opportunities to connect but that's on the condition that you're healthy enough to participate in that and I am not right now.

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SCorpus89801@reddit

Yep. The loneliest time of my life was when I was 21 years old living in L.A. I had roommates and some friends but I just felt so alone in that city.

How no one seems to know each other.

I’m only 100 miles from the small town I grew up in, but in my town everyone knows everyone, and lots of people keep tabs on each other. My mom fills me in on what’s happened with people I grew up with, even if she hasn’t personally seen them in years.

Maybe it’s because I’m a transplant, but in my city people barely know their neighbors.

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Several-Buy-3017@reddit

I grew up in a smallish town in Georgia. I used to be kinda jealous of the folks who lived in Atlanta because it seemed like they always had better stores, restaurants, concerts, sports events, etc. As an adult I lived in Atlanta for five years. I began to realize that all the stores, restaurants, concerts, sports, etc were not worth the hours sitting in traffic or the general cold natured big city people. Other big cities also tend to have an angry vibe that is missing from smaller towns.

Most Americans grow up in suburbs/towns around larger cities so it’s not that big of a leap from small town to major city though the biggest difference I’ve noticed is cities on the coast vs those non-coast.

Cloister phobia.. Grew up on 40 acres. Moved to the city with my now husband in a 3rd floor apartment. Felt like I had no privacy, and that everyone in the surrounding buildings could look in my windows. Never lived in an apartment again!

It’s like a whole new world when you can go to a grocery store without a minimum 60 minute round trip drive (not including shopping time). You don’t have to plan so extensively because you can just go grab whatever you need and be back home in like 10 minutes.

Actual sidewalks on almost every street was wild.

I honestly didn’t know that towns had streets that were legit Main St. All the small towns had one everyone referred to as “Main Street” but it was always actually named Oak, First, Washington, etc. Took me months to understand when I moved because I could not find the shops people were talking about on what was the main street of the town.

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FrostyVariation9798@reddit

Smaller town life to megatroplis life: it took me a decade to learn enough to not be naive, and to stop doing things the way i had envisioned when growing up.

Also, far more people to be careful of, and far more people to befriend.

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6483955@reddit

A car is a huge difference. Living downtown in a big city meant I got rid of my car because it costs quite a bit to keep it in a garage. Walking distance to grocery stores, shops, and restaurants is a nice perk!

It’s really loud at night in the big city unsurprisingly , and quiet/peaceful in rural areas.

The wildlife in rural areas is nice to see! That’s why I loved Seattle. Big city life, but driving distance to a beach, mountains, rivers, and cool wildlife.

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royalhawk345@reddit

It’s really loud at night in the big city unsurprisingly

The wildlife in rural areas is nice to see! That’s why I loved Seattle. Big city life, but driving distance to a beach, mountains, rivers, and cool wildlife.

This is why I love the Bay Area. I'm a three hour drive from some of the best places I can think of, and the rest are like two hour flights at most. I don't have much reason to go east of the Rockies.

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Kind_Way2176@reddit

The noise. Bugs and frogs are loud AF outside the city. The city can be super quiet sometimes. Frogs don't stop

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Individual_Rush271@reddit

That a big city is just a bunch of small towns crammed together.

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Donutordonot@reddit

How freaked city people are over wildlife. Grew up hunting, fishing, catching snakes etc etc.

On the flip side being able to run to the grocery store and grab what you need and leave is amazing. A 2 hour grocery run back home is 10 minutes in and out. Being just another face in the crowd has its up side.

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Perle1234@reddit

I moved to a big city and it was awesome and exciting for about 10 years and then I craved solitude so I did the most about it and moved to Wyoming lol. It’s great but I travel a lot for work and go to big and small towns and cities. I worked in Seattle last year and it was fun but I went to a smaller city of 50,000 this year and it’s really nice.

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Patient_Character730@reddit

Went from a big city to a small rural Mormon community. Everything closes early, like 8pm even on the weekends. Also Sunday everything is closed, hardware store, grocery store, sometimes even the gas station. It really was a change I hadn't expected. Also the owners of the businesses close whenever they feel like it to go fishing, hunting, or whatever, whenever. Doesn't matter that the sign says open M-F 9-5 if they want to close it down they can. I found this out trying to get my oil changed and the owner was like Nah I'm going fishing, try again next week. 😑

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NightOwl173@reddit

I love going to the movies. In my small town I could roll up 10 minutes before almost any showing (minus a give event movie like Avengers Endgame) and get a great seat. Last night I tried going 30 minutes before Project Hail Mary and the only seats available were front row so I ended up buying a ticket to the next showing and killing an hour. Not exactly shocking, but something I often forget about.

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ClickAndClackTheTap@reddit

No one walked me to my car when I left a gathering. I thought I had pissed off all my friends.

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shittyswordsman@reddit

Moved from a town of 1,000 to a city of 600,000.

There are traffic lights in the city!

A few kids in my city passed away from drug related injuries or addictions in the country side. Addiction is very easy to get into in these small communities, I could have easily gotten ahold of meth at 12-13 I'd I'd wanted.

No driving to "the next town over" for groceries, in fact, people don't really get the concept of "the next town over" around here.

People get married and have kids young in the countryside. Often 20-24. Teen pregnancies were not uncommon and abortion is EXTREMELY taboo.

I the country, all the adults kinda parented all the kids. It was common for friends parents to punish both of you, or to be scolded by a strange adult if you're acting out.

Neighbors do not being you baked goods upon your moving in in the city.

I no longer feel any reason to hide my bisexuality.

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Digital_Punk@reddit

Move from large cities (3 million+) to a small town of 40k. I was not prepared for how nosey and judgemental everyone can be. I also wasn’t prepare to run into my therapist, dentist, favorite barista, sister-in-law, and my next door neighbor all on the same grocery shopping trip. It’s a very weird experience.

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Igor_InSpectatorMode@reddit

In the city, everyone finds it insanely weird I'd even consider walking to a place just a couple miles away. It's not far at all, and it's not hard!!!!

Additionally, no one warned me that everyone would look at me suspiciously if I politely greet everyone I meet and wish them well like I do in a small town, and also no one warned me that the people who come up to talk to you when you're outside walking places are often crazy from drug consumption and/or mental health problems and will regularly do things like they you they are the reincarnation of Jesus. I'm beginning to think that these two are actually the same thing. Everyone is suspicious of me saying hello have a great day and walking by because the other people who approach you are so often crazy.

The sheer scale of the vice industries here is also mind blowing to me.

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Icey-Emotion@reddit

Driving is different.

I grew up suburban/rural area and moved to a suburban area of a large city. We had to learn how to be aggressive drivers. Then we moved back to a rural area with a small city. We had to learn to be less aggressive while driving.

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AAArdvaarkansastraat@reddit

People drive so fast!

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Key-Candle8141@reddit

The two places might as well be different countries

I grew up in rural W Virginia and now live in Kansas City (which thinks its a big city 😄) but I've traveled a bit and seen Los Angeles and Miami and Chicago

I'm looking forward to moving to a smaller place someday

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stang6990@reddit

Went from big to small. There is very little village feel in a small town unless you attend church, which we do not. So we get excluded because we are not part of the in crowd. Which isnt a surprise. In a bigger town you have options to find similar open minded people.

2nd issue is owning a small piece of land just outside of town. It sucks with kids bc no one is close to play with, families are not welcoming because of point 1.

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Write_Now_@reddit

Sidewalks are an under-appreciated luxury.

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Mysterious-Ruby@reddit

Small towns know everything about everyone. They know your parents and your family. They remember that super embarrassing thing that happened 10 years ago and remind you if it.

I’m sort of lucky in the sense that the nearest bigger town to my hometown has become a lot more diverse over the last 20-30 years which has kept it from falling into the kind of decrepitude a lot of formerly industrialized town in the Midwest face. A lot of the migrants that were brought in to work both in the fields and in meat packing have put down roots, set up shops and restaurants and are doing more than their fair share to keep the economy going. It also means there’s decent Asian and Mexican food options.

Locking cars/doors. My parents don't have a key to their house. I don't mean that in a rhetorical sense--my parents literally lost the key to their door in the 80s and have never replaced it.

We left the keys in all our vehicles with the doors unlocked. Barn is unlocked with keys in every vehicle (tractor, motorcycle, boat, etc etc) in it.

Having more foods available at grocery stores, and just more choices in general when buying stuff was cool. There were a lot of foods my husband (who had a similar socioeconomic background as me) had regularly as a kid that I hadn't tried until my teens or even in adulthood (like kale, fresh beets, mangoes), cause they either weren't available or were a high price and extremely low quality.

Also, businesses are open on Sunday in cities. Where I grew up, literally EVERYTHING was closed on Sunday. Everything except church. My town of 4000 people had 5 churches. Significantly more per capita than where I live now.

Everything is closer together in the city. I live, work, shop, and recreate in a 5 mile radius. That's almost unheard of where I grew up.

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Old-Sprinkles3135@reddit

I grew up in small mining townlets in the Intermountian west and now live in a PNW metro region with about 1M. I'm always low-key surprised that I don't run into more people I know or that my kids don't run into people they know,. especially at summer camps they attend in our neighborhood. I was so used to seeing people you know everywhere you go, like it or not. Going to the grocery store with my dad took 2+ hours because he would stop to talk to everyone.

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Hooligan8403@reddit

My parents were on a quest to move us to smaller and smaller cities and towns as I was growing up. As a kid the largest city I lived in was Regensburg Germany which at the time (89-92) was like 120k people. Loved it. There was always something going on. It was a beautiful city. Public transportation was easy for my mom to navigate not speaking much German with two small kids. We could walk anywhere else we needed to go. Our little neighborhood seemed small though it was part of the larger city. Local baker knew us since we always went in for bread and gave us suckers everytime. Same with the deli. Christmas markets in Dec were always awesome and they had a living nativity with camels. Food was awesome and while not as diverse back then as the cities I would spend a lot of time in later in my life we never had anything we couldn't find that we wanted to eat.

Smallest town I have ever lived in was in South Carolina. It's not even a town it's an unincorporated community of about 1k people. It had a "town square" that was an empty lot, one gas station/pizza place (no dining room), post office, and like one or two small local stores in the dieing "main street". It had one stop light. Next town over was only like a 10-15 minute drive but it wasn't much better in terms of amenities. Two grocery stores. Couple little restaurants and shops, one good bar, and like 10 churches per person. I hated it. Even the 29k desert town in CA I moved from had more diversity than most of the towns and cities around me in SC combined. Nearest Walmart was like 30 mins away. People all know each other and were always in each other's business. I thought it was bad in my CA town but worse in the rural area.

No-Conversation1940@reddit

There's a lot of talk about lingering segregation in Chicago, but, I see people of different races on the street. I'm not saying there isn't segregation, but I can't ever seeing anyone who wasn't white in my hometown of < 400 people.

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alanbdee@reddit

First thing that comes to mind for me that people in a small town live at a different pace. Everything's slower. Nobodies in a rush. I had heard it but I didn't understand it until I lived in a small town. Which was Beaver Utah, populations: about 5k.

I'm hoping that with WFH becoming more populate, more WFH people will move to these small towns. Lots of places are on the brink of dying because of lack of jobs. It's ultimately why I left. But at the same time, some towns like Beaver don't want to become too big. While I was living there, Wallmart wanted to put in a distribution center. Beaver city counsel said no. They wanted to keep the town small. Something I didn't understand at the time but I do now.

When it comes to political differences, a lot of it is inherent to where you live. If you live in a small town, you're not exposed to many if any gay people. There's a valid argument to be made that you won't want your tax dollars to be spent on something you won't benefit from.

There is a level of community you just don't see in cities or suburbs. For example, my aunt was in an abusive relationship. This was in the 60s. She was trying to get out but her husband threatened to kill her if she ever left. The local police were no help. She ended up asking her bishop for help, who had a relative in Beaver and they coordinated a help my aunt and the kids get to Beaver to hide.

It took her husband about 6 months to find out where she was. When he pulled off the exit in Beaver, the sheriff who had been on the lookout for him and his car pulled him over and told him he could leave town now or you can disappear into the mountains and will never be seen again. A sheriff could never get away with that today but I 100% believe it in a small town like Beaver in the 60s.

For better or worse, everybody knows everybody else and they all watch out for each other.

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beenoc@reddit

I'm hoping that with WFH becoming more populate, more WFH people will move to these small towns.

The problem is that, while a major factor, jobs are not the only thing that dictate where people want to live. A very large amount of people (I don't know enough to say a majority but I wouldn't be surprised, and I feel pretty confident in saying a large majority of the people who work in fields where WFH is a big thing) don't want to live in rural areas, for any salary.

They want lots of choices for restaurants and grocery stores nearby. They want to be close to the airport or the hospital. They want their kids to go to schools that have more resources than poor rural school districts. They want fun things to do nearby that aren't hunting, fishing, church, or "drive to the city to do X."

Even if WFH is an option and they move based on that, odds are they're going to move to an outer ring suburb that's 30-45 minutes from downtown, where they can get a nice big suburban house without breaking the bank but are still close to city amenities (and can go the other direction for the same distance to get to anything rural they want, like hunting), as opposed to Beaver, where you're 100 miles from the nearest Costco and 200 miles from the nearest airport of any size.

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BigBlueMagic@reddit

No big yard, or any yard at all really.

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JackFrostsKid@reddit

I don’t live in a “big” city, but the one I moved to is about 13x the size of my hometown. There are a lot of cultural differences I could talk about but I was at least warned about a lot of that.

What I did not expect is that cities are reliably 10 degrees hotter than surrounding areas. I looked it up at one point and it comes down to the fact that cities have a lot more pavement and a lot less trees but it’s still utterly bizarre to me.

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Leverkaas2516@reddit

It's not what must be unlearned, for me it's more a matter of what you can show and what you have to hide.

In my smallish town there were (Christian) churches everywhere and it's part of life. In the city, you learn to not make your religion public, because there are quite a lot of people who will ascribe ideas to you based on that, leading to a weird sort of intolerance that's also evident here on reddit.

There's tolerance in the city, it's just different. When I moved there to go to university I was in a record store and a guy walked in, bald, entire head painted green, black cape with a high collar, and just went about his business. It wasn't Halloween. He was just treated like a normal person, and I understood immediately: you can be outlandish (or downright crazy, as I came to learn) and people in the city just don't care. They've seen it all and learned to ignore it.

I grew up rural, and I currently live in a college town. So, not tiny, but not big. I'm kind of jaded about larger cities. Again, at least compared to mid-size towns, it's just the same sh*t, but more. Places to drink, places to eat, etc. Sure, the bigger places have more museums and shows, but you can only go to the same museum or zoo or garden so many times. It's also not like you're going to a show every weekend. So, I guess I just don't see the appeal in living in large metros. They are places to visit. I'd rather have my space where I can keep my animals and have the yard planted the way I want it without an HOA Karen knocking on my door. IMO the best deal is living rural, but not on a serious farm that you have to manage, and only being like one hour away from a large metro.

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Tree_killer_76@reddit

I’ve always lived in suburban parts of mid-large cities, but my dad grew up in sleepy small town Alabama and his parents, brother and my cousins never left. During my childhood, we frequently visited my dad’s side of the family and I still go back to visit every now and again.

I currently live in a very upscale suburb of the 5th largest city in the US, where the average home value is nearly $2M and there is virtually no crime of any kind. There is no homelessness or blight. The only thing you ever see on the Citizen app, for example, is people calling the fire department because there was a rattlesnake in their yard lol.

Yet, my Alabama family absolutely refuses to come visit. Why? Because they are certain they’re going to get murdered. To them, nearby big city = murder. Trying to convince them otherwise has been futile, despite the fact I’ve been here 20 years and have not been murdered even a single time.

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pomegranate7777@reddit

In a small town, everyone knows your business, to a ridiculous extent. In the city, no one notices what you do or wear or eat or buy or where you go.

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Farmwifehw77@reddit

I grew up in a town of about 2500 people, then moved to a city of 3 million people for 20 years, and have now moved to a different town of about 1500 people. The thing that got me was how isolating the city was. My whole entire subdivision just drove home from work, opened their garage doors, pulled their cars in, closed their garage doors, and never left the house again until time to do the same covert departure in the morning. And you only ever made friends by actively seeking out people you had things in common with. Moving back to small town and all of a sudden neighbors bump into each other in the street, stop by for a visit on the porch, invite you to everything. I actually have a wider circle of friends with more diverse interests now than I did in the city.

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zmonty07@reddit

Grew up in southern NH (surprisingly a lot of us in this thread) and now living in Virginia after being in DC for a bit as well.

More of a "looking back" story for me: One thing I've realized I really miss about living in the suburbs away from a major city is the starts. It got DARK where I grew up in southern NH, and with no light pollution anywhere around us the night sky was always full of stars. It's something I took for granted or just didn't think about much, but now that I'm surrounded by the DC/Virginia's heavy light pollution I realize how much I miss it.

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mac6uffin@reddit

Great book!

I thankfully read David Copperfield years before which made it even more resonant.

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404-gendernotfound@reddit

I love Barbara Kingsolver

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iowanaquarist@reddit

I didn't move to NYC, but I spent a couple weeks there... For such a supposedly modern city, the way they handle trash seemed third world to me. No dumpsters, not even trash cans along the roads, just mountains of trash (mostly in bags) piled along the sides of the roads.

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Loud-Bee-4894@reddit

Availability and variety of take-out. It was INSANE!

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scarletwitchmoon@reddit

As a teenager, I lived in a city/suburb so it wasn't as much as a cultural shock. But in my 20s and early 30s, I lived in a small town of 20k. I loved it for awhile. But I started to miss civilization. All my friends had graduated college and moved on. To make friends in certain small towns, at least in the South, it often relies on a church community. Even my friends that did stick around went back to church. It was like no one would make plans with you unless you saw them on a Sunday morning.

I moved from somewhere the nearest town with "everything" (level one trauma centers, sports leagues, concerts) was a four hour drive, to living smack in the middle of an even larger "everything" city. Stadium traffic from NFL games messes with our parking. There's a hospital just for eyes.

Because perfect storm of ADHD Medication Shortage, pharmacy weirdness, and a doctor who won't give me a paper script I've have a monthly road trip to a pharmacy two hours away for the last six months. It's not convenient but it's not like an overnight stay, either.

Locals are horrified. I have to repeat myself so they can be sure they heard me correctly. You'd think I'd said I was getting there by hitchhiking the I-5 corridor in the '70s. My GP (not the prescriber) is originally from the Canadian prairie. "Weird he won't just give you a paper script but four hours once a month isn't bad. Your car good in the snow?"

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since_the_floods@reddit

No one warned me I'd fall in love with the quiet, the space, and the greenery. Shocking because I never thought it was loud, crowded, or bleak.

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IrianJaya@reddit

I used to live in a small town. About a year after I moved to the city, my car broke down on a busy road. This was around 1991 or so, and I never owned a cell phone back then. No worries, where I grew up you just wait for someone to drive by and they would stop to give you a lift to the nearest pay phone. In the city, nope! Hundreds of cars drove past and no one even so much as slowed down. And I stood out there like an idiot just waiting expectantly. Finally I gave up and started walking until I eventually found a gas station with a pay phone. No one told me that other people don't stop for broken down cars in the city.

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Ok-Ad8998@reddit

Grew up in inner ring suburbs, worked in the city and in outer suburbs. Last 20 years in a small rural town. Different in a lot of ways. You know far more of the people you come across in a typical day. Politically, a lot different. I was shocked about how casual people are with guns out here. Walked past a pickup in the grocery store lot last fall that had a deer rifle laying on the back seat. Windows open, no one around.

EatFishKatie@reddit

Lived in a city moved to a rural town. What surprised me is being forced to coexist with terrible people. In the city, if someone is terrible, its easy enough to avoid them. In a small town you are trapped and forced to interact. Nothing else was that bad except having to interact with a small handful of people who just were annoying, rude and outright mean. Go to the grocery, there they are. Bar? They are there too. Filling up gas, they are at the pump next to you. It was insufferable. Again, most people were lovely, it just was that small handful that eventually helped me realize I didn't want to coexist in a place with people I would normally never interact with. The thing is, I know cities have people like this, it's just so much easier to escape them and get away.

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Heykurat@reddit

In small rural towns, everybody knows everybody's business. Who's having money troubles, who got arrested, who's sleeping with whom, whose kid is the troublemaker. There are no secrets. You tell someone something and it will be across town within the day.

In bigger cities, nobody knows you from a hole in the wall. It's a kind of anonymity that let's people have more privacy.

This phenomenon is also why small towns usually have a few people who "keep to themselves" and are quasi-hostile to visitors. They're trying to preserve their privacy.

One advantage to smaller communities is that when there is someone up to no good, like a burglar or that guy who trespasses on your land with his ATV, someone will know who it is. "Oh that's Danny's truck" or "His sister said he just got a new gold watch from somewhere".

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OdinThePoodle@reddit

I grew up in a western suburb of Chicago, which in and of itself wasn’t particularly populous (approx. 60-65,000 while I lived there), but as part of a metro area with a population of nearly 10 million, you’re just a face in the crowd. Outside of your personal sphere of influence, no one knows who you are. You’re totally anonymous.

mpjjpm@reddit

I grew up in a small town and now live in Boston. It never gets dark in the city. I was visiting a cousin and few years ago and thought I’d had a stoke in my sleep because I woke up and couldn’t see anything. It was just so completely dark, and now I’m used to some level of ambient light, even with blackout shades.

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Icarusgurl@reddit

I grew up in a smaller town and moved to the capitol city of my state.

So many runners here! All hours of the day, all weather conditions, just mofos running. Back home, if someone was running, it was from someone or something.

(And I'm not dogging on runners, I ran for about 10 years.)

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Gullible-Apricot3379@reddit

Not exactly the question, but I grew up in a medium-sized city of about 100k people and now live in a city of 1.3M and metro of 8.34M.

Quality healthcare was more accessible in the medium-sized city. Not talking about cost— things like how far it was to a doctor’s office, or how long it took to get to a hospital, or how long it took to get an appointment, not having to pay for parking…

Part of it was definitely that the smaller city was in a sweet spot— the largest for a couple hundred miles and large enough to have the vast majority of the services (for example, there was a children’s hospital as part of one of the city’s two hospitals, but there were only 8 pediatric beds or something. Compare to the bigger metro, where we have two huge children’s hospitals, but you’re kind of limited to those two, so if you don’t live next them, you’re kind of SOL.)

And there were definitely services you couldn’t get in the smaller city (like an organ transplant, or a burn unit). But the overwhelming majority of normal stuff was so much easier to navigate.

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Justmakethemoney@reddit

The diversity.

I grew up near a town of <1000, in a midwestern state. It was the least ethnically diverse county in my state, and according to one county official "we like it that way".

I did not have meaningful interaction (beyond pleasantries with a stranger) with a POC until I was in college. Same for any religion other than some variety of Protestant. My career put me into a few different communities, one being predominantly Muslim, and another consisting primarily of people from the inner city. I was the 20-somethng asking ignorant questions.

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Hour_Mall_1746@reddit

Also diversity functions differently. Northern cities are diverse on paper and extremely segregated in practice where most white or black residents just don't interact with each other. Rural people in the south are all poor together whether they're racist or not and go to the same schools. Rural areas in the south with diversity subsequently end up with more integration and mixed families than many northern cities.

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Johnnys-In-America@reddit

Come out west if you really want to see the definition of melting pot.

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Character_Pace2242@reddit

I grew up in a very rural farm town in Illinois of 750 people. We actually lived 5 miles outside of town. At 18, I moved to a city and have lived in cities of varying size ever since. Nothing really surprised me about moving from a rural area to an urban area. Probably because we traveled often when I was growing up and we were exposed to different cultures, cities, etc.

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HolyCompetence@reddit

People in the city don't say thank you when you hold the door for them. They usually don't even look at you.

I grew up in a rural area and went to college in a big city. To me, it was crazy how accessible Uber was there (there were never enough people where I lived for Uber to function), how many things there are to do, and how diverse it was.

My roommate was so used to being in majority non-white spaces and thought our school was conservative and that kind of blew my mind.

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brown_polyester@reddit

Rural to big city to small town. You lock your doors in cities! We never did that growing up in the woods!

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I went to college in NY. Man it was nice having public transportation to go shopping 10 (20-30 because of the stops but still) minutes away instead of having to drive an hour and be able to take a 30 minute train to grand central. I’ve been going insane here in vermont since I left.

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neddiddley@reddit

Small town to city here.

When you grow up in a small town, it’s hard to really grasp the scale of things in a city. And I mean everything.

I mean, the school district I live in now is one high school, and if you combine the enrollment of all the elementary and middle schools that feed that HS, it’s probably bigger than the total population of the town I grew up in. And that’s just a single school district that covers a tiny geographic part of the city and the suburbs for where I live now.

Same thing with wealth. In the small town I grew up in, “rich” basically meant your parents ran some mom and pop business, or maybe one parent was a doctor at the county hospital. Your house was nicer, but it was still pretty much your typical house. In contrast in the city, you drive through wealthy areas with actual mansions with square footage that compares to an entire school where I grew up.

There are countless other examples, but the point is, you don’t really know how small your hometown really was until you’ve lived in a city.

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hypo-osmotic@reddit

The politics of which school to go to/send your kids to was interesting to see when I moved to a big city. In the small town I grew up in, there was only one public school and we all went there. If it really didn’t work out you were homeschooled or went to another town entirely. In cities there’s multiple public schools sometimes with multiple districts, multiple private schools, charter schools. There’s lotteries to get into them and debates about where to draw the district lines and who to bus in

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Eagle_Fang135@reddit

Grew up in the outer burbs. I was so surprised how much work it was to go do anything in the city. It was 10 minutes just to get the car onto the street. Then wherever you are going you have to search for parking.

So a quick 10 minute milk run takes an hour. So then you plan around that for other errands too. Just a lot of extra hassle to do basic things.

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Mobius3through7@reddit

I went medium sized town to big city to middle of nowhere.

The biggest surprise was how AWFUL urban living was to me, so I went really hard in the opposite direction and now live in an area with a lower population density than Mongolia.

It's heaven by comparison

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MainelyKahnt@reddit

I've seen a good mix in my time. I've lived in the city, in the suburbs, and now in a rural area. The city was by far the most convenient. You could walk to all services you need like grocery stores, farmers markets on weekends, package stores, bars, restaurants, event/music venues, etc.. but it's very crowded, and has become exceedingly expensive. Apartments and even houses are small and close together. Not much outdoor space to really enjoy unless it's a public park and those are full of homeless folks most of the time these days. The suburbs however were way worse. Everyone was super nosy where city folk usually keep to themselves. Every house looked like a copy/paste of the last one. Basically soul-suckingly generic and bland. I mean that about the actual area and the people that live there. Your worth was measured by the size of your house and the car in your driveway. You'd get yelled at if you didn't mow your lawn in over a week. In the rural area life is 100000x slower than the city, but oddly similar to the suburbs. Tin the suburbs everyone commuted to the city for work so it was a ghost town during work/school hours. In the rural area I live in now you see people out working their land, building out-buildings, moving/grazing livestock. The town center is full of people grabbing food or a beer in between the shit they have to do. However, if you don't make friends easily or actively seek out activities with others it can get really lonely really quickly.

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MainelyKahnt@reddit

Basically, the city was a bunch of communities stacked on top of one another, no matter your interests or vibes, you'd find a community eventually and they were tight knit so as to differentiate from the many other communities present. In the rural area, there's only one community but it's based around living there instead of specific interests/lifestyles. Lobstermen, farmers, contractors, clerks, salespeople etc.. all apart of the one community where in the city they'd split into their respective cliques. The suburbs was like a dysfunctional version of the rural. Only one community of many walks of life and they all hate each other and make sure it's known. Like mean girls on steroids but instead of writing a "burn book" they just sue you for petty shit and call the cops if you dare let your kids play outside after 6pm.

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Head_Razzmatazz7174@reddit

I grew up in a smaller town. Once the base closed in 1973, a lot of the businesses downtown suffered, as many of the military people stationed there transferred to other bases around the country. My mother got work as a part time teacher, then a car dealership, and finally got back into civil service.

Most of the office jobs were taken up by people who had lived there since the early 60s, and you pretty much had to know someone to even get an interview at some of the better paying ones.

When I moved to the city a few years after graduation, my biggest culture shock was having a huge choice of grocery stores within a 5 mile radius, and the amount of actual well-maintained sidewalks everywhere. Public transport was a new concept to me.

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emmaros3@reddit

The suburbs are so quiet and dark. You shut off the lights, and there is no sound, no light.

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pikkdogs@reddit

The first thing you learn is that not all city people are the same. You grow up in a small town thinking there are two kind of people in this world, small town folk and big city folk. Then you move there and there are all kinds of divisions.

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WrongJohnSilver@reddit

People actually don't understand where their food comes from. They didn't grow up with it growing in their backyard, or having to care for then slaughter the herd.

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MuppetusMaximusV2@reddit

People actually don't understand where their food comes from.

But what does this mean? Like, they don't know that their steaks probably came from somewhere in the Midwest? What are they supposed to do with that information?

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The12th_secret_spice@reddit

There’s a lot of country folks who moved to the city. This just sounds like a stereotype.

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WrongJohnSilver@reddit

It's what I experienced moving to the city.

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penisdevourer@reddit

My parents are divorced and live an hour away from eachother. Mom lives in the country (and had primary custody) and dad lived in the city (had us on weekends). My 3 older half siblings lived with dad full time.

Me and my big sister and little brother could walk to and from school (not the middle school though, gang activity in the neighborhood surrounding it). In elementary we’d walk from school to mom’s sewing shop, and the only thing between our house and the highschool was a cemetery so I’d walk to and from the highschool.

My 3 older half siblings sometimes had to walk home from school if one of their friends couldn’t drive them or they missed the bus. When they did have to walk they wouldn’t get home until after dark.

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17Girl4Life@reddit

I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and I never fit in. But I was a reader and a film buff, so I knew about the wider world. Moving to a big city was an easy transition for me. I immediately felt more comfortable, and I love all the cultural opportunities available here. No big surprises, pretty much what I’d hoped for.

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anythingaustin@reddit

I lived in cities my whole life. I now live in a very rural mountain area and my closest town has 200 full time residents. There are no gas stations or grocery stores but there is a brewery, a distillery, and a pizza place. What has surprised me is how hard everyone parties when there’s nothing else to do. I genuinely thought that living a simpler life meant healthier. We don’t really have access to fresh produce or medical care but there are just a crap ton of drugs and alcohol.

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Individualchaotin@reddit

I can wear whatever I want and get compliments or nothing instead of judgment.

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BrettScr1@reddit

People spend a lot of time talking about which highways they take. Saturday Night Live made fun of this in “The Californians” but it’s honestly true of Americans in any major metropolitan area, not just the ones in California. “I took Highway 7 to 394 and then got on Highway 169 and…” “No, that’s not the route I took; I took 494 and…”

Where I grew up, I don’t even know the number of the highway because there’s just the highway and the Interstate and you take one or the other depending on whether you’re going east-west or north-south.

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m_leo89@reddit

Where are you from where there is no Rural and Urban areas?

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I am shocked by the amount of noise and trash people will put up with.

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UpbeatPhilosophySJ@reddit

The cockroaches in big city buildings are real

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I grew up in Los Angeles urban sprawl where one city abuts another. I now live in a small town with one stoplight. Things are very different here. Whenever you go out you run into someone you know. Some of the stores only take cash (no credit or Apple Pay), People are very supportive of local businesses and don’t use big chain stores/restaurants.

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DeeDeeW1313@reddit

I grew up in a tiny town about 60 miles east of Houston. Population was 1,500 and now it’s even less. Just one gas station, one conviene store, a feed store and three churches. I went to school 20 miles away with a bunch of kids from neighboring tiny town. My graduating class was 80 kids. We drove 30 minutes to Walmart. There was legit nothing to do as a teen but as a kid running around was great fun. Swimming in creeks, running in pastures, climbing trees. It was hard in HS. We had pasture parties and drove around backroads. Eventually we’d drive into Houston to see movies or go out to eat. But yeah, as soon as I turned 18 I moved to Austin for college.

Now I live in a suburb of Portland (Oregon). Wouldn’t consider it a big city but it’s a city.

Ideally I’d want to live on a bit of property do we could own chickens and a few cows or goats. But only 10-15 minutes from a nice suburban area because I want my kids to go to a school where they have more access than I did as a kid. I also want to live within 30-45 minutes of a major city to have access to museums, zoos, good airports.

Squidgie1@reddit

Moved from Chicago to Southern Indiana (0/10, do not recommend it) and you cannot get an appointment for professional services on a Saturday.

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Fluid_Anywhere_7015@reddit

In my experience, small towns in America are pretty solidly homogenous. There's one predominant ethnicity/culture, with very little variation. That's not to say minorities don't exist, but rather their experience is buried so far in the background as to be almost completely invisible.

Moving to a big city was a really eye-opening experience. The sheer variety of ethnicities and cultures can be overwhelming, and learning there are spaces in which you, as a majority white person, can feel distinctly uncomfortable because now YOU are the "minority" in that enclave or neighborhood.

But it's all in what you decide to make of it. Keep your eyes and ears open. Behave like you're a foreigner in a strange country, and don't assume that they ways and mores in which you were raised were so entirely as universal as people told you. Avoid being the bull in the china shop as much as possible - which means being extremely polite and very honest.

Assimilation can happen pretty rapidly and painlessly if you just behave decently and non-defensively.

I grew up in a small town, moved to big cities where I lived for decades of my adult life, but finally returned to a small town to retire. That last decision was prompted by more of the congested nature of city life as opposed to the slower and more relaxed lifestyle in a small town.

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LifeFindsAWhey@reddit

In my experience, small towns in America are pretty solidly homogenous. There's one predominant ethnicity/culture, with very little variation. That's not to say minorities don't exist, but rather their experience is buried so far in the background as to be almost completely invisible.

I dare say this is more true for areas outside of the Deep South. I grew up in a standard rural Louisiana town, and we were pretty close to 50 / 50 Black and White, with a lot of French Catholics and sizeable chuck of Anglos Baptists.

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GSilky@reddit

Never being able to be alone. There is always someone around. I learned to be up and about at 5a on Saturday and Sunday morning because it was the only time I was able to find a modicum of isolation outside of my apartment.

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EvilMrGubGub@reddit

The rural life is quiet. Seeing people is a rarity but I never felt unsafe on our property.

You do realize at some point that you have to take better care of yourself. A sprained ankle when walking in the woods or creek is a bigger deal than if I do that anywhere where I live now. If I broke a bone or sustained a serious bleed, I would seriously be in charge of my own ability for survival. There was no ambulance or fire department that could respond quickly.

Also snakes. I'm in Missouri so Copperheads and Water Moccasins are my least favorite things to see in my path. Since I fished a ton as a kid i always had to watch the bank to avoid an accidental encounter. Never had a real close call, but I also observed several common sense rules. Thick jeans, thick socks, high top boots, never walking in tall grass or murky water if I could help it, look before you step is big and saved me a few times.

You don't see some of those snakes because they stay still until you literally step on them. The moccasins were easier because they hate people and tend to stay away as soon as they sense us. Always heard stories of them chasing people but I didn't have that experience, but also I kept way aware at all times of snakes. There was water running through half our land so they had a very big healthy home.

Look up alligator snapping turtles, and their largest size. We had the type of environment where that was a very real possibility for their size, as I personally sighted several through the years.

Meals are planned better because you cant just go galavanting with no food on an empty stomach and expect to have a good time. It could lead to you getting hurt!

We didn't keep guns on us due to our age and we felt relatively safe around the wildlife in our area, though we did have a cougar, lion whatever they are and that was always a threat in the back of our minds. Never any bad contact with him/her, plenty of game around. But I know they sometimes loved to hang out near our barns at night.

When grandmother realized that she no longer allowed us outside at night, and I think got the uncles to stash a rifle for her just in case. Plus we installed better floodlights for the whole yard area, no shadows means no hunting grounds.

There's a lot more forethought for everything. We had extra gas, heating elements, fire wood, generators etc. You never want to be caught without something.

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wampwampwampus@reddit

I grew up in a city with multiple gay bars and a community center that had regular events. I moved to a much smaller town (not quite rural), and queer community is a lot harder to find, but way more democratic? It's smaller groups of people doing fun things with other people who share their interests, and if your interest isn't represented, it's fairly easy to put something out there and see if other folks are interested. It's way less alcohol-based, and for a few other reasons it's kind of nice, but we also have zero full time gay bars (gay-friendly and even gay-owned, but a different vibe than what I came up with), and the few more official orgs and pride festival tend to be underwhelming.

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BrotherNatureNOLA@reddit

I grew up on 350 acres. We could not see our neighbor's house. Everyone could walk around their yard naked if they wanted to. Now that I'm in the city, I can hear my neighbors when they argue. When I'm gardening, I can smell whenever they're smoking.

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DiscontentDonut@reddit

I've lived in a city all my life, but I have plenty of family in very rural areas that I visit somewhat frequently.

The biggest thing that shocks me is always the lack of traffic. Even at 5pm on a Monday (rush hour, when most people get off work), there are hardly any cars on the road. It never occurs to me until after the fact that duh, farmers, restaurant workers, and people who work retail don't have standard office and/or military working hours (I live by a giant naval base).

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Valuable_Recording85@reddit

I grew up in a town with 25k people. Big enough that you don't know everybody, but small enough that you know everybody at school and church. After Meijer and Walmart ran the grocery stores out of town, you only had two places to make regular purchases. There was a strong sense of familiarity, even if it wasn't quite community all the time but there were times I saw tons of strangers come out of the woodwork; most notably the county fair and the Relay for Life. I used to go to those places just because I know all my friends would be in the same place back before we had cell phones.

I moved to a town with 1k people. It was weird seeing everyone else with a strong sense of familiarity and me being the new guy. People I didn't even know thought they knew my business because gossip is the only fun past time for a lot of those folks.

I've moved to a couple other places, but right now I'm in a city with a metro area of about 2 million people. Most people are just as nice as they are anywhere, but I never anticipated just how much time I would spend in my car.

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Brennisth@reddit

I moved from a small town in the south to Atlanta (big city for southern standards) then down to a suburban area in Florida. It might as well have been three different countries. I could not believe that people would casually eat at a restaurant when it wasn't a major holiday / event in both cities and suburbia. Daily shopping was common, instead of a once a week planned outing. In the city, I lived in an apartment with hundreds of people...and knew none of them by name. In my hometown, everyone knew everyone. When I moved to suburbia, I knew a few neighbors by name, which then surprised me again because I thought that was just a rural thing.

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Bosox783@reddit

There are a lot of things, but the diversity really stands out, I grew up in a small city with almost no Hispanic population at time outside of Mexican restaurants. I took Spanish in high school but didn't take it seriously because it felt pointless. I regularly regret it now as I've spent most of my adult life in places where I'd say \~20% or so of the population speaks Spanish as a primary language. Major metros contain a lot more diversity than just Spanish speakers, but it is the thing I experience most day-to-day.

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Bosox783@reddit

Another thing is how important picking where you live is in a major metro. I could be downtown in 10 minutes in my hometown, and in under 30 on my bike. In big cities, you can easily be cut off by neighborhoods. Once I hit my 30s and my friends started buying homes in the suburbs, it became easy to live an hour+ apart even if separated by 10 miles as the crown flies. When I was growing up, someone who lived 10 miles away still lived within 15 or 20 minutes traveling.

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jamiesugah@reddit

I grew up in a town of 1200 people. I miss grass. Like, yeah, I can see it, but I have to make an effort.

Also I miss the stars.

I've had several conversations in aisles too. One lady who I never met asked me what my favorite tea was because she was looking to try a new kind. (I was looking at tea bags) I spent 5 minutes discussing tea bags with her. Ended with both of us trying different teas we haven't tried before. I have had many instances where I got recommended a product by standing in the aisle comparing two products and some random person walking by stops to tell me which one worked for them.

Rural seems to be so much more friendly, willing to help strangers.

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Perdendosi@reddit

I grew up in a town of 1200 people. I've lived in now three cities of more than 1 million.

There are stereotypes of each living situation, and of course those stereotypes are often wrong or gross overexaggerations. But I don't think I was "genuinely surprised" about anything in either living situation.

Is it surprising that large cities are more diverse, offer more dining and shopping options, have more culture, are more expensive, and are more anonymous? Nope.

Is it surprising that small towns are generally more homogenous, offer fewer things to do, are cheaper, and require you to know everyone? Not really.

I think that people who've not lived in small towns might be at least somewhat surprised at how much people truly care about each other there, even if you may not agree on politics (or sports teams, which are probably even more contentious). Most people are actually rooting for you in a serious, genuine way and are proud of you when you succeed, whether that's helping our football team get to regionals, getting a I at music contest, rallying folks to build a new shelter house, starting a business, or whatever.

That said, I've been lucky that I was not a member of any "serious" outgroup when living in the small town, so I didn't have to be the subject of serious discrimination. That might change my view. (I do think that lots of folks in small towns have significant cognitive dissonance when confronted with their bigoted views, whether that's racism or homophobia or whatever and end up with a "you're one of the good ones" mentality. That's not to excuse their beliefs or practices of course, but just goes to show how silly such discrimination really is.)

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Vegetable_Morning740@reddit

I live on East Coast of US , New Jersey , very diverse and inclusive area . Visiting Michigan and Colorado I couldn’t figure out what was missing … oh there are no people of color . No diversity . It made my white ass uncomfortable .

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GetInTheHole@reddit

I grew up in a town with about 2000 people until I was 18. Moved to a city of about \~45K for college, then moved to a city with about 3 million which is where I've lived ever since.

Nothing really surprised me. I was born in a small town. Not a cave without TV/radio/newspapers. I knew what cities were.

The major thing to unlearn, which I did immediately in college, was not to leave my car keys on the floormat and the car doors unlocked all of the time. But that wasn't much of a stretch.

People make way more of the divide than there really is. Does everyone know your business in a small town? Sometimes. But you know theirs as well. So it's a detente' of sorts. And it has its positives. I can trust that my aging parents have people who will check up on them when I'm 1000 miles away.

Can you take advantage of all of the amenities in a large city? Sure. But people quickly find their routine and don't literally go to the museum every weekend.

Im actually a LOT safer in my city than I was in rural Idaho.

I was told girls get snatched off the streets by their ponytails in the city. In fact, everyone is actively trying not to piss off the cops, even at night (this is a particularly safe city admittedly -- but I never believed such a thing even existed).

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Grew up in a compilation of small towns outside of Jacksonville, Florida. I now live in San Diego. The biggest thing for me was the diversity in grocery stores. I keep getting asked if I’m going to move back home but I live 5 minutes from a Vietnamese grocery store and there’s a Mexican grocery store right across the street. Why would I ever give up this kind of diversity to live in fucking Middleburg where the local high school basically gives you your diploma, a confederate flag, and your first set of adult sized klan robes? Hard pass.

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AdmiralKong@reddit

Moved from a small town of 1500 to a big city of over a million.

The first thing I noticed was that city life is crazy expensive. The second thing was that basically everything the small town people told me about cities while growing up (high crime, unfriendliness, weirdos) was either completely wrong or the other way around.

My neighbors in the city are all super nice and we know each other, have a group chat for local events. People talk to each other. Crime is significantly lower if you look per capita. And the people in my small town were WAY weirder than the average city resident, just baseline.

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NaomiiiTwinz@reddit

I used to live in South Floridan cities and things are much closer. There was constant busses and an active night life.

It's loud, busting, expensive, some people are honestly rude as hell. When we first moved to Florida, it turned out much safer than I initially thought it was, so that was a surprise.

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Aggressive_Power_471@reddit

How close together the houses are. How much concrete there is. Depending on the city you actually don't want a car (Boston I did not, Phoenix it is a must.)

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SaltandLillacs@reddit

I can walk to everything I need in 10 minutes

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mynewworkthrowaway@reddit

For quite a few years I completely forgot that our state had a professional hockey team. Until one day I was driving through the state capital and see a huge crowd of people just standing around outside this building. I get closer and see the teams logo on the building and realized what it was. Hockey just isn't a big thing where I live.