Living in a small town...

[Warped9]

At this point the only thing I'm somewhat disappointed with is the daily newspapers. Back in Mississauga the weekend was my time for newspapers. On Saturday I'd read the Toronto Sun and the Toronto Star. On Sunday I'd focus on the Toronto Sun's sunday edition (I like the differing left and right perspectives).

Here in Brockville you can still get the Toronto Star, but it costs more. You can't get the Toronto Sun--instead you can get its sister paper the Ottawa Sun which is really a winnowed down imitation. It just doesn't have the same overall feel to it.

Thankfully in this day and age you can get any paper you want online. The Sun's Sunshine Girls even look better because of the better resolution images as do the car pics from the automotive sections in each paper.

Shopping wise I can't yet see any real deficiencies. The retailers have made a decent job of getting their stores most everywhere. The downside is that so much of the plain box style architecture looks so much the same wherever you go. This town also apparently has a comic shop called The Comic Cave. I'll have to check it out. But sadly it appears to lack a decent book store to my liking. For me Chapters/Indigo, W.H. Smith and Coles stores have long become bust. The World's Biggest Book Store off Yonge St. just north of Dundas in downtown Toronto was a decent place to find stuff I was interested in like science fiction. Thankfully books are something you can get easily online. But I admit I'm old-fashioned in regard to liking to handle a book before I buy it.

It's going to be an interesting experience.

 

[Triskelion]

Grew up in a town of 5000. Couldn't wait to get out. Now living in a city of 19,000,000. Can't wait to get back. I like 100,000-500,000 size, small enough yet large enough. Never tried the 10,000's though.

But definitely give me small towns over big cities any day. But then, I happen to value my humanity.

 

[nx1701g]

I prefer small town living - my town has a little over 300 people in it - to the city life.

 

[Warped9]

Sitting around the breakfast table this morning I just learned this town even has its own Santa Claus Christmas parade and last year they had about fifty cars, or floats, or whatever and that several thousand people showed up to watch the parade go by.

Another upside is that my new coworkers (so far) seem to be a decent bunch. The management team mostly seem to have a witty and humorous bent with touches of sarcasm. I should also add that all them come from elsewhere as well and many if not all from small communities.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I have always been a Big City Person™, having lived in big cities all my life. The smallest place I've lived in had a population of 150,000. However, I have worked in much smaller towns, many with the usual facilities and amenities, the smallest one being about 26,000 in population, but only for short periods of time (say, no more than a year).

Sadly, these small towns still have the usual big businesses (i.e. the Big Four supermarkets) nearby which kind of ruins the charm of the town centres. Last year I went on holiday to Carrbridge, near Aviemore (a place I had visited a few times in my teens), and was somewhat saddened to note that a big Tesco had opened in Aviemore town centre, like a sore thumb among the tourist centres, ski and mountaineering stores, and book shops.

I don't know what it is, but sometimes I like having the big bustle of a busy city centre to visit at my will, and sometimes I don't. I once worked in Boston in Lincolnshire (a town of about 35,000 people) and I felt as if I was in a completely different world, which sometimes was welcome and peaceful to be away from the crowds, but other times felt odd and a little too "close-knit" for a person brought up in the bigger cities.

And as I've mentioned in previous threads, I have found it hard to maintain a close friendship with people due to my moving around all the time, but I do have friends, associates and familiar colleagues in the various places I have lived.

 

[Warp Coil]

I live in a massive suburban town of 97,000 that is sandwiched between two large cities (Washington, D.C. and Baltimore). While I wouldn't exactly call it city life, I'm surrounded by people and I'm accustomed to large, urban metropolitan areas. I've never found myself particularly interested in living in a big city - I like the peace and quiet. I like trees and grass and some open spaces. But at the same time, I think that living in small town USA would be very difficult. What is there for people to do? Right now I have options - multiple movie theaters, dozens of restaurants, parks, lakes, mini-golf, bowling alleys, malls and shopping centers... all within reach. Plus, I've got the two massive cities each within a thirty minute drive, where there's even more to do. I guess I just worry that living in a small town in the middle of nowhere limits choices and options, and I wouldn't like that one bit.

 

[sojourner]

Give me a town big enough to have a large bookstore like Borders or B&N and my holy trinity of shopping: Bestbuy, CompUSA and Target. Oh, and a good theatre with stadium seating. But NO BIGGER. (and preferably no Walmart, that place seems to attract the most unsavory people)

 

[Delta Belle]

I once visited a friend who lived in Flagstaff, Arizona (pop. about 55,000). They lived outside the town in the countryside, with clean air, clear skies, a stunning view of a mountain from their big kitchen window. It was so quiet there, I was afraid I'd immediately go deaf when I stepped out of the airport back in the big city.

After a couple of days, I realized that in addition to the clean air/clear skies/mountain view, every one of the country homes had a satellite TV dish.

 

[thestrangequark]

Every once in a while I become temporarily enamored of the idea of living in a small town. I've lived in Seattle and New York, so I've never experienced small town life. Even my study abroad time was spent in big cities, Cairo and Puebla.
I don't know if a small town could sustain me, though. New York barely manages!

 

[Marc]

The sized of the place doesn't really worry mean (one of the things I liked about Adeladie was it was fairliy small) but it makes find work harder.

I find it hard to call Adelaide small seeing its population of one million is twice the population of my entire state.

My sister lives in South Plympton. I am not sure which suburb of Adelaide my nephew lives in but it seemed to me we travelled quite a distance when we visited him.

Hobart has a population of just under 200,000 which is just about the right size for me.

Well it's smaller than Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and on the world scale it's pretty small though it's large then some capital cities.

South Plympton I know - my late Grandfather use to live there on Cross Road.

But yes it can take a while in the car to get places in Adelaide - I used to live North of the city (about 18kms out from the CBD and a friend was bit futher out but south of the city - would take an hour to get from my place to hers.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

I feel like I have the best of both worlds

I live in a smallish town of about 20,000 people or so. But we have a large bookstore, movie theatre, Target, Best Buy...all the stuff you would expect an average town to have. Very safe area. What we lack are the cool little stores bigger cities have, like little used book shops, cool diners, bars, stuff like that.

But I'm only about 25 minutes away from a larger city that does have all of that stuff. So I can drive there when I want to experience some big city stuff, and then go home and be safe later. Very good set up, I suggest it for everybody!

 

[Holdfast]

I live in city of a bit more than 150k people which is about the right size for me, esp. since it has excellent connections to anywhere else I'd be interested to go if I needed something I couldn't source locally.

It's built on a human scale and you can keep a general map of the place in your head, but at the same time, it's wealthy and established enough to have nearly every amenity and convenience you might need within a 30 minute drive radius from home. The historic nature of the city, combined with the high student population percentage, gives it an interesting mix of cosmopolitan and traditional, which also suits me. Frankly, I don't see myself ever moving anywhere else.

 

[TheBrew]

I prefer living in the outside of the city towns. I liked living right outside SF and I am liking living right outside DC. I'm not stuck in the middle of it all when I want to relax on the weekends, but I am a quick metro ride away from anything really exciting.

 

[Ward Fowler]

I grew up in a county with 28k people and around 3k lived in the county seat, which is where I lived. Now I live in a city where just the metropolitan area has 2+ million people. I can tell you that I prefer where I live to where I grew up. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that I grew up in a small town, but I'm also glad I left. There is far more opportunity in larger cities and I would never be making the money that I am now if I had stayed. I know a lot of people who stayed behind and most are barely scraping by. Then there's the benefit of entertainment (NFL and Major League baseball) as well as nicer malls and supermarkets. I'd love to live in my small town again, but only after I retire and no longer have to worry about a career or money.

 

[propita]

Well, Fresno is the 5th largest city in CA, but for all it's "city-ness" (I can't call it too urban), it's still pretty agricultural. Fresno County is the leading agricultural county in the US--and therefore the world.

So it's still kinda "small town" for such a big place. But because of that, they didn't know how to allow proper growth. It's a mess on that, with developers having their way for decades and paving farmland, and when you drive 5-10 miles in any direction, you run out of city.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Well, Fresno is the 5th largest city in CA, but for all it's "city-ness" (I can't call it too urban), it's still pretty agricultural. Fresno County is the leading agricultural county in the US--and therefore the world.

So it's still kinda "small town" for such a big place. But because of that, they didn't know how to allow proper growth. It's a mess on that, with developers having their way for decades and paving farmland, and when you drive 5-10 miles in any direction, you run out of city.

Every time I hear the name Fresno I think of that one scene in Airplane II...

McCroskey: Zero point five warp...God help 'em, nobody's ever travelled at that speed before.

Johnny the hysterically funny controller guy: Last spring we did Europe in nine days! And then we went to Bakersfield...and then we ended up in Fresno. Fresno? No one goes to Fresno anymore!

 

[Amaris]

A month ago I moved into a smaller community.

For fifty years I grew up and lived in the Greater Toronto Area, the latter forty in the city of Mississauga (pop: about 500,000) just west of Toronto (Canada). Toronto's population is about two million. I now reside in the city of Brockville, Ontario with a population of about 22-25,000.

It's only been a month, but already I feel some differences. The air and water seems better or perhaps just different. I sleep better overall. I find people in general not as rushed and generally more at ease. Certainly the traffic is much, much lighter.

The town seems to have most everything that the big city had only on a smaller scale, and whatever isn't immediately near I can access online or go to Kingston (3/4 of an hour's drive by highway) or to Ottawa (an hour's drive).

I haven't made any definite new friends here yet or connected with folks with similar interests, but I'm certainly hoping to. Presently I'm not missing much of what I left behind except perhaps my favourite pizzaria and a particular person I liked very much.

Anyone else here live in a small town? Has anyone else made a similar move to a smaller community? Are you glad you did or do you regret it? Has anyone always lived in a small town?

Awesome! I know how you feel.

We moved from a city with 112,000 (if you count the recently annexed areas, and I usually do) to a farm town of 8,000 people. The air is clear, the water is cleaner, I can walk outside and see much more wide open space. At night, it's darker (we had lots of light pollution where we lived). The people are friendlier and the town is small enough that I can walk around in the downtown area and reach the Municipal building, the library, the Police station, the Fire Station, and a 5 minute walk gets me to the Post Office, with a whole two counters.

I love this little town, and I plan on staying here. Doing the speed limit of 25 mpg, you can literally pass through the downtown area in about 15 seconds (if you don't get stopped by our two traffic lights first). What really drives it home is that across from the pizza place (a block up the road from the Post Office), is a cornfield.

J.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

Having lived in both small communities and large cities (lived in Sydney for 9 years), I'm quite happy with where I am at the moment in Newcastle. Newcastle has a population of around 270k, with the Hunter region having around 500k. It has everything Sydney has, but it's close to those smaller communities where I have lived in the past.

 

[Sephiroth]

Every once in a while I become temporarily enamored of the idea of living in a small town. I've lived in Seattle and New York, so I've never experienced small town life. Even my study abroad time was spent in big cities, Cairo and Puebla.
I don't know if a small town could sustain me, though. New York barely manages!

come with me, to Albuquerque, it's like a big city that's also a small town

 

[thestrangequark]

^I can think of few paces less suited to me, sorry.