What do you prefer: living in a city or a town?

[Tacodidra 59,793]

Definitely small towns for me – I think big cities are too chaotic. But living in a slightly smaller city is nice too.

[The Kaeya Simp 13,953]

i prefer nice vibe towns with the amenities of a city

[Clawdeen 12,109]

I don't think I could live in a big city. 

[misaokuser89 135]

town, cities has too many people

[Cash In 21,510]

Town. I used to live in a city around 2014-2015 and honestly, I don't think I'd ever do that again. Crime was very bad and the pollution was awful. I'm currently living in a town about 10 minutes away from there and it's so much better. 

[EpicEnergy 22,074]

I love cities, but I think I like it better living around fewer people. More people usually means more crime and problems.

[Longhaul 6,470]

I've lived in both, and each one has its drawbacks.  I think if I had to choose I'd prefer to live in a medium-sized town, one not too big to be overly crowded or noisy, and not too small to not have some form of entertainment.

[Clawdeen 12,109]

I prefer living in a town.

[FriendGuy 43]

Outside the suburbans, I want neighbors actually, just not in my literal backyard lol.. City is the last place on Earth I wanna be.

[SCS 7,443]

I've lived in both, and I can say I definitely prefer small town life. As with all things though, both have their upsides and their downsides.

While all places and lived experiences will differ, my time in large cities has consistently met with a higher density of suffering. Crime, poverty, homelessness, drug addiction are rampant and integrated into your daily experience. I have been in the vicinity of stabbings, assaults and most common of all, car crashes. I frequently travel through an intersection with an ever-growing collection of crosses memorializing those who died.

I also experience a sensation of "energetic imprint" that differs across spaces and feels stronger the more people there are living and passing through. For example, when I visited San Francisco I felt a pervading sense of despair and tragedy soaking into the very fiber of my being as if I were standing on the shore buffeted by wave after crashing wave. This was not simply a reaction to the personal tragedy I witnessed there, of which there was no end. But even walking through the oddly silent streets at midnight, past businesses boarded up and scaling the inclined sidewalks I felt the tsunami of grief reverberating throughout all, punctuated only by the wail of ambulance sirens every quarter of an hour.

Conversely, when I visited Las Vegas I felt physically ill in a distinctive way the moment I stepped foot off of the airplane and first made contact with the earth. It felt as if I had immediately been plugged into a circuit of tar and sludge, dragging down every movement with intensifying gravitational pull. I was not actually sick, but that's the closest analogy I can use to describe the feeling I had there that I have never in my life experienced before or since. The air and earth surrounding me felt infected by an innate sense of wrongness that threatened to swallow me whole at any moment. Again, I witnessed and reacted to an array of varied human suffering, but this sensation was all-pervading.

But as with all things, nothing is ever just one way or the other. I visited a beach in San Francisco holding one of the most beautiful harbor scenes I have witnessed in my life. I meditated on the calming waves gently lapping at the shore, and absorbed the sunset gently cascading. In Las Vegas I witnessed monumental feats of architecture and engineering, with green-infused spaces and water features inspiring genuine delight. We will always shine a light in the darkest of places, and this duality of being bears a grounding exhaustion with a joy afloat.

Small towns are not by any stretch of the imagination exempt or disconnected from the matrices of suffering. If anything, I find rest in these emptier urban environments and in nature alike from the emotional quietude compared to large urban environments. The "energy" (for lack of a more accurate term) feels quieter, emptier -- all imperfect analogies for a nonphysical sensation -- allowing for more introspection, and for more of simply existing without as much parsing of sensory input or connected implication. You will witness joy and suffering alike, but it will be less often and in smaller quantities.

Within the silence I find a door connecting both inward and outward in a sea of liminal tranquility.

[Spark Thunderbass 1,395]

Definitely cities for me, I'd probably feel depressed living in something like a small rural country town with not much flash and style going on.

I live in Victoria, Australia where we have the good ol' city of Melbourne, man I love that area so much, I hope to move there someday, not so much in the CBD, but rather the suburbs surrounding the area would be ideal for me.