While I live in the United States, in northwestern New York, we have a slogan, "the big city with the small town atmosphere. Because of good roads, we can travel quickly by car to the country or to one of the Great Lakes and can move about the city efficiently. When I travel a number of hours by car to see my children and grandchildren several hours south, the north south-road passes through many small villages that are quite lovely. There are many conveniences in living in a city, and lots of attractions of living in the country. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Still today, I prefer living in a city.
When I was in a boarding high school in southern Indiana, it was a very charming and pleasant experience. I even volunteered a few hours each week to work in the school's vegetable gardens which produced our food and vegetables for sale to nearby cities. For the first time in many years, I returned there recently, and had good nostalgic feelings about my brief youthful life in the country. I visited many of the small villages nearby. Life then had been very quiet and serene, and returning now, the same situations seemed to exist at the school and in the remaining country and village areas. It seemed that not much had changed in all of those years. Recently I rode with a friend through the villages of southern China, and I had many of the same feelings of nostalgia for small town and rural life. One of the great advantages of rural or village life is having a sense of place, of serenity, of being known by many people and knowing many friends over a long period. Life is quiet and very little crime occurs. A disadvantage seems to be that life is often rather boring and unexciting. The hustle and bustle and the busy excitement more common in the cities are often missing in villages and rural areas.
I have had most of my city living experience in towns and cities with a population of 70,000 to a half million. So, I haven't lived much in really big cities like New York City or Chicago in the US. These cities have highly expensive but small apartments and very expensive products, crowded and sometimes dangerous schools, the possibility of violence or crime, or other problems which large cities typically face because of traffic congestion, lack of much greenery, serious pollution, or the sense of not even knowing our closest neighbors. Nonetheless, such many people in such cities have lives that always seem fast and exciting.
For me, I prefer a reasonably small city close enough to the rural areas so that I can enjoy the best aspects of each type of life.