modern city life is bullshit. It's not organic. It's controlled by developers and politicians that hoard land and use their city's real estate as a store of value for oligarchs that don't live there.
Your local underground art & organizing space is part of a developer's plan to artwash a neighbourhood as part of their plan for gentrification.
Spend all day commuting and working and competing with consoomers that will do whatever it takes, compromise anything, just to stay in the city. All for what? Access to better bars + clubs for 2 hours of fun oblivion at the weekend? Access to theaters and galleries you don't have time to go to? Access to interesting people? Cafe life at the weekend or something?
fwiw, living rural is difficult if you've lived in a city for a long time. pay is much shittier, it's difficult to integrate, it's conservative. People are less open, imo. But the massive increase in time and agency must count for something. Please tell me it means something lol.
City life, as it's developed, is a tourist facade, and buying into it is supporting the ghouls that control the markets. The same ghouls that keep an apartment in the city, but would never live there.
Living super rural right now, so idk about that, issue goes with how the US structures itself around cheap fossil fuels and keeping individualization high more than the a simple city-rural divide. Time gets eaten one way or another is what I've found, in the city you have the illusion of entertainment, of human connections, culture and such, in rural areas this is stripped away and you see the US for what it really is; a shit painted gold (sorry to offend shit).
One part that flips chud from lib and vice-versa, same neoliberal delusion, is chuds have no hope, that's one part they cling to opiates and the OG opiate religion and/or chauvinistic nationalism for their pains so hard, rural life affords no comforts, city libs at least have the illusions of such. Do with that valuable piece of info as you will.
In the city at least I had the option of reasonable public transport and I could walk to the grocery store or work, here? Can't even bike, it's an hour driving the nearest stores or work places. If I crave any specific fresh dishes I must make them, there is no 'buy' unless I'm willing to travel 3-6hrs away to the nearest large city. There is not even a simple bakery out here aside from Walmart which is the sole monopoly grocer.
Access to medical care is harder too, if I need to see a specialist I have to drive hours away. I notice in the community because of this there's a lot of diseases that don't get caught until too late with worse outcomes than in the city, for the young its things like autism not being discovered until they're almost of school age, for the old its cancers that were once treatable are now terminal or stroke treatment that gets delayed.
The city I lived in was very chuddy, so there's 0 difference in people being bigoted toward me being trans (if they find out that is) or being nonwhite. I still have to be on the alert. Learn to have some sort of personal protection, there is no safety.
Haha, I got to watch a dude who transplanted from NYC to San Antonio learn this first-hand as we drive thru rural Texas to a client's office. He was literally agape at what he saw just from the road, which was two-lane and paved, which is to say that we were just scratching the surface.
I hadn't realized until that point just how much some people (probably most of us) live in their own bubble.