Ask HN: Has anyone here left the big city in pursue of a simpler life?
I do not know exactly what's the link between the two, but I think it might be related to the fact that it's useful for tech workers to be relatively updated about world events, how society function in general, and what's happening lately in the field.
The problem is that doing that will very quickly tell you that modern society fucking sucks. Almost nothing works, everyone hates each other, things that are important get ignored because of greed, and most importantly, there's almost nothing you can do about it.
After a decade working in tech I realised I'm tired of being exposed to these problems. I'd really like to leave the big city and its problems and live in a remote area where I can be closer to nature, and in a small community where I could be more self-sufficient and contribute back in more meaningful ways than I do today.
I'm posting this in HN because I have noticed that this is not exclusive to me. It seems that getting burned out of modern society is quite common among people who worked in tech for a long time, so I was wondering if someone here had experience in making this jump and leaving the big city to live a simpler life next to nature. Did it help you? What led you to do it and how do you feel about it today?
124 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threadHowever, "leave society behind" no longer involves locality. If you come out to the sticks and still obsessively doomscroll the news, you will not reduce your stress much. Conversely, if you resolutely ignore the distressing noise around you, you might find contentment in your city, still.
When we had kids, I knew we would have to move despite loving the city. My personal favorite was Philly. Walkable and no need for a car. Any type of food was usually an easy walk away. Close second was SF for the nightlife and ability to choose your weather by getting in the car for an hour or two.
I feel in the end it was a fantastic move. We sold our row house in philly and purchased a working ranch, sent our kids to a private school, and converted a pasture into an athletic field with the proceeds.
The downside if there is one is that we would be hard pressed to replicate what we have now and my wife has had to turn opportunities down in southern California as the equivalent to what we have now would be a home for at least 10 million.
I guess there might be a political downside in that I am a left of center and most people in my community are right of center. However, noone has been isolating. There are some blow hards, but fir the most part people dont ask me about my politics and I dont ask about theirs and we can get along fine.
I think it helps that I am a youth coach with a nice personal field and I coach 50 percent of the girls in our community in some capacity.
Feel free to ask me questions.
Got out just in time. It's really gone downhill in the past few years.
Being relatively self-sufficient is its own blessing, though. Especially over the past few years it has been great to have food security and almost everything I need here or within a few miles.
Life is slower, there is more of an emphasis on community, the cost of living is lower, the schools are solid, there is far less crime and homelessness, and you can commute to the urban amenities as needed.
Does it have EVERYTHING an large urban area provides, obviously not, but life goes on just fine without those things. What's more important to me? A boxing gym in walking distance or being able to pay my house off in less than ten years?
- nature looks like: https://www.alltrails.com/de/route/germany/wander-tour-harbu... - "rural" village https://www.hamburg.de/neugraben-fischbek/ (image gallery) that _actually_ is part of hamburg area, located at this nature, and - 35-42 minutes by train from that village centre (u can walk to the train station in like 10 minutes) to the middle of hamburg
edit: to take this further. You could live in Broom, a hamlet, which has a population of 579. Cycle or drive 10 minutes to Biggleswade station and get the 45 minute train in. In theory if you got really efficient, you could be in the heart of the City of London 1 hour door to door.
Moved from London (9m pop) to suburban North Leeds (800,000-1m pop), much better. Still get the semi-anonymity of a city, and the things that I enjoy about them (varied food to eat out, markets, theatre, cinema, bowling etc), but I'm also 5 minutes from national parks, waterfalls etc.
The beauty about Leeds in the UK is as soon as you go North, there is basically nothing major until you hit Scotland. So you can be away from people very very quickly which is rare in the UK, whilst also not cutting yourself off from the world.
It's also ace as the city has a great identity and community. The running clubs are full of the most varied and grounded people, from all walks of life, that I have ever met. We do a lot of fell racing in the Yorkshire Dales in all elements. The community spirit found around running the rain, up hills, and bonding over cake, local beer and Yorkshire tea is amazing and reminds you of how great most humans are.
There is also great civic pride in local food, drink, culture. There are incredibly accessible and affordable spas for weekend breaks to sauna and massage (Rudding Park) within a 20 minute drive, that aren't booked out months in advance or full of instagrammers or full of London city bankers. Just locals having a laugh.
OP, I get the feeling, I almost did the same. But do not go remote for these reasons. Move somewhere smaller maybe (smaller cities have greater identity and community than large mega-cities without the drawback of towns or hamlets), but make sure you assess the world through the people you talk to and interact with, not the internet or news. Otherwise you will get way more depressed.
Happiness is only real when shared.
My personal experience is that, despite London indeed having an impressive offer in terms of culture, entertainment, food, social life, etc. it's an illusion. Most people do home -> work -> home, with the exception of the local pub. Even meeting with friends which are not work colleagues is complicated, usually involving 1 hour commuting each way.
So in London the choice is amazing, but I enjoyed almost none of it. In Newcastle the offer is more reduced, but I do find I can enjoy it _all_.
Also I'm closer to nature (where I live), I can afford a big house and I actually _know_ my neighbours.
It sounds like you simply don't want to be in an urban area, and that's ok. If you're remote and you don't own a house, once your lease is up try moving to a smaller town, say one with a college in it. A place like Ann Arbor, Asheville, etc. If that's still too "modern society", then maybe look at renting a place that's even more rural. Once you find a place you like, then look at buying a place there or somewhere else that's very similar.
I now live in West Sussex (1 1/2 hours from London), surrounded by fields, I walk my dog in nature every morning, I see a kingfisher once or twice a week, I chop wood for exercise, go on hikes with my wife and sometimes oil paint outside.
I work completely remotely as a dev, work 4 days a week and we're about to have a baby. I've also heavily cut down on Twitter, I rarely have any meetings, my life is as simple as I want it to be and I couldd't be happier.
1. I got fresh cow's milk every day 2. I lived in a farm house next to a lake with a beautiful community of Mayans and ex pats 3. I woke up every day at 6 am to work out 4. I finished my work earlier because i was so happy 5. I worked on complex tasks, and pair programmed, with no issues
Now tell me why it makes sense to make everyone come back.
No you don't.
I come from a small town in India. I can't speak for everyone, but I don't think these things are any better in rural parts of the world. In fact, they could be worse. Yes, life is simpler and the community aspect is good. But what you mention are fundamentally human problems. Greed will show up on the door as soon as ancestral property gets mentioned. It doesn't take long for a small issue to turn into a verbal clash. The things that people believe in could be borderline disturbing.
On the plus side, I like the general slowness of everyday life. I like how things like productivity and using time well are alien there. I don't deny pursuing a simpler life might work for you, but I don't think it's the magic pill. Smartphones and Internet have created unique problems, but they still stem from human nature.
Additionally, I don't see why pursuing a simpler life isn't possible, to a good extent, without uprooting your life. Stop watching the news. Go out in the park, and "waste" 1-2 precious hours just admiring the birds and trees. Meditate. Rather than trying to fix the environment, prfioritize how to view your life better. I highly recommend reading books for this.
I would pursue addressing feelings of depression directly before attempting to radically change your life in the hope of fixing things indirectly.
When the pandemic started and it was possible to work from home, even more people moved out.
There are some folks who lived in great cities such as London or Berlin which settled in my country because they thought it's amongst the rare places where authentic country life can be experienced.
...a guy I knew growing up gave me this advice "Find somewhere you want to live and figure out how to make a living there." Boring, simple, evident but it took 20 years to sink in.
Do you have time to do your job and to care for cows, horses and chicken? And also work in the garden?
Every small farmer I know has at least one member of the family working at least one regular job, usually for benefits, to make ends meet.
Stop watching so much news, dude. Everything has always been terrible. The reality is, you have more access to more information than ever before in human history, and it's all pushed by companies trying to suck you in with more engagement, largely by inducing excessive emotional reaction to things outside of your control (and in many ways, things that have no actual bearing on your life)
Maybe I'm spoiled for parks in Philadelphia, but it shouldn't be that hard to get to nature from any city. I also go on urban hikes to clear my head.
The problems you describe won't be solved by a move to a small village. You need to ween yourself off the news you read. I'm not suggesting becoming a luddite, but stop gorging.
This is something to be very careful about. If you aren't religious -- or, actually, if you aren't evangelical protestant or maybe in some places catholic -- there are many, many rural communities where you will be a de facto outsider. There are also many rural communities where this isn't true. You just have to be aware of this when deciding where to move.
In the end, I feel our community has embraced us. I coach a girl's field sport that now 50% of all school age girls participate in. When we "go to town" everyone knows me and calls me coach. I feel I have been able to show a small rural community that atheist, liberal, immigrants are not here to destroy America as many suspected we might. They have showed me conservatives can act with compassion and stunningly (to me at least) that many laws that make perfect sense in a city make absolutely no sense in the country.
It's all relative. I grew up in York County and lived in Harrisburg for a couple of years. Philly's tech scene is fucking great by comparison. Now that tech is so remote-heavy, you've got access to national/global salaries, while having comparably affordable housing, more methods of public transit than any other city in America (coverage is admittedly a different story), a nearby airport, the rail corridor, and comparably sane weather, aside from the subtropical summers.
While I work from home now, for years I worked in a historic 19th century bank building above a bar in a walkable neighborhood full of restaurants, art galleries, parks, and boutiques. My visits to the Bay Area remind me of the suburbs... sure, pay is way higher there, but you're driving to a corporate park that, from the outside, might as well be Exton PA or Springfield Ohio or something. And everything else is so far away.
If a show comes through town and I miss tickets, I can hop on a train (or drive) to New York or Baltimore or DC or Boston.
Everything has its pluses and minuses. Because of the Philly tech environment, I bought an old theater on a hill by the river that I live above, and during renovation found thousands of 18th century revolutionary war era artifacts, which became a whole side quest (and a 27 episode podcast to boot). I think it would be rare to be able to do something similar in a city with a more "rich" tech environment.
I'm sure there are people who are perfectly content with their tech job in Omaha, or Austin, or Salt Lake City, or San Jose, and there are also people (like OP) who aren't content with what they have either. Heck, I was doing "fine" in York for a while.
Well sure, 1 > 0. The global salary thing seems to be moot. I hardly see any international postings. I assume the salary would be even lower too.
In terms of actual dependence, I feel equally self-sufficient in both places. Rural people massively under-estimate their dependence on global economic systems and particularly three things. First, the regular weekly flow of gasoline and diesel and various finished goods. Second, the regular monthly flow of social security checks. Third, tax dollars from major metros to fund schools. At least where I lived our school system was almost completely funded by state tax dollars that were re-appropriated from suburban and urban districts; the local tax base accounted to something like something like one tenth of the district's education budget.) These dependencies exist in cities as well, of course, but there doesn't seem to be any confusion about that fact in cities.
In many rural areas, you have kids as young as 10 hunting (supervised, or supposed to be), fishing, riding their bike places, exploring or "hanging out" in the woods, building things, working with power tools, etc.
Really, location foent matter that much. It's the parenting style and what constraints the local culture places on them.
> hunting supervised
So not independent. At all.
> fishing, riding their bike places, exploring or "hanging out" in the woods, building things, working with power tools, etc.
For a ten year old, all of those things can be done in a city FAR, FAR easier in a city than in a rural area. Even exploring the woods, in many cities, can be done by a ten year old with a commuter rail train pass and a bike.
The crucial question when you are in a rural area is: with who?
> riding their bike places
You have to be intentional for this to be possible in rural areas. Not even "safe", just literally possible.
Again, it's totally possible. But if you are not intentional, your kids will not, by default, be able to bike to their friend's place or a common middle ground. If they have to bike ten miles to meet up with a friend, they're going to end up connected to a car and spending most of their time online.
Go back and re-read. Not everyone follows the rules.
"But with who?"
Friends within a couple miles, siblings, etc.
"You have to be intentional for this to be possible in rural areas. Not even "safe", just literally possible."
Yes, tell me my life experiences. Now stop trolling. It is literally possible and people do bike and walk places miles away. Don't believe me? Go look at the Amish.
Which may or may not exist within 2 miles. Or even 10. Again, you have to be more intentional. In a city you can buy pretty much anywhere and the kid will have neighborhood friends. When moving to a rural area you have to think about this a bit more carefully. It's possible but not default.
If you buy a place 10 miles away from the nearest house with kids who have a reasonable age overlap, then that's going to have a huge impact on your kid's independence.
I am not trolling you. I don't care about you at all. I am addressing the original poster. I am giving them reasonable advice: you have to be more careful about where you buy in rural areas if you want your kid to be independent.
There are downsides and things to be careful about when moving to any area. I am not attacking your lifestyle. I am simply pointing out some of the things that you need to think more carefully about when moving to a rural area, especially if you are a city person with no knowledge of rural life. I would give a similar list of downsides and how to mitigate them if OP were a person who has only lived in rural areas and was asking about city life. "Don't buy above a noisy bar; you can cross boundaries between safe and unsafe in a short stroll; research the transit system; having a car will be expensive but essential if you want to get out of the city; school quality can be excellent or terrible; apartment living has many downsides you'll need to be careful about mitigating; etc."
None of these things are reasons to live in one place or another, and there are ways to address the problems. But you have to be aware of the problems in order to mitigate them. And the OP has never lives in a rural area, so might not have thought about "oh, if I am 2 miles down a gravel road and the nearest cluster of properties is 12 miles down the road then my kids have a hell of a bike ride if they want to play after school without depending on me shuttling them around. Odds are they'll probably end up on the internet a lot instead of doing the 7-14 mile ride on any given afternoon."
Not a reason to move to a rural area! Just something to think about and consider -- cutting that down to 2 miles from 14 changes the game.
My posts are not directed at you. They are advice to a different person entirely. But since we're here, another observation about rural life: aggressive and angry people are not unique to cities; they exist everywhere.
Parents in cities have been arrested for letting their 10 year old kids play in the public manicured park unsupervised. Google "Free Range Parenting" as a city thing.
There is no way to compare the independence and freedom to play and roam of a country kid with a city kid.
We moved to the country precisely because we felt is would have been ludicrously dangerous to let our 8 year old wander the streets of Philadelphia unsupervised. There was no chance in hell we would allow her to hop on an Amtrek to go hunting for frogs in some creek.
Okay. I googled it. I'm seeing articles about parents being arrested for this sort of thing in places like Blairsville, Georgia (pop. 526) and Killingly, Connecticut. Not exactly massive cities...
If cities arrested kids for waling or biking or being on the subway alone, no one would be able to make it to school in the morning.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/living/feat-maryland-free-ran...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2018/09/05/mom...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/16/...
Here is a counter arguments against your school point:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/single-dad-barred-from-sending...
Sure, we had to drive to more play dates and the closest kids who are actually our neighbors live almost a mile away. However, my kids and really most kids in my community safely ride and play alone in a manner that might get city parents arrested. These kids help manage active herds and flocks.
Sure, our community relies on external energy that we take for granted, just like city folk rely on food and water they take for granted.
I don't get your social security check point/dig though. Do you believe there are somehow fewer recipients of such services in cities? I personally know a guy who refuses his social security on principle.
While I know rural schools can have funding issues, I know our public schools are well funded and we don't end up getting our per-student fair share of state funding as our system is well capitalized. As far as quality goes, I don't think there is any question that city schools are craptacular when compared to suburban and rural schools.
> However, my kids and really most kids in my community safely ride and play alone in a manner that might get city parents arrested.
This is ignorant, tbh. Elementary and middle school students take the subway to school alone, all the time. In many cities schools even hand out free/subsidized transit tickets.
Kids getting arrested for walking or biking alone in a city is rare. Also, the stories that make it to HN's front page are almost always about rural communities or sparse suburbs not near a major metro. The last one happened in a town in rural Connecticut. In Reason's archive of free range parenting articles, I cannot find a single story about an arrest in a city. All of those arrests happen in either rural or suburban communities.
OP: you are more likely to be arrested for letting your child wander around alone in a suburb or rural area than in a dense city.
> Sure, our community relies on external energy that we take for granted, just like city folk rely on food and water they take for granted.
Again, I am giving OP advice.
If OP moving to a rural area so that he is not dependent on modern life, he's most likely in for a rude awakening.
Everyone understands that city dwellers are dependent on others. Many city folk move to the country thinking they will be independent, not realizing that they will still be dependent on others and on society.
> school funding
Very state dependent.
Again, I am giving OP advice.
If he's in a state where this is true -- and there are many where it's true -- his kid's school quality will depend on state funding formulas. Raising local taxes to pay for schools if that formula changes will be very difficult. State level politics may have pragmatic impacts on your life in a way that doesn't happen in a city that can insulate itself from statehouse politics. You're often trading city counsel politics for statehouse politics. Not always. Often. Something to be aware of -- if you're moving to a rural area to escape the effects that politics can have on your life, it aint gonna happen unless you go full off grid and home school. Where there are people and services, there is politics.
> As far as quality goes, I don't think there is any question that city schools are craptacular when compared to suburban and rural schools.
Another ignorant assumption about cities.
Most of the best best-ranked public schools in the country are located in cities [1].
If OP wants to provide a best-in-class education, that's possible in cities by getting into the right public magnets. And in every city there are excellent but not top-x-in-the-world public schools that are easier to get into.
It's also possible in rural areas, but usually requires out-of-school enrichment. Which can be easier and more accessible than getting into great magnets for many folks! Again, not digging rural areas, giving OP actionable advice.
Some rural schools are terrible and some are excellent. Similarly, some city schools are terrible, and some are truly excellent. OP: anyone who tells you otherwise about either rural or urban schools is ignorant.
I am not competing with you about urban vs rural. These posts are not directed at you. I am providing OP with accurate advice about how to manage a transition. That involves pointing out the things that can go wrong and how to address them, not fixating on the things that come easily.
[1] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools...
I have lived in NYC, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Toronto, London, Tampa, and San Francisco. The downtown parts, not their burbs. I think that qualifies me to have an opinion about city living.
This is ignorant, tbh. Elementary and middle school students take the subway to school alone, all the time.
Some places, sure. Others you can get arrested for that:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/single-dad-barred-from-sending...
Sure there are great public schools, but... the great ones are generally competitive admissions drawing from wide areas. The number 1 school being:
Students from Fairfax, Arlington, Loudoun, and Prince William counties and from the Cities of Fairfax and Falls Church are eligible for admission.[32] Students must be enrolled in Algebra 1 or a higher level math class in 8th grade and have a minimum GPA of 3.5 to be eligible
While that school might technically qualify as public, the admissions process looks like a private school to me.
When I say "public school", I'm talking about the school that your kid is going to go to "by default" outside of any kind of lottery system. I can assure you that in Philly that meant craptacular. Despite the reputation of Masterman the only Philly school in your top 150. Their enrolment is hyper competitive. Masterman's acceptance rate is 3% of applicants making it more selective than Harvard University.
I do agree that rural schools are not universally great or even good. Ours happens to be and we selected for that. I would say that understanding the community's expectations for post graduation are key. If the community does not expect the vast majority of high school graduate to go to 4 year college then the local school system priorities are likely to align with that expectation and that is important to understand.
I understand we are all attempting to help the OP. You were the one that introduced the spurious points about resource dependencies, the flow of social security checks and reallocation of school funding. All these seem to having nothing to do with city vs urban living and in my opinion apply more to city living than rural living. In fact New York State had to be sued to properly fund NYC public schools.
By far, the mid-sized city is the best of both worlds.
When I lived in LA, I absolutely felt like I was living in a dystopian parody of a progressive city. When I lived in small towns, I absolutely was annoyed that everyone knew my relatives and thought we were friends or something because of that. Zero anonymity.
But Minneapolis has historically been good, though it's changed a lot since George Floyd. Now we live in a smallish suburb and get all the amenities without the claustrophobic small town bullshit.
OP, just try moving to a distant suburb, and embrace the wisdom of middle age.
A smallish city will provide 90+% of what you'd get out of a big city without the dystopian backdrop.
I grew up in a small town, moved to a big city, then moved to a smaller city during COVID, with the intent of it being temporary until things go back to normal, and now I don't want to go back. Just as much to do, with less traffic, lower cost, and it feels a lot safer to walk around.
I bought a pretty damn big house (comparative to what I had in the Bay Area). I'm taking more vacations. The people are nicer than SF Bay Area, you can go places (restaurants on a weekend, for example!) without having to wait in long lines or park a million miles away. You can get tickets to concerts without having to be the FIRST person on Ticketmaster the moment they become available. You can get to nature a lot faster (I went skiing a couple months ago and it was bonkers how there were no lines or waiting for anything). Everything just feels easier, like you get to enjoy everything 20% more than you can in a metropolis where everything feels like a hassle and you've got people crawling on you like roaches.
Do you even know that they track your gait? and face? wherever you go?
(of course they don't even need to since you carry a tracking device in your pocket)
They all think they will move to rural community to live simpler, more selfsufficient life among other people, casualy share tips on permaculture with their neighbors and what not.
You might get lucky to find similar minded people, but at the end newcomers are just those ridiculus city folks that come to the town, talking weird stuff, while local hold blue colar jobs in nearby town or hustling income as helping hands whenever they can. Most people do not chose rural places, they just don't have any other choice. Also rural poverty is a thing.
Anonymous, sure. But how can anyone be self sufficient in a city? Do you have a large garden? Rainwater tanks? The tools and workspace to do your own plumbing, construction? Do you have solar panels and batteries?
If the utilities all shut down and the grocery stores all closed, everyone in a city would die or flee. It is impossible to be self-sufficient in a city.
Glad you asked! Let's go over your questions.
>Do you have a large garden? Rainwater tanks?
I've got space on my roofs for a garden - I own a three story building that has 100% lot coverage (something you can still afford to buy in Philadelphia) I could easily install rainwater tanks indoors (since our rainspouts travel inside our house to drain into the sewer line) or outdoors - but I walk to the produce merchant and use one of the longest-operating municipal water supplies in the country. Currently we just have herbs and cherry tomatoes in our roof garden.
>The tools and workspace to do your own plumbing, construction?
As a matter of fact yes. This is the third home I've owned. First one was built in 1905 in the suburbs and was a gut job. Everyone should have a circular saw and an 18v cordless drill, but I've also got plumbing supplies and electrical supplies. We hired contractors for this place because it was a complete gut job (down to three walls, and we had to install steel structure) but we generally don't have to call contractors unless we're short on time. Our second house was built in the 90s and didn't need much work, but since we learned on our first house, we updated the floors (we have tools for tiling too) and cabinets - largely pre-built. We tried something more raw on the first home, and it nearly caused my wife and I to divorce. Why bother when mass manufacture has solved the problem? Even still, I do tend to build my own desks/shelves.
And, being in a city designed for horses, if I'm missing tools, I walk to the hardware store. I've got a van, if I need bigger things than I can carry. And if I didn't have a van, I could take transit (or a taxi or rideshare) to the big box store, rent a truck from Home Depot, and use that to transport big goods.
>Do you have solar panels and batteries?
I've got a long flat roof, and a neighbor who sells solar. We've opted instead for a green roof, but that's sort of a phase three thing for the building. Talking about self-sufficiency while ignoring the benefits of society, then simultaneously crowing about solar panels seems a little bit like moving the goalposts in terms of what counts as self-sufficient.
>If the utilities all shut down and the grocery stores all closed, everyone in a city would die or flee.
That's a big if for a city, but a reality in rural communities. In my lifetime, towns in my country have been abandoned. WalMart moves in, and Main Street is boarded up in a matter of years. Industry gets offshored, and people who can afford to will flee. "Ghost towns" are an attraction across America.
The closest thing to a ghost city in my country was Detroit in the early 2000s. Even cities destroyed in wars are rebuilt more often than they aren't.
>It is impossible to be self-sufficient in a city.
Context matters. If you want to talk about bronze age self-sufficiency, I'm sure it's a great thought experiment. There's an efficiency modifier to self-sufficiency in urban environments, and as evidenced by placed occupied for multiple millennia such as London, Constantinople, Beijing, or even cities like Berlin and Baghdad and Cairo, even when things get real bad, cities are much more likely to recover.
But then I lived most of my life in big cities, and for me moving in a rural community a few steps from the forest where I can walk between two meetings definitely solved many problems. Being free of all the stress of city life and connecting to nature really helped with emotional work and gaining perspective. I don't regret my 20's but I'm glad I found calm and happiness. Maybe in a few years I will have sufficiently recharged to be able to move back in the city.
Also I don't know about Philadelphia but in most cities I lived parks were small and sterile and real nature was not easily accessible.
Oh yes, Philadelphia's got parks: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/philadelph...
Want to get lost in nature? Fairmount Park goes on and on. You can drive about an hour to the Poconos if you want even better isolation in nature.
We've got a whole pile of National Parks in the city, too. Obviously not the scale of Yellowstone, Yosemite et al, but usually very well maintained, and stocked with National Park Rangers, who, no matter the national park I've been in, are hands down some of the best human beings I've interacted with.
There are definitely the more small/sterile neighborhood parks like you described, but the city has also had five public squares designed into its original 17th century plan, and they've somehow survived into the 21st century, mostly for the better. And then there's the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, cutting a 45 degree slice through the grid system for a tree-lined, walkable space running between the world class Philadelphia Museum of Art and our second-empire-style City Hall, which probably only still exists because in the early 20th century, the city ran out of money before they could demolish it.
I used to live in Downingtown, three minutes' walk from the train, and about 30 seconds walk from a sprawling rails-to-trails park system organized around the local creek. There were definitely benefits to that (didn't have to wear high-viz during hunting season) but in my situation, I came to prefer a more urban home base. It's funny because we initially moved there from central PA, and it felt kind of cute and even a little bit hip. Lived in Philly proper for a few years before coming back to our Downingtown house for a couple years. Now, it felt like I was in the sticks, man. Like, I knew what "the middle of nowhere" really was, and this wasn't it, but it still felt like I was on the edge of civilization by comparison, and not necessarily in a way I appreciated. Now we're back in the city.
Glad you've got a good situation, and context from previous, very-different situations too! Ultimately, the key is to adapt to your surroundings and make the most of what you've got. And if you're fortunate enough to have the option to change things up, well that's just a bonus.
We have the same problems here with less job opportunities and fewer online services. Maintenance of things is underfunded so I'm not sure the everything sucks would be solved tbh
Might just be my area but people seem a lot more "us vs them" than I've seen from city folk, probably through lack of exposure, people here still casually use all the slurs that the internet got rid of. Might be a bit of a culture shock if you're not used to it.
Everyone still hates each other, but for different reasons. Best believe any gossip spreads like wildfire too.
Having said that there are good things too! The walks in greenery here are endless. I could set off now and still be on the same trail tomorrow, fields and woods and stuff to explore all the way on both sides.
I'd seriously consider it, if I didn't have my own family, but if I didn't have my own family I would be possibly digital nomad travelling across Asia/South America...
1. https://diggersanddreamers.org.uk/community/tipi-valley
2. https://www.kausaycommunity.com/
The grass is always greener.
I found rural life alienating. Any semblance of intellectual life revolved around the community church and religion. Being in nature and out of the city was nice, and having lots of living space was very nice. But I had little in common with my neighbors and, frankly, found it more difficult to get away from the bullshit of modern life. Every conversation that wasn't about petty church politics/gossip was about actual politics. Rural America has internet access; without bars and gyms and other third places, lots of adults default to doom scrolling and binging politics infotainment TV.
IME, a good middle ground is to move to the outskirts of a smaller town with some sort of draw, such as a sizable college or substantial outdoor recreation (eg ski hills and the like) or regional hospital. Life is slower, community is more tight-knit, but there's enough going on and enough transience that you don't get the pathological downside of slower life: stagnation and passive aggressive group dynamics. The northeast is great for this sort of thing; places like Plymouth, NH are rural but also have life.
Another consideration, if you have children, is that by default mobility depends on access to a car. Your children can have independence in rural areas, but it's far harder. And if you don't facilitate it, their social lives will be dominated by being online far more than it would've been in the city.
Childhood independence in rural areas is possible, but you have to be more intentional about it. There are no busses or subways. This is another benefit of living close to a smaller town center: if you buy the right place, your kids can bike into town and meet friends.
Things can be different in Europe to the US but this is still key. If you move to a low cost of living, relatively anonymous town then things are going to be pretty average. If you’re an educated, intellectual engineer than can be kinda stifling. You need people you can relate to, which basically puts you back in MCOL/HCOL.
However, I'm not sure that moving will fix your issue. You can still spend too much time on Twitter and listening to news podcasts and YouTube channels, you don't need to be in the city for that.
In fact, maybe staying in the city would be actually better for you. You can socialize, go walk around in the city, try out new restaurants, chat with all kinds of people, and realize that despite your favorite YouTuber saying society lost its ways, you can actually have normals conversations with most people.
Remember, whatever makes you miserable, in this case, you can just "stop it" a la Bob Newhart.
All these idyllic places seems to exist only on Hallmark channel.
I made it barely over the 1 year mark until I HAD TO do a U-turn and now live in one of the biggest and most diverse cities in germany (hamburg) with an office job again, this time with a hybrid model. I could not stand having to drive with my car everywhere, having nothing interesting besides the same nature spots around me that is worth visiting after a few months, having nothing to actually meet people and socially connect besides a handful of neighbors, and always being on the verge of getting "left behind" in a world than changes faster than ever.
I guess the only people that can be happy in such a small village setting is when one grew up with that lifestyle and is used to it, or went through burnout and needs stuff to be quiet to be able to function, or already is financially so well off that the concept of "having to work in the future" doesn't make sense anymore.
Also its not only about me: my wife and both small children started lagging behind in development (hard to measure) in the village year, while all bounced back or "bloom into living life" and making leaps forward only weeks into relocation into a vibrant big city.
EDIT: maybe I would simply ask you to imaging your life situation right now, and remove all possibilities that stuff can substantially improve in your future, in exchange for being able to look at more trees outside of your window.
Is perhaps going offline a key to a better life than moving away from the city? I'm not sure and would also be interested in stories from other HN readers.
Another thing you might consider is moving abroad. There are cities with better living quality than many car-centered US cities, e.g. cities with lots of walking and hiking opportunities, lots of cultural activity, nice outdoor cafes in Southern Europe, commuting by bike, etc.