I now live in Brooklyn. Why? Perhaps I’ve been unfortunate but ALL of the small places I’ve been have been EXTREMELY judgmental of anyone not “just like us”.

Anyone “odd” is suspect–even when known cradle to grave. If you are catholic (or pick a non-local religion), you’re odd. If you are ethnic, you’re odd and/or second-class (depending on your ethnicity). If you were from the “wrong side of the tracks” you’re odd AND no ‘count. A career woman has gotten too big for her britches. A childless woman and a gay man are abominations.

As JD said, every day living gets mixed with “bombing the hell out of Arabs.” (or fill in the blank with the regional pariah and methodology of preference).

If you are “odd” your opportunities are that much more limited by your peers as well as your resources (good ol’ boy club anyone?). Small places have long memories and the sons pay for the sins of the father.

If you are poor, your educational opportunities are severely limited (unless you sign your soul away to student debt). Your cultural opportunities are limited, or at the very least homogenous. I never was a country music fan and I prefer my twice yearly visiting state orchestra to play something other than “show tunes”. My neighbors couldn’t understand my love for caterwauling (opera).

I’ve been so poor that hunters would “donate” extra kills to feed the family through the winter. Of course, I married into an “acceptable” family. Others weren’t considered worthy of charity even though the family farms kept afloat by their exploited labor (including children).

Of course, when I became a divorcee, I was “odd”. But then again, I’d always been odd and my husband was considered odd for marrying ME.

In a city (and I’ve lived in others but I’m partial to NYC), there are FREE everything–including free association. Maybe cost of living is more; but being poor in the city is INFINATELY better than being poor in the country.

I rarely spend money for what are, to me, the luxuries of life: concerts, lectures, educational ops, global peoples and food, and privacy (well, pre-911 anyway).

I wouldn’t give up Shakespeare in the Park for all the corn bread in Conetoe.

I’d love small town life for all the reasons stated by others–I am not anured to the charms–if it weren’t for small minds and hearts that tend to go along with it.

I also have 4 golf courses within 15 minutes of me. After work $12-$14 for 9 holes, I will take this anyday over “city life”.

I live in Seattle, and I can *walk* to the grocery store in 10 minutes (5 minutes or less to drive). And there’s a municipal golf course within 10 minutes’ drive…

Also within a 5 minute walk from my house: a business district with >6 great restaurants, a branch of our spectacular city library, a movie theater, two theaters for live performance, three parks, a weekly farmer’s market (May through Oct), and my youngest kid’s preschool.

Also within a 10 minute drive from my house: probably 200 restaurants and pretty much any kind of commerce you can imagine (legal and otherwise–this *is* a city); several miles worth of lakefront parks; a stand of old growth forest with a small population of bald eagles; boating, fishing, world-class gardens, and not to be forgotten, my other kid’s elementary school.

And that’s not even counting downtown, which is about 15 minutes’ drive away, or 20 by bus. Even faster with the light rail coming on line in a couple of years….

Different strokes for different folks, but I love living in a vibrant city where you don’t even HAVE to get in your car!

Everyone say it with me– correlation does not imply causation. Areas that are more diverse also tend to have other characteristics that could cause the negative effects mentioned in your link. Age and wealth are mentioned, but there is much more than than to be considered.

I’m a fan of Putnam’s “Bowling Alone,” but I think he may be off base here.

“In diverse San Francisco and Los Angeles, about 30 percent of people say that they trust neighbors a lot. In ethnically homogeneous communities in the Dakotas, the figure is 70 percent to 80 percent.”
This is also comparing large cities to small towns.

Honestly, I wouldn’t put a whole lot of stock in a report that is yet to be published, and it’s difficult to say what he actually did and what parameters and specs he used.

I was born and raised in the ‘burbs of DC, and now I’d consider myself a city girl. Love it. I’ve had to move away for graduate school (in Urban Affairs and Public Policy), and man, college town life stinks. I’m just waiting to go back to Baltimore (which is another possibility of where icup is talking about).

I have never lived in a real “city.” I grewup in small towns and seasonal towns. As an adult I have lived in those towns and suburbs, mostly. I have found living in suburbs near a big city is best for me. It seems like a small town, but if you really need to go into the city you can. Especially if you need to work in the city but live outside ( and save money,etc).

Fortunately, there are many ways to live that are NOT based on location whatsoever. Who cares if there is a computer store in a small town? I wouldnt even notice one in a big city. Shopping? Thats what this internet thing is for. Well, except produce and things like that. ( I DO expect 24 hour grocery stores with self-checkout- so that probably eliminates some small towns). As long as there are grocery stores and gas stations somewhere, thats about all I need.

I think technology makes a form of “arbitrage” possible without needing to live in foreign lands. A lot of goods have the same cost ( and domestic shipping rates) regardless of your location, and certain occupations produce the same income. If those factors are stable, then you can shop based more on housing costs, quality of life,etc.

That’s just me. I love variety. If I didn’t love the variety as much, I could move back to my small hometown and get less variety, but still a rich, albeit homogeneous, culture.

I agree that someone who is thinking “Oh I want to live with other cultures so I can learn more about them” is going to have a rough time. But the people I know who are concerned about diversity are in already in multicultural families. People want to fit in, and especially they want their kids to feel “normal”. One way to do that it to look for other families that look like you. A third-generation Korean-American married to a blond guy, or a black woman living with her white boyfriend, or a white woman raising a black kid - they don’t want a Korean or black neighborhood, they want a multicultural area, with a variety of families in the mix.

Or as one former coworker would say, “Yeah, I miss living in a small town in Eastern Washington…” and his India-born wife would finish, “But you got REAL tired of how people would stop and stare at us on the street! Thank God we’re back in Seattle where we’re NORMAL!”

icup may be talking about State College, PA which is home to Penn State University. It is about 3 hours from Philadelphia (which is the city with the high murder rate).

I’ve lived in areas with population ranging from 20,000 to 800,000 and I’ve found I rather like the 200,000 range. It is a good balance of cost of living vs service you can get. I suppose another way to get this would be to just move to a small town fairly close to a larger city, but I personally don’t like driving all the time.

My two cents,
CD

I also have 4 golf courses within 15 minutes of me. After work $12-$14 for 9 holes, I will take this anyday over “city life”.

Also, my post is misleading in that the article focuses on crime, it does not… it focuses more on how neighborhoods and infrastructure / political relations are perceived.

We’d be stupid to ignore that some groups don’t mix well. Also, how does diversity affect crime factors? From what I can tell, not so hot… here is just one article I read regarding some studies: http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-06-25jl.html.

Please please please don’t hound me or call me racist etc… people are mentioning it and I wanted to show both sides of the ethnic diversity argument.

I will also point out that although I live in a state that is 95% caucasion (ND) we do have some areas (Fargo mainly) that have very active cultural centers.

Part of the problem with professional jobs in small towns - people who have them keep them until they die. And they usually have an informally known successor. The trick is to position yourself as a successor. I became a library tech in a library with a horribly low turnover by volunteering, making friends on the staff and Board of Trustees, making myself valuable, and working at Subway for two years. Subway was tolerable only because I’d been pretty much promised the next job that opened up at the library, and sure enough, I got it. Likewise, your best strategy might be to find a community you like with jobs in your field or a field you’d like to get into - even if they’re not available at the time you move - and spend some downtime on professional development, freelancing, and networking.

The best part is the relative lack of crime though. Murders, grand theft, B&E, etc is all extremely rare here. In the nearest city, there was talk recently about the 256 murders that have occurred in the first 6 months of 2007 alone.