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This entire question is completely distorted by the poor-qualtiy postwar urbanism that is rampant everywhere.
The reality is, there shouldn't be much difference. Lowrise cities -- 2-4 story buildings/townhomes, small apartments, walkable neighborhoods/mass transit, corner groceries, all that stuff that people think can ONLY exist in big cities should be the norm for nearly all towns.
I don't think many people would describe a place like, say, Bordeaux as a "big city". 250kish people in 50 square kilometers is hardly Paris. It's a small city, or maybe a big town. And it has everything you can want from a city and more. Shows, museums, beautiful multimodal neighborhoods, a robust tram system, restaurants and cafes and bars. All this kind of stuff.
The problem is we've all been mentally taught you can either live in island, R1A zoned suburbs which require driving to do ANYTHING or else you need to live in a huge metropolis like NYC. Or else we've been trained to think of a "city" like the bullshit they have in Texas, where it combines all the worst features of those island suburbs/car dependence with all the worst parts of city (crazy prices, noise, exposure to nearby-feeling crime, etc).
While a lot of the US big cities are trying to sort out the knots they've tied themselves in, your best bet to find beautiful, livable urban-ism is in those much smaller <500k cities that don't even show up on the typical lists of cities. Especially if they are historic, since the more historic a place is the less likely it got bulldozed in the 60s to make room for more highways (destroying local neighborhoods in the process) Some kind of a big university also tends to be a plus, though it's a mixed bag. Check for places that do not have an interstate carving through the middle of the city.
We can only get the amenities of modern urbanism in the biggest metropolises these days because of how badly the "suburban experiment" has distorted and destroyed our community life. And there can only be so many metropolises, so they've naturally turned absurdly expensive. People can't afford to live in them because of how much people want to live in them. So they settle for suburbia, since financial poverty feels way worse than poverty of community.
The problem is we've all been mentally taught you can either live in island, R1A zoned suburbs which require driving to do ANYTHING or else you need to live in a huge metropolis like NYC
I prefer areas zoned for agriculture over either of those. My favorite place I've lived so far is one where you look out at night and see nothing but inky black outside my windows. I'll walk 5 miles to the nearest town for that.
I'll never argue with someone who wants that true, rural/countryside/homestead life. The appeal is there for me too, even if my own calculus says the cons wildly outweigh the pros.
I'm pretty skeptical you're going to find it 5 miles from a healthy town, though.
I would walk 500 miles for a clear, dark night sky.
For me the important difference between the two isn't just a zoning problem, it's a people problem.
Small towns, like the one I grew up in, even ones that are comparatively progressive, are still a nightmare for anyone who doesn't fit in with the community norm.
Big cities let people find their community because therefore a lot of different ones to try.
This doesn't go away with different planning or by fucking cars or whatever the kids are into these days.
Big cities let people find their community because therefore a lot of different ones to try.
You should read the horror stories from so many of those NYC co-ops. Some would make even the most jackbooted HOA presidents blush.
I don't really think this is unique to cities of some specific size. I definitely agree that it's going to be harder to find a perfect fit in a smaller town. But it's also harder to meet people at all in an anonymous metropolis where you have to work 75 hours a week just to make rent.
If you take away anything from what I have written, it's that I think this dichotomy is bad. We need a compromise. The lowrise old-world city is what worked for our species for at least 5 millenia -- it's only in the past couple of decades we decided to rethink it and force a schism between the fake rural aesthetic of the suburbs and the productive, efficient downtown -- and in so doing we destroyed both city life (by making it ungodly expensive thanks to the immense financial drain the suburbs and lack of continuing infill development represent) and the peaceful countryside life (by putting to death small towns in favor of the interstate highway big box store commercial strip). The only lifestyle that has weathered and still works pretty well in this day and age is the homesteader life, and to say that way of living is not for everyone is definitely an understatement.