> Rural communities tend to be intollerant of people who don't match their ideal of acceptable humanity.
Not exactly. Intolerance is more visible, but that's simply because you end up getting to know everyone. Imagine that 1% of the population is intolerant. In a city with 1 million people, it is incredibly unlikely that you will ever encounter the 10,000 people who are intolerant. In a village with 100 people, you are almost guaranteed to bump into the 1 intolerant person on a daily basis.
> rural areas simply can't have the concentration of amenities that cities do.
What amenities are found in city homes that are not found in rural homes? High speed internet, maybe, but even that isn't true very often anymore. Hell, the rural areas around here have access to considerably better internet service than my urban home does.
Once you leave the home, there is no difference. It is not like cities of today are built with walls around them.
> all things being equal I think that most people would rather live in cities.
People like what is in fashion. City living is currently in fashion. It hasn't always been and it most likely won't be again at some point in the future. Fair to say that right now people generally prefer living in the city. That is why they have no qualms about paying so much to be there.
I thought this and moved to a rural part of Ireland. It was horrible (though even many Irish dislike the midlands)
One sometimes forgotten issue is that being a 45 minute drive from a hospital is really scary when your 2 year old is struggling to breath at 3 AM.
If it weren't for trees, I would be able to see the hospital from my place. Obviously one could go deep into the middle of an expansive forest and say that rural areas has no infrastructure, but if you were choosing where to live on the basis of infrastructure, you wouldn't choose there...
Given the rural areas that have infrastructure, I still wonder what is missing, passenger trains aside?
In terms of amenities I mean things like world class museums, subways, professional sports, big name concerts, access to diverse hobbies (e.g. classes in almost any form of dance in the world), etc.
> world class museums, subways, professional sports, big name concerts, access to diverse hobbies
Those are found outside of the house. Like I said before, there is no real difference at that point. 30 minutes travelling into the city or 30 minutes travelling across the city is the same thing. It is not like cities of today are built with walls around them.
If it's 30 minutes then it may not make a huge difference. However, it's often several hours.
There's also a big difference between 30 minutes on a train and 30 minutes driving. You can relax when you are on the train and 30 minutes of driving often ends up being 45+ minutes once you factor in finding parking.
> However, it's often several hours.
How, exactly, does 30 minutes of travel often become several hours? Are you stopping for dinner and some shopping along the way?
> You can relax when you are on the train and 30 minutes of driving often ends up being 45+ minutes once you factor in finding parking.
A typically average time to get to train station is around 10 minutes. Another 5 minutes waiting on and boarding the train, especially during off-peak hours when the entertainment you spoke of is most likely to happen. 10 minutes more to arrive at your destination after getting off the train. That is 25 minutes right there. So you are imagining just 5 minutes spent on the train?
Ignoring that you don't necessarily have to drive, 5 minutes of relaxation (let's say 10 minutes; you need to get home too) every once in a while when you occasionally take in a professional sports game or big name concert is what you consider a difference? If you really want to get into such fine grain details, where do we even begin? You are going to gain those 10 minutes of relaxation back in the rural area when you step out into your backyard instead of having to go all the way to the park. Realistically, once something takes place outside of the home, there is no difference.
Yeah, sure, certain situations could see that 25 minutes reduced, but there are also rural areas much closer to the city that can also see that travel time reduced. 30 minutes of travel away from the city can take you a surprisingly significant distance! The earlier comment wasn't trying to find a place of perfect optimization, rather some kind of reasonably average scenario.
The Internet thing is true. I live in a town of 2,000 in what would be considered the middle of nowhere, and have a local ISP that's better than anything I had available in the large metros I lived in prior.