> 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.