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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   19888 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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I know this is a predictable response, but I nevertheless want to point out that I am American, and there is literally no sum on earth you could pay me to live permanently in New York. The smaller cities and towns are indeed far different, as other people already told you.

For what it's worth this observation is actually consistent with my experiences in other countries as well. I love visiting Britain, but you would have to pay me to make me live in London. The smaller and mid-size cities, on the other hand, are lovely.

In general I think I prefer the smaller towns.

I love visiting Britain, but you would have to pay me to make me live in London.

Oh boy yes absolutely. I'm British and if it were not for my highly paid job that requires me to be in London I'd be off to some mid size place like Letchworth Garden City (or, shock horror, Milton Keynes) which is basically like American suburbs but done right (never been a fan of the anti-suburb crowd, the US messes up in certain respects with how they do them but the basic idea is very sound).

There are plenty of nice suburbs like Beaconsfield, Gerrard’s Cross etc where you can live in a big suburban house and take the train in direct or nearly direct to the City for work.

It depends on the region, I think. In East and (most of) Southeast Asia I'm generally comfortable with the idea of living in the bigger cities; as overwhelming as they can sometimes be there's a lower baseline level of dysfunction, lower crime rates, less urban decay and a much lower chance of having run-ins with junkies, fent zombies and other such unsavoury characters. To be quite honest if I was fully capable of freely moving elsewhere without having to incur extra costs, I would go somewhere in Asia (I currently live in Australia as well, and while I like Sydney enough there are a couple reasons why I would not stay here long term).

In most Western countries I would definitely prefer not to live in most of the cities; granted it depends on the country but the level of dysfunction in many of the urban cores is hard to stomach. The smaller cities and towns are consistently much nicer.

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