Brendan Heisler🧢

Always, you do it because it's CHEAPER. And cheaper means you need less money. Which means you're less RELIANT on earning and all that goes with it. Spend less, need less, work less = "time rich," free to do as you like. "Difficult" is the price you pay for "freedom." Always.

The "city feeling" is, as far as I can tell, purely aesthetic. It can be achieved convincingly in sub-100k towns by a combination of architectural details, density, lighting, and structures from the pre-single-use-zoning era. Utica (64k) and Plattsburgh (19k) come to mind. Basically, if you see certain details on a multi-story, mixed-use building (such as corbels, dormers, vaults, fancy brickwork) and the streets have wide sidewalks and yellow sodium halogen streetlamps, our brains think "oh, I am in a city" even if we are in a very small town. I bet it'd even be possible within a six-block area of a 300-person village in the wilderness. If such a place had two lively cafes or bars playing a little music, and a few second and third floor apartments that were actually being lived in -- you really might think to yourself "why does this tiny town feel kind of like Brooklyn?"