I live in a city--historic section of a city--and it is great, for the most part. Do I pay more than people who live 20 or more miles outside the city? Of course, but I have a better lifestyle in most ways. There are more than a dozen restaurants within easy walking distance, along with two markets, florist, dry-cleaners, salons, everything. Need a bottle of wine or an onion--it's a two-minute walk on sidewalks. It is gloriously convenient. We bike when we don't walk. The convenience factor is major. The city has a symphony, ballet, theaters, multiple galleries, parks--all within a 5 to 10 minute drive, and only 10 minutes because of street lights. Our neighborhood is beautiful and historic--great architecture. You get none of this out in counties--no history, no architecture, no culture.
In the counties you get cookie-cutter subdivisions (or worse if you are farther out). In the counties you are driving constantly--wasting energy. In the counties you get more space; other than that, they are sterile and ugly--all strip malls and subdivisions, one after the other going out along major thoroughfares. County people watch TV and grill, maybe play a little golf (declining sport).
Cities, when right, are far superior to counties and burbs. That's why millions of people visit Paris, London, Berlin, Stockholm, New York, Tokyo and Shanghai, etc. Nobody says: "Hey's let's go visit Frackville--I hear the barbeque is great." Suburban sprawl has ruined millions of acres of pristine land and made America a very unattractive place--unless you find strings of shopping centers attractive. And that's where county folk spend their lives--in shopping centers. A lot of new subdivisions are nice, but they go up farther and farther and farther out--and then there's lots of traffic.
White flight to the burbs dealt a major blow to cities, but a lot of them are coming back. If middle-income people in significant numbers moved back to cities, cities would be thriving. The city I'm in has made a pretty substantial comeback, but, yea, the schools remain a problem because a lot of the whites in the city put their kids in private schools after elementary school. The school board has not been very smart.
Counties have their own set of problems. As they grow and sprawls occurs, property taxes must rise to pay for roads and police and fire, etc. The kids are in huge, suburban high schools--some good, many no better than decent, others not so good. If you've had a good living experience in a big city, it is nearly impossible, I find, to live in a suburb. I think we'll see cities prosper in the next 50 years as a lot of millennials are much more comfortable with social diversity and see the advantages of not just living in a city--but working in a city, creating businesses in a city. Depends on what you're into and what you're used to.
