I'm out in a small town pretty much every week, and I'm always happy to go back to the city.

Mostly it's the people. Everybody smart enough to do a knowledge worker job has left. Everybody creative enough to make art has left. Everybody who understands the value of excellent education for their kids has left. Everybody young and beautiful enough to get into the dating scene has left. Everybody who wants an exciting life has left. The people who remain are still nice (everybody everywhere is nice, really) and often admirably hard-working, but they're slow and seem to live inside fairly tight horizons. I like to be among people I can learn from, and I find those in the city.

I also like life in the city because I like to travel, mine has an airport and excellent public transport, and I really like not owning a car. To live an hour away from the nearest big city would mean that everything in the world would be an hour further away.

So I might reconsider when I can call up a self-driving electric taxi to take me places at any time, or when VR takes off in earnest and I spend much of my time in there. But by that time, I imagine life in the city will have become even more interesting, and life in the country will have fallen even further behind.