I prefer living just outside of large cities. I grew up in northeast Ohio (Warren, which is located between Cleveland and Pittsburgh and was a city of around 50,000 when I was growing up). After college I moved to Charlotte, NC, well a town just outside of Charlotte. I loved living there. Whatever I wanted or needed was close by, yea had to drive to it, but not a long drive to anything. What I will never do again is live in an HOA, horrible, horrible, horrible. Totally agree with the neighborhood Nazi analogy. Last year we moved to Jacksonville, NC. It's got around 80,000 people, although a good portion of that military. I really like where we bought our home at. Nice neighborhood where the houses are not right on top of each other and no HOA, yet still close to grocery stores, drug stores, ect. What I don't like is I still have to drive either 1 hr to Wilmington or 2 hrs to Raleigh for certain things that they don't have here.