Power? Always working for me, one outage in 3 years. Water? No wells to dry up, also no power required for me to get water (water pump). Sewage? No septic tank maintenance. Internet? Fiber straight to my condo and never have an outage.
Meanwhile in my rural life, I had Verizon wireless internet with a 5gb data cap, one time the cell tower got zapped and no internet for two days. Our well died 3 times in 10 years, which meant no water until we dug a new one. We drove over the septic tank and broke it, so that cost a pretty penny. Every single electronic in the home had a UPS because our power browned out nearly daily.
Then you have things like living near an AWS warehouse, so I get 1 day shipping on a lot of items.
Cities have a life style that I enjoy more, maybe I'll move to the suburbs but I'll always stay in a major metropolitan area.
WFH won't be permanent for most people. Cities won't be attractive for the next 6-12 months but eventually people's incentives to live in a big city will be back to where they were pre-COVID19.
Currently with parents in the suburbs. Given how long I estimate it'll take for cities to be appealing again (think: dining, bars, clubs, museums, concerts, and shows) I want to spend the next year optimizing for access to nature, more space, and gardening; preferably with a small group of friends.
See a more verbose plan here:
So personally no plans to move to a less densely populated area.
But the big thing is the attitude. As a city friend put it, "Everyone uses each other and that's fine. You use friends. You give them a gift to make yourself happy."
Outside the city, people are less... reciprocal. A neighbor might wash your car because he was in the mood. You can throw a BBQ and just randomly invite neighbors who pool money, offer to buy, cook, or clean. Neighborhood kids come over to hang out and you can serve them tea.
I have previously lived in both dense urban settings (NYC) and rural areas (Wimberley, TX and Soultz, France) and would not consider moving to an area where I had to deal with septic tanks and satellite internet, even for 100% remote work.
* I live in the outskirts, not the city center, and would KILL to have a mass transit option within ~1/2 mile of my house.
* August, etc.
* When I compare property taxes with my HS friends in Appalachia, they're astonished. I pay 3-4X of my friends' rates for similar houses/land. The Texas no-income-tax schtick has worn off with me.
* I didn't grow up here & my friends are scattered around the world. So there's no allegiance to anything here. (With the strong exception to taco trucks.)
Where I am its smaller rural blocks often around 40 acres. These quickly get smaller as you head to the city until you hit suburbia 15-20 min closer in.
For myself and family its be absolutely awesome. There a great blend of IT and physical work having a WFH desk job on a farm. Also so much activity is on your doorstep so going for a hike/dirt bike/horse ride etc is something you can do for a quick break and get back to the office. Its a real game changer in doing these things which in city life was often planned weeks ahead and took much of a day. And generally great for family life, just the little things like the other day I build an impromptu flying fox off some wire rope we had around as kids latest hobby is to head into the bush looking for trees to climb.
For me its been incredible, but that said it wouldn't be ever-ones cup of tee. If you go the farm route its like having 2 jobs and your really tied to animal if you want to take holidays, so get friendly with your neighbours. Also having never really done physical work I love this aspect and even bought a bulldozer to do some road works and clearing rather than hire someone, its really cool.
If you like bars and clubs its not going to be ideal either as there no much going for social scene and at least around here some areas are unsavoury that you get with city fringes. But if you have family it probably will give you more quality time together.
If your thinking to would be good, Id say do it fast. The older you get the harder it will be. We see people like us doing it and no-one seems to dislike it.
If that social network was still around I'd likely stay, but it's hard to justify the expense when more of my friends are in one place back in my hometown.
It's all temporary, though—I'm planning on coming back once the city starts to open back up in earnest.
There is light at the end of the tunnel :)
The only major difference is that offices are still empty - this actually turned out to be a good thing though - less traffic, biking and walking around is really nice.
I do see commuter towns getting way less popular if remote works really lifts of.
I currently live in an apartment building of 25 people and am closely surrounded by similar apartment buildings. This means that there are literally a couple hundreds of people than can annoy me at any time - either by listening to loud music, by doing some house renovations, by leaving a constantly barking dog at the apartment, by parking a loud car/motorcycle near my window, by having loud conversations near my window etc. In the suburbs, you get similar factors (+ most likely more lawnmowers and leaf blowers than in my district), but you only need to worry about perhaps 10-20 people creating a nuisance, not hundreds. Not to mention that, in an apartment block, I am often able to hear (over the walls) conversations happening in surrounding apartments, while this is just a nonissue in the burbs.
If burbs people complain more, it might be because they expect perfection (they bear the daily long commute so they want to get real peace and quiet in return), while apartment dwellers just live in resignation.
In the burbs, is is a wild west with no mediation/arbitration process. There is a huge sense of entitlement on both sides - "this is my property and I can do what I want" vs. "you are encroaching on my property/rights and I will complain/behave passive aggressively about everything".
Everything you mentioned are issues in suburbs as well - often more so:
- Neighbors dog in the backyard barking all damn day.
- Neighbor throwing BBQ/party in the yard w/ music, and loud laughing/talking late into the night.
- Kids yelling/laughing/screaming.
- Teenagers revving cars up and down the streets
- Lawnmower at 6 in the morning
Trust me, I've lived in both. Apartments have a process to handle unacceptable behavior and disputes. Suburbs are way worse - if you are looking for more private space, you need to go rural where houses sit on large lots.
Ok, so that must be the difference between US and my country (Poland). Here, there's often just enough people with "fuck everyone" attitude (drunks, depressed people, teenagers with irresponsible parents etc.) to ruin it for everyone else. And also, because the flats are mostly owned and not rented, there is no building management that is interested in maintaining a decent standard of living for everyone.
So I can see your point.
Quality, not that remote, well-established neighborhoods are a way to go.
Also low- or no-personal tax, low crime, clean, low dems states getting consistent inflow of migration
While my current job has gone permanent WFH, my next one might not. So I wouldn't want to move too far out anyway.