Given my profession (network engineer) I need to live in or near a large city. At an hour away it can be a bit tough to get to work, but I don't worry about my wife or my kids while I'm away, and we still have good schools, hospitals, and emergency services.

Accept the following things-

- You will drive an hour to work each way. Or more. Or accept that you don't have a good job
- You will have to plan on sleeping at work, at a friend's, or two hours of driving for any real storm which will be after you've shoveled your driveway.
- You will have nothing like pizza/chinese/deli delivery, and UPS/FedEx will never find you, so they have to hold any package at their office and you have to find time to go to them.
- You will be waiting on police/fire/EMS if you need them.
- When power gets lost, guess what, town folk get priority before you. Of course they'll strip the crews for getting a small town off their work site so that city folk get power. So you're in the dark for a week or three every year.
- High speed internet? HAHAHAHAHA!!
- You are on a well and a septic tank.

There was more to this, but it was basically just a rant about how cityborn have ruined small towns, to the point where those people who don't leave just to get a job they can survive on now sleep behind double locked doors and with a loaded shotgun by the bed in a town where people didn't lock their cars or their front doors 30 years ago.

I live in a town of around 20,000.

After retiring from the Navy, my wife and I move here with three small children. Packed up and left Norfolk behind.

Best thing we ever did.

I also like being about 45 minutes from great hunting, fishing and hiking.

Bend (the near big town of 80,000) is were all the fine city folk come to visit. Nice folk but I am glad they go to Bend.

Blake

www.outdoorquest.blogspot.com

www.outdoorquest.biz

I loved lots of things about living in small town Minnesota but hadn't realized what I missed about coastal city life until we moved back to Providence. Being closer to friends, the arts and culture, beaches, great food, etc. Easy access to a faster pace of life when we want it and a slow day fishing for blue crabs when we need it. We "managed" living in a small town OK but living in this city has probably rejuvenated our marriage.

Of course, I don't know what Toronto is like. There are cities where I'd never want to live and would choose small town in a second (NYC comes to mind). But you really got to break down your day, the things you like to do, and other commitments to see if a lengthy commute everyday is worthwhile.

Working For The Weekend ... Sorry, Christina's post just pulled this thought from the back of my mind.

Living in a small town is nice. However, commuting more than an hour each way can really grind a person down. IMO, it is intrinsically beneficial to live and work as close together as possible. Time spent commuting is, for the most part, wasted time. Sure you can fill it with this and that, but given a choice, I would prefer have the time back to spend as I would choose.

I believe that many convince themselves that their commute is 'me' time where they can catch up on reading, etc. But given a choice, I bet all would rather be somewhere else.

Commuting is expense from more than a monetary point of view.

There are many areas that a good living can be made and still have privacy, acreage, short commute (or none), and all the important stuff that families can enjoy. My wife works on a branch campus of a large university, the back of their property nearly abuts ours. We are 10-15 minutes from our childrens grade schools/daycare. We have a county seat city and courthouse of 15,000 within site of our highest hilltop. Lots of cool topography, forests, fields, nice mix stable (not boomtown)suburban/rural mix. We enjoy an hour drive to the Pittsburgh region to do zoo/museums/etc..... I serve on a non-profit board there. While a "remote" backwoods local has some advantages, I enjoy being on the fringe. We still have well/septic, I have access to both, but opt out due to the distance to road (3/4 mile)so we have I ran 1000' waterline when I ran natural gas line to our house. I LOVE heating with NG, if our well ever goes bad I can just tap into the public water. You can just hear the cars below our 20 acres on the road. I can WIZZ in the front yard, hunt on our land, log, etc.... We are "hidden" and many people (even public service providers) dont even know we are back here. We still need to be prepared for plowing snow (fire/EMS protection)road maintance....etc... There ARE gems out there, convienence, privacy, good schools/parenting networks.... you just need to look.


Ironwood

Yes, that is a pain in the derriere. Better than driving, but still not that great. I commuted from one city to another by train for grad school (liked where I was living, rent was much more reasonable than in Boston where the school was, so didn't want to move)...it was over an hour train ride. It was doable, because I used the train ride to read/study, but I don't miss that commute at all!!

OK. Here is a guy who did just the opposite

I work in a medium size town . Used to live there too but moved to a LARGER town about 25 minutes away.

Logic was that in the larger town was more people friendly and we were closer to things we liked. Smaller twon was almost limited to work and business. Was almost owned by companies and establishments. So, instead of worrying about work-related commute we were fed up with how many times we had to drive when we wanted to go shopping, visting friends, or other activities.

Now, we are closer to what we want and can tolerate the distance to work. I really don't miss living in that town. The daily commute is offset by weekend driving which is now shorter and more pleasant

Re: Train commutes - One summer years ago I commuted to Boston from PVD on the rail. I was working three jobs at the time and would fall asleep during that hour-long ride every day. It was terrible and provided no rest, but I couldn't help myself. Still hoping the drool I'd find on my face when I'd wake up was my own...