Where I live is almost the opposite of yours. I live in an urban area, ‘close-in’- so you know the area that’s not downtown but is the city and has lots of shops and houses. There’s nine kids on my block alone, though two of them are toddlers, and we just had a block party yesterday which was really fun. Mostly everyone knows each other. I’m not especially friends with most of them, excepting my best friend who lives next door, but we still hang out when there’s nothing else to do, and I bike home with Dean’s family because he goes to my school. There’s also an eight-year-old and his little toddler sister who live across the street, and I babysit them sometimes. There’s a large park a few blocks away, and I meet people there. Usually someone I know is hanging out there already when I come. Close by is a street lined with shops, and the staff in a lot of them know me by name. 

The sidewalks are cracked, and the front yards are either not lawns or dried grass where you need to watch your step. The not-lawns are covered with the effects of kids, soccer balls and muddy footprints. There’s posters up around town about a criminal being around and not to go out after dark. If you forget your coat outside, it’s gone. I never, ever, want to move.

I live in an Urban area, bordering on slightly Rural just because there's so much countryside and fields, etc. I love living where I live because, honestly? I don't like cities. XD Not saying that everyone who lives in cities is a bad person or anything, but I don't like cities. I thrive on the woods and long, winding dirt roads. Paved streets, polluted air, and bustling people just don't really appeal to me. 

I live way out in the country, in a super rural area. Picture classic rural countryside: old gravel roads, farms, blue skies that stretch on forever, the smell of sweet hay and grass in the air. There are people around, but it's not like a neighborhood at all. The sense of community is amazing. People have each other’s backs here, you can feel it. And everyone has lived here so long that everyone knows everyone. The houses are spaced out, there are woods and fields and hills and farms, and the Appalachian mountains in the distance.

The stars are amazing. You step outside at night and feel like you can see every one of them. There are lots of animals too, which I love. Sometimes random dogs and cats will show up at our house, and we feed them and they stick around for awhile. We usually don’t know if they belong to anyone or not, because people let their dogs and cats roam out here.

We live right next (and I mean right next, like, you go out the back door, there’s a fence, and then the farm starts) to a really big farm, and the owners of it are really nice and let us come whenever we want. There’s a big, gorgeous old grey barn that I like to visit, and sheep and dogs and cats and chickens and cows. There are tons of places to hike and explore.

We have to drive about two hours to get to the nearest mall and quite a few other places. We’re actually so far out that even our Dominoes pizza doesn’t deliver to us, but sometimes we order from there anyway and meet the deliverers halfway in the parking lot of a church. XD And if you were wondering, no, we don’t live like hillbillies. We still have high-speed internet, WiFi, and all the luxuries of modern life.  

I adore it here. Even though I spent most of my early childhood in cities and suburbs, no place has ever felt like home as much as here, and I don’t think any place ever will. I never, ever want to move. 

@Vyolette, I agree with you completely about cities! There’s certainly nothing wrong with them, and I even enjoy visiting them from time to time, but I wouldn’t want to live in one. Cracked pavement, tall sleek buildings, and light pollution make me sad. I, too, thrive on fresh country air, dirt roads, and woods. 

I live in a very rural area on a farm! It's a ten minute walk just to and from the mailbox. It takes 15 minutes to drive to the store, and an hour and a half to get to school. (Pretty much everything is far away from our house.)

Around here, almost everybody has cows or horses (or both), and the lifestyle is pretty slow-paced. It feels kind of like being on an island since we live on a lot of land surrounded by trees.

@Vyolette - Agreed!! I love the smell and feel of the country!

I live in an... Urban enviorment? I think Brooklyn is considered urban. It's just that, compared to Manhattan, which is the real city part of New York, the residential areas of Brooklyn are positively rural. Okay, maybe not rural. Suburbanish. *shrugs*

ewvt

Agreed on the first part. Brooklyn is sorta ew. 

I actually live in all three!

The area my dad lives in Edinburgh is very rural, with all the sheep and grass you could ever want. I love the dirt roads, and the chilly air, and the old fashioned architecture, and the bright stars. It’s absolutely gorgeous, but it’s also pretty far from any good restaurants or shops.

Right now, my dad in I are living in Hong Kong, which is an extremely dense city. The whole island is only 5 or so square miles, and there are so many people. The food is amazing (bubble waffles are the best), you can take public transportation everywhere, there are great beaches, and the city is safe.

And then my smallish town in California, where my mom and brother are. Open fields of dying grass, hills up and down the area, school kids laughing after school, and perfect weather. I am so biased, but The Bay Area is the most wonderful place in earth. I’m 30 minutes away from San Francisco (the best city in my opinion), and close to beaches and good schools. I would love to go there right now.

<3 Fidelity  

All of your descriptions about urban and rural living sounds amazing. I live in a sububan area, the supposed American Dream, though I've always dreamed of living in either an urban or rural area. In suburbia, the houses look the same, the neighborhoods all copies of each other, and the sporadic spacing of trees is just creepy. Art rarely takes place in a suburban setting, except for perhaps in distopian stories. Looking at my neighborhood from above with Google Maps, its all housing and schools. I can't see the stars at night, but I can't see city lights either. Instead, I see broken street lights and flickering TV lights from neighbors' windows. It seems like suburban life tries to combine the positive aspects of both rural and urban life together, though it doesn't succeed in every case (I think it would be very interesting to live in a Mixed Use Neighborhood) and sometimes instead brings a sense of world-weariness. What is nice is that my high school is very close by, so that I can easily walk to it and see all of my friends. I don't really have some other people's problems that also live in suburbia of not enough people to talk to, though I also never talk to other people when school is out. I don't know many of my neighbors and we aren't at all close knit. There are many chain restraunts and shopping areas, but they all lack any culture and are very repetitive. Nobody views my suburbia as a place they want to stay in; everyone wants to move off for college as soon as possible and my neighborhood is positively bursting with soon to be empty-nesters and high schoolers. While suburban life provides good opportunities such as some nice schools and relative saftey, I also often wish that I lived in either an urban or rural area instead. 

@Leeli, your descripition sounded beautiful! 

Wow! Fidelity, you're living in Hong Kong? That's so awesome!

I live in a nice little suburban area where everything is very new and very big. I kind of miss my old home town. But on the plus side, I'm closer to RTP now. 

I live in the city at one house, and the middle of nowhere where our closest neighbor is 1 mile away. :3

I'll post pictures which I cropped to keep Darkking and I's identities hidden. 

Another landscape cropped of the garden :3