Most people don't have a clue about NYC. Either they see things in the movies or TV, or if they go, they just do the main tourist stuff in the busiest parts of Manhattan, and assume that is NYC. There are so many neighborhoods where it is so much more quiet and less hectic, including in Manhattan, let alone BK or Queens. Most New Yorkers purposely avoid the areas where the tourists go because they don't like the crowds either, especially the tourists, who are always stopping to look at things and getting in the way. Meanwhile the tourists think, I just experienced NYC! When they literally have just done some major tourist stuff mostly.
I mean I can be in Times Square in 15 minutes, but I never actually go to Times Square. Avoid it like the plague. I live in a neighborhood that is mostly 2-3 story homes which are single family and often 2-3 family, with some 4 families mixed int, also with some mid rise condo and apartment buildings also peppered throughout, usually four to six stories high. There are multiple parks nearby. It's never too crowded. I can walk to do all my shopping and I never have to use a car to go anywhere in my area or in the city. I have a car because I do work in the suburbs, and my family lives about an hour away. But if I didn't need the car for work, I could find other ways to visit them a couple times a month.
I could never ever live too far from a city. And no, not just any size city, but a major major city. Not like a Charlotte or something like that, way too small. Millions of people. With serious walkability for a lot of things, and with good mass transit (in America mass transit is communism for some reason but it's what makes NYC amazing) - the mass transit and walkability to lots of things are the key factors here. Not many cities in America have it, we are a car culture. In the US I could probably live in some west coast cities for a couple years each, like Seattle or San Fran or Denver. But to get real walkability and mass transit outside of that I'd have to go to Europe, which I hope to one day.
To me the greatest things to experience are the good stuff that humanity creates, along with natural beauty. As fucked up as humanity is, the things that move people are the arts, culture, food, experiences. Also nature, but if I live too far out in nature, I'll get none of the amenities that I mentioned before at all - they will be figments of my imagination - but I can always go visit nature when I want to. And I do. I like to camp and hike and go to the beach, and all those things are an hour to two hours away from me by car.
I go to the MoMA a few times a year or more. It's amazing to have that access. There are so many more museums too, about everything, the big famous ones everybody knows and little ones like the tenement museum and others. I popped in to go to the MoMA the other day for an afternoon date. It was so inspiring and pleasant and I was struck by this photographer's exhibit, a Vietnamese American woman who shoots in large format. Then I walked ten minutes and got food made at a Singaporean vendor hall where most of the vendors are actually from Singapore, and have visas to run them here. Home shortly after to my nice and quiet condo with my big screen tv, pets, and office with my gaming setup.
The diversity is unparalleled, and the food is a product of that. I mean you can just go to a shit ton of neighborhoods and throw a rock in each direction and walk to a ridiculously good food place. I'm not talking high class expensive food. Ethnic food. Fast casual food. You can live in NYC for your whole life and never run out of new places to try and eat. What makes it special is you don't have to drive to any of them. Between your feet and the subway, and in a few places a bus or a bike, I mean it's all at your fingertips.
I go visit my family in the burbs, less than an hour west of NYC and I enjoy visiting, but everything requires driving, and even being that close to NYC, in a very diverse state, the selection is totally pathetic compared to anything near me. You might have some ethnic restaurants, but they are like nothing compared to a major metropolitan city. There are suburban/urban areas around me that have tons of great food but those become few and far apart every mile you get further away. We have the largest Korean American population in NJ outside of Cali, with great food. There are some great areas that are very Indian, etc...so there are pockets of vibrant things once you get out of the city, but they get fewer and farther between the farther you go.
Can the crowds and mass transit be annoying and suck sometimes. Oh absolutely. Can it be expensive to get the space you want while still having great access to all those amenities? Yes, and that fluctuates widely. I'm lucky to have in unit laundry, but many people don't. Annoying. There are definitely drawbacks. I don't think living near an actual major metropolis is for everyone long-term, but, everyone should do it for a few years and then live anywhere else. You will see and experience the very best of human expression and a lot of different versions of it. That is the marrow of life. You may think you don't need it or you may think you are even getting it living near a small city. But you aren't. Not being isolated in cookie cutter neighborhoods with strip malls and soulless chains with a few more vibrant things peppered in there.
Not everybody dresses the same, people look different, tons of different languages, it gives you hope. No cookie cutter strip malls and the same fucking boring chains you see all over the place. Everyone dresses the same, like uniforms. That stuff is soul sucking. There is nothing to do.
If you've never experienced it you don't know what you are missing. If you base your judgements on the few actual big walkable cities in the US on either what you see on tv or what you do as a tourist for a week in Manhattan, you have literally no idea, through no fault of your own, but you just don't. Also when people live in diverse big cities, they tend to see the bigger picture of the world, that we are all humans creating and trying to get by, no matter what we look like. And that's why cities vote blue. To me that says a lot about what cities help people see, even if they move to the burbs later. I mean look at what the red party is all about today. That shit is scary. And where is that base? Nowhere near cities. I think that says a lot about what the lack of experience away from cities does to people. Ignorance creates bad hombres.