For many years, it seems that everything speaks in favor of big cities – more employment opportunities and more jobs, more opportunities for business, career growth and self-realization, better medicine – the best and largest clinics and medical centers offering the most modern medical services and having the best specialists are located in large cities, the best opportunities for education – The best universities are located in large cities or near large urban agglomerations. Big cities offer much more opportunities for entertainment and spending free time, for acquiring new knowledge and skills, for improving general culture – a large number of museums, libraries, theaters, cinemas, interesting, curious and non-standard places, unusual and atypical spaces. A huge selection of places and entertainment to visit. There’s always something going on in a big city, it’s never boring in a big city. There are also better travel options because they have the largest airports, railways. railway stations, bus stations, ports and transport hubs, from which there is transport in a huge number of different directions and routes, which, first of all, at lower prices than if you were traveling from some remote village or small town. A big city offers more shopping opportunities and a greater choice of goods and services, and very often lower prices in many areas due to great competition.
Big cities offer a dynamic and diverse life, a rapid pace of life. There is no provincial drowsiness and backwardness. Coming to a big city, everything looks more interesting, more spectacular, more ambitious, more impressive and generally more attractive. The first impression that big cities make on people from a small town is that life in a big city is more developed, for more advanced people, and that they can succeed faster here. In a big city, you can meet more interesting people, find more friends and people with whom you have common interests, or people with interests similar to yours. You can find your dream partner because there is more choice, you meet and get to know more people.
The surroundings of big cities are also very interesting, there are often many interesting places to visit that are located at a short distance, places that offer people the opportunity to relax from the rhythm and noise of the big city, walk along quiet streets, have a good time and relax in general. Suburbs and small towns around large ones are also more developed than deep rural areas or provinces, the quality of services is often higher, and there is quick access to the amenities of a big city. Even more companies are investing in offices and facilities in the suburbs, moving their business units from the expensive center of a big city. It turns out to be a developed urbanized area or agglomeration, in which the surrounding settlements are often in no way inferior to the city, even attracting people with tranquility, order, security, amenities, lower real estate prices and proximity to the city.
These settlements are closely connected with the big city, regular and convenient transport goes to the city, because almost all of their residents work there. Unemployment in large urban agglomerations is very low, almost everyone who wants to work is working. Well, not everyone, of course, works the way they want and achieves the success they dream of.
Against this background, life in a remote village or a small provincial town located at a considerable distance from large urban agglomerations and large economic centers may seem like a tragedy and punishment. In a small town or village, at first glance, everything is worse, there is no work, nowhere to go and nothing to do, most of the time you lead a monotonous and boring life. You meet the same people on the streets, you hear the same things every day, you listen to the same stories. It’s harder to find interesting people. Many of your friends or neighbors would immediately move to a larger city if they had the opportunity. You will meet a lot of people who regret that they did not move and did not take advantage of the opportunities that they had for this. Living in such places and seeing such things, one might wonder how I got here and is there a light at the end of the tunnel? And what kind of light is this – the inevitable departure and abandonment of the village and small town forever, or rather, it depends on the point of view and mood.
But in fact, people’s tastes are different, and life is changing. Living in a big city, it is impossible not to notice the shortcomings of life in it. In a big city it is more dangerous, there is more crime, there is noise, there is dirty air, life is more stressful and there is more stress. Even in a big city, everyday life can be gray and boring, and mostly you can meet cold, aloof, rude and ill-mannered people. You may feel lonely and unhappy in general. There are more opportunities for work, self-realization and doing business in a big city, but the competition is also higher. You will quit your job, so what, someone else will take your place. In a big city, you can often face abuse from other people, employers or business partners. It’s not so easy to find people you can trust and rely on. To find people who understand you or empathize with you. If you need help, often the list of people you can turn to for help and who would really help you is too short. In a big city, you sometimes feel that you are too lonely or infinitely lonely. Life is raging around you, you see a lot of people on the streets and in shops, and you are so lonely.
Although due to the great competition, prices for some goods and services in a big city are cheaper, in general, life is expensive and costs are high. Life is bustling, there are many wonderful opportunities and offers, there are many bright events, but money is needed for everything. Rents and real estate prices are high and getting higher. We have to earn more if we want to live well. Many people barely have enough money, and they lead a very modest lifestyle.
And here the question arises, is life in a small town or village really that bad? Where the air is clean, there is almost no crime, the distances are short and everything is at arm’s length. Where you will not travel in the morning in a crowded subway, drive through congested streets, constantly stand in queues. Where it’s quiet and you can take a break from the frenzied rhythm of the city. Where you can meet and get to know almost everyone and know what you can expect from everyone. Yes, many people would not return to the small town or village they left in the past, because they would perceive it as a step back or a kind of retreat. There are those who would like to return. Here we are not talking about returning or moving to a specific settlement, but about whether life in a small town or village can be attractive and how it can be made attractive.
Life in small settlements is quiet and peaceful, the air is clean, there is beautiful nature around, sometimes there is a beautiful and pleasant landscape design, calm and sparsely populated streets and squares, small and cozy gardens, shops and restaurants, a slow and relaxed rhythm, short distances and a high level of comfort.
With the development of information technologies and digital services, the situation in small towns and villages is beginning to change in a positive direction. Or, if positive changes are still not observed in certain places, in fact, it is about to happen. These changes no longer depend so much on mayors or local authorities. The situation is changing all over the world. Now there are much more opportunities to work from home, home office and remote work. Many well-paid jobs and professions are mostly performed either completely remotely or using a home office. Software development, programming, customer service, marketplace support, trading platform maintenance, development of digital products and services, design and creation of creative products, remote medicine and telemedicine, and many others. Yes, now it is absolutely possible to find an interesting and well-paid remote job and save yourself from the costs and stress associated with a big city. It is absolutely possible to communicate with your colleagues and partners only remotely using digital services such as chat or video conferencing. If you open and start browsing the largest international job sites and the largest national job sites, you will be able to find a huge number of offers for absolutely remote work. Remote work is the whole process, starting with submitting a resume, interviewing, submitting the necessary documents, training, the work itself and trainings, and ending with leaving work. Many people have never visited their company’s office. If you look at the huge number of ads and positions on these sites, at the huge number of opportunities, you may be impressed. For comparison, you can enter remote work or work from home into the search engine of a large international site and note how many results this search will give you, and then enter the same on the largest job site in your country and choose remote work or work from home again. You will be surprised. A search on a major international website will allow you to find as many vacancies for remote work and home work as there are in your entire country, and even more, including remote work and on-site work. And a search on the country’s largest job site for remote work and work at home can give more results than in most major cities of the country for any type of work. And also offers for remote work and work from home will very often be more highly paid than casual work in a big city – software development, work on promising products, projects and directions using modern technologies, online trading and shopping, development of customer service platforms and marketplaces, creation of creative products and much more. At the same time, large cities offer a huge number of low-paying jobs created to serve a large number of the population in these cities. With such positions, you will never have enough money, you will barely cover the rent and monthly expenses, you will spend a lot of time on daily commutes to work in crowded public transport and on congested streets. It will be very difficult to raise money for your own home, as expenses and inflation will eat up your income and savings, and real estate prices will continue to rise. In a sense, this desire of yours can become a train that has no destination. You will get a decent amount of stress every day, you will often witness arrogant, rude and hostile attitude towards yourself and other people. Often, relationships between people in a big city are quite cold or strained due to lack of money or increased competition.
And in fact, people who prefer to work in a big city or have to travel to it more often can also live in a small town or village. They can simply find a job with a convenient schedule that allows them to go to work and spend time at home with their family at the same time. For example, a schedule in which you work for two days and then rest for two days, or you work for three days and then rest for three days, or, for example, you work for one month and then rest for one month. Some people work six months a year, then take a six-month vacation or a break if they manage to earn enough in six months of work to be able to live on their earnings. Regular and convenient transportation from small towns and villages to large cities and large economic centers can be organized. To be able to arrive on time in the morning for work, school or lectures, to be examined in the hospital, and then after lunch or in the evening, people could easily return back. Fast and convenient shuttles every day. Provide more buses, trains, minibuses, provide more seats and be able to transport more passengers. Their route will start from small towns and villages and move along certain routes around the big city, not just to the bus station. Routes can pass by hospitals and large medical centers, by schools and universities, as well as by business zones, office parks and industrial zones, through the most central, most convenient and most communicative places in a big city, through the most sought-after, most desirable and most attractive places. If the distance to a big city is longer and people have to travel a total of several hours a day in both directions, arrange a sleeping area or a recreation area with beds or comfortable adjustable seats and armchairs, more like sleeping cars on trains. Thus, people will be able to sleep in the morning on the road, and then return to rest after a long and stressful day. Or get a laptop and do something useful on the way. Instead of forcing people to buy a ticket every time, offer them affordable monthly and annual travel tickets. Subsidized lines can be organized for the most needy. To build dormitories for workers and employees who work for several days with an overnight stay in a big city, so that they do not have to sleep in a hotel, and give most of their salaries to rent rooms. Large companies and employers could also help here, which in this way could find an additional number of workers and employees. They could attract people who work in other major cities or in other countries who are currently paying for expensive housing.
Now you can take advantage of a lot of opportunities and services without living in a big city and without going there. Now you can really use high-quality services regardless of your location or place of residence. You can make purchases online, including on the largest platforms in the world, and receive orders in a reasonable time. You can get advice online on any issue and in all spheres of life, for example, get high-quality advice from an experienced doctor remotely using telemedicine. You can always ask for help from virtual assistants or a chatbot with artificial intelligence. The virtual assistant will tell you what’s new, the chatbot will solve the problem for you or offer you various solutions to a specific problem or various problems that bother you. You can always independently search for answers to your questions and solutions to your problems using Internet search engines, and the most important condition for all this comfort is having a good Internet connection. Many requests and applications can be sent online to private companies and government agencies, documents can be signed and issued online. We could find many opportunities in any direction if we knew how and where to look. We could solve many of our problems. We can’t always get our bearings quickly, a detailed study of things can give us a lot of ideas that we hadn’t thought of before, a lot of solutions and options that we didn’t know about and didn’t guess.
Various organizations and services in small towns and villages or focused on them, as well as various digital platforms and services can provide more information about the possibilities of remote work and obtaining high-quality digital services. Websites and platforms may have special tabs and sections for ads and vacancies designed for people living in remote small towns and villages. Companies that deliver goods in a short time and offer services 24 hours a day could emphasize in their profiles and on their websites that they also work in small and remote settlements, that location does not matter. Local authorities can also participate. They should not just repair the streets and do landscaping, but also give valuable advice and help people find more opportunities for work and self-realization, improve their well-being and have access to quality services. For example, when a person visits an employment agency, he was not only offered the same few and unattractive positions, for example, to become a cashier or a warehouse worker, or to say in a plaintive tone that, unfortunately, there are no vacancies in our area, and that everyone knows about it and all people have long gone to work in other cities and countries, but provide him with information about international and national platforms that offer home office, remote work and work from home. They comment on opportunities, positions, requirements, examples of ads or successful candidates, give advice, etc. Because there are jobs and there are many offers, but people don’t know where and how to find them. It’s just that people don’t even know and don’t suspect how many open vacancies for remote work exist around the world and even in their own country. They have no idea how many new niches, directions, opportunities for self-realization and business they can discover online, they do not know where and how to look. Well, they should have certain skills, speak a foreign language and have Internet at home, but this is the least of the problems. Someone has to open people’s eyes and help them find their way. Over time, they themselves will feel that location and place of residence are not so important, that they need to be more informed and resourceful, that attitude, abilities and skills are more important.
It is a good idea to create more information resources telling about the benefits of living in small towns and villages. Publish more articles with high-quality texts and photos, more videos to inspire more people to visit them, live there seasonally, for certain periods or permanently. It’s good to create cool content to promote them as interesting places to visit and good places to live. A very popular version is that if we live in quieter and more peaceful places, with fewer people and stress, with cleaner air and healthier food around, we will be healthier and live longer. Local companies and entrepreneurs could also be involved in this process to help promote their small towns, villages and districts. Promote places to visit, events and products created and produced in the area. Create an interesting and rich program of events so that residents and guests of the district will never be bored, attract more tourists and win more adherents of seasonal stay and life in these settlements. In recent years, an important indicator is not how much permanent population a city, village or settlement has, but what is its average annual number, or the average monthly population, how many people stay seasonally or for certain periods, what is the number of tourists. It can show how attractive life is there. Some towns and villages manage to attract a lot of seasonal residents and tourists, people who often spend certain periods of time there and then return again and again. Tourists and people who come to work remotely for several months and want to combine remote work with tourism and leisure. Programmers and IT professionals in general, digital nomads, scientists, people working in creative industries or remote customer service, art professionals, musicians, writers, artists, people who work mostly remotely, and people who are not tied to location.
Small towns and villages that successfully attract more people benefit greatly from this. Business, construction, infrastructure are developing, more and more shops, restaurants, hotels, offices are opening, these towns and villages are becoming more attractive and lively every year. The idea of building office and residential complexes in such places, opening common workspaces, the idea of creating and developing IT villages is very interesting. The opening of complexes where there is an opportunity for both accommodation and tourism, as well as for remote work, with equipped rooms and conference rooms, with modern technologies, monitors and screens that allow video conferencing. Hotel complexes can also develop in this way – in addition to tourism, recreation and local flavor, offer conditions for remote work. Thus, some hotel rooms can become offices and studios for remote work, rather than places to relax. Of course, guests will be able to use the additional services of the hotel, because, of course, they came not only to work. They will also go outside, go shopping, visit cafes and restaurants, have fun, walk in nature and play sports. They will look for interesting places, classes, activities and events to visit, relax and think about what new things to try and how to diversify their lives. The truth is that life in a small town or village may not be so bad. It’s a matter of taste and point of view.
Do you prefer to live in a small town or village or in a big city? Does location matter in the modern world, or is it more important to have access to the Internet and modern technologies?
