Is it true for you that being in a city “impairs our basic mental processes”?

"Human minds struggle to keep up with the mental over-stimulation that’s ubiquitous in most cities. This can lead to mental and emotional fatigue in city dwellers," writes http://www.utne.com/Science-Technology/Cities-Stress-the-Brain-Nature-Restores-the-Mind.aspx?blogid=36, but it's not the case for me.

And for you? Would you rather live in a city or countryside?

I spent 10 days in the countryside some years ago and couldn't sleep at all. I am accustomed to the noise of traffic and voices in the streets and I sleep like a baby through all of it. But in the countryside the verses of the crickets and such like animals kept me wide awake and very irritated. When I was living abroad, I lived in an apartment situated on a very quiet street. At night it was so silent, I could not sleep at all. I called my husband and told him:"the silence is so noisy, it is driving me crazy!". He says that we Italians are so accustomed to living in cities or towns we freak out when we live in an isolated place like the countryside.  I think it is true. Apart from the "noise", if I lived in a very isolated spot I would be afraid of serial killers and marauding delinquents. I feel at ease only when I live in a place where I can open the window and shout "help!" and people around me would come (hopefully) to help me. I think it is an ancestral memory of the times when the barbarians where invading Italy one wave after another and the only way to be relatively safe was to live surrounded by people.

I would only live in the city, New York in particular, but not in the centre. The city is in a way like the wilderness, like a jungle to be more precise. Otherwise I would only live in a total wilderness, perhaps even with no roads, but always by the sea, the lake or if worse came to worse, a river. 

Ditto. Or the mountains in my case.

I didn't vote for I like both.

I live in a small medieval town, situated very close to the North Sea. I have everything I need within walking distance. Nice, pleasant, calm and affordable and somewhat boring. The same house with its pretty Italian-style courtyard, etc., would not be in my range if I moved to Copenhagen, so...

Still, I'd prefer being closer to Copenhagen, which is a four-hour train ride away. Where I lived in the US, I was only a hop, skip and a jump away from NYC with the NJ transit. Fifty minutes or less and I can enjoy the city and everything in it. That's how I like New York City.

Nanna

Me too. 

I voted 'city' because even though, as a compromise, I could live in the country (as I did in Florence), it would have to be a hop, skip and a jump away from a city.

"Stadtluft macht frei", translated: "city air makes you free"

An old German saying from the Middle Ages. I think it still applies.

After some hesitation, I checked option 2. There should have been a third option, either "suburb" or "other"... Cities are for working, I`d say. But really living... it depends, of course, for tastes differ. I like living where I can go barefoot in summer, and roar songs without scaring the neigbours too much, and climb a tree if I feel like it, and keep dogs and cats without having to ask for the neighbours` permission, and above all, have at least some privacy. But it has to be not more than 15 minutes to the nearest bookstore!

As Nanna also said, yes. Sorry about that. Working in a city myself I saw at first only this Manichean split between translators/interpreters working hand in hand with their city direct clients and those doing telework for far away continents, in the country comfort of their pyjamas and slippers. Obviously the world is not black and white.

Ah...I saw the poll as a straight preference for where we like to live, which, of course, affects how we work, but I didn't think in those terms in my first post.

All things being equal, I would certainly have more direct clients if I lived in a big city like Copenhagen. All I have to do is present myself and I enhance my chances. Not so easy in this suspicious-jutes-everywhere neck of the woods

Nanna

Another Freudian slip on my part then, considering that I spend most of my life in my office...

Meanwhile, an amazing survey is out in Poland: http://www.rp.pl/artykul/247454_Slask_liderem_dobrobytu_.html. Based on the level of salaries and the unemployment rate, Silesia is the leader, although how can you reduce the 'standard of living' they are touting to the level of salaries and the unemployment rate? Unless the crisis is so bad that these are the only things that count these days...