Why I Love Living in a City

Living in a city offers me convenience and a lifestyle I can’t usually find in non-urban settings.

People often ask me why I enjoy living in a dense urban area so much. Currently I live in San Francisco. Before I lived in Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago, with occasional longer stint residencies in places like Palm Springs and Las Vegas. Cities have thus far appeared to be my thing most of the time when choosing where to live.

As I was walking early one morning recently from my apartment to the restaurant where I have breakfast most days, some of the reasons I enjoy living in a city became clear.

On my way to the restaurant I immediately encountered a good friend walking his dog and we chatted for a few minutes. There are lots of dogs in San Francisco. It surprises people when they visit here. Despite being a cat person, dogs make me happy. I try to pet a few dogs every day on the street when I can.

I then ran into two more friends with whom I conversed briefly in the three blocks walk to the restaurant. There are about 10–15 decent to great restaurants within a 3–4 block walk from my apartment along with an abundance of coffee shops and small retail shops.

Once at the restaurant, I saw one friend and one good acquaintance with whom I also chatted briefly. Then a close friend came in and spontaneously joined me for breakfast and, as usual, we had a great conversation. Then someone known to my breakfast companion but a new friend to me came into the restaurant and we asked him to join us, which he did. I learned so much from that brief conversation with the new friend. Turns out his career is quite fascinating and he’s done some really cool stuff. I learned some things.

For those who know me, you know I’m a highly online connected guy (for better or worse) and I was able to answer a few emails, check social media, and so on within the few minutes I had between people encounters because of the great wifi connectivity cities generally offer. That’s not always easy to do in non-urban areas where such connections can be spotty.

After breakfast as I was walking back home to begin a day of writing I stopped by to pick up mail at my mail drop and went into my local 24-hour drug store and pharmacy to pick up a medication.