I’ve lived in both at various points. I’ve lived in NYC, rural Colorado, rural Tennessee, and Chicago. Grew up in rural Tennessee. Life is generally about the same in whichever sort of place you are. People from both areas exaggerate the differences out of some apparent prideful need to feel particular or special.

The only real differences are superficial. Cities have more traffic. It’s harder to park. There’s more noise. People are a bit more cold and distant. But your day to day life is more or less identical in my experience. You’ll have a bit more “to do” in a large city, but I find that you end up not even doing those things 99% of the time anyways unless someone’s visiting. It’s often too expensive, to inconvenient, and too time intensive. Just like in a rural area, you tend to just sort of stay where you are. Just like in a rural area, it’s going to take you 40+ minutes to reach a place where you can go “do something”. In a rural area, this is because the distance to drive is so vast. In a city, this is because traffic and/or public transit is going to make the trip last just as long anyways. It takes as long to go four miles in Chicago as it does to go 30 miles in rural Tennessee, in other words

The only meaningful difference comes in regards to how you get around, and the experience of going out the door. Cities are nice because you can just take a little stroll down to the nearby store, or nearby park, or whatever. Rural areas are nice because you can just go drive off somewhere outside someplace, and be alone, without a bunch of noise and fuss and stress.