Lafayette, Louisiana -- ~2300 per square mile, not too crowded. Traffic is awful, but not major city awful. Public transportation is alright (it works, but is no where near where it needs to be -- on par with a major city or Europe).

We have too many grocery stores; Albertsons, Winn-Dixie, Walmart, Target, Fresh Market, Whole Foods, and too many others (many local stores). We have too many general purpose shopping places; Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Conns (don't shop there), Lowe's, Home Depot, a fairly nice mall with too many stores, plus a metric fuckton of others.

Quality restaurants all over town from sushi to Vietnamese (not your hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese), to French homestyle, to Cajun (center of Louisiana for Cajun, actually), Italian, Indian, one Cuban place, and probably a thousand other restaurants -- Cajuns like to eat.

It's a college town, so the people down here are more liberal than conservative. Many are Catholic, so conservative is not really compatible anyway (we have Lent for a reason -- debauchery all year, not just Mardi Gras). The debauchery continues with all the damned festivals we have.

River Ranch is the upscale area of town, all new, and can be very expensive but it's within walking distance to many of the places on the south side of town, which is most of it. The university is on the old side of town, the best part of town.