Interesting thread.

The Edmonton I live in is not the quaint, close-knit Edmonton that I remember as a kid. The metro area and surrounding burroughs have a population of over a million now, and is really adopting the big city, don't-give-a-shit-about-anyone-else attitude. On the plus side, being in the prairies has the advantage of land, so those million+ people are spread out over a large area, instead of stacked on top of each other like in your usual wordly metropolis. It can be nice being close to ammenities, but the noise and the daily grind does bring you down sometimes.

Ideally it would be nice to live just outside the city so you don't have to drive stupid distances to buy groceries or DVD's, whatever. But the housing/land prices are so ludacris these days it's very prohibitive and sometimes seems like a pipe dream