Yeah I'd agree. Not all cities are the same and there are some benefits to living in them, as well as problems. I think the problem is when people from the country go to downtown areas, those areas tend to suck and you need to have a certain, shall we say street smarts, calloused ability to ignore the random bullshit going on around you. If you go to the nice parts where people actually tend to live, it's not near so bad, and there's lots to do close by.

The opposite it true in the countryside. City people who visit kind of lack the, shall we say roughing it ability and can't figure out what to do with themselves when there. It's very much a country mouse and a city mouse type situation.

The thing is there is a gradient between "cities" and "country" and I think most people would not like the extreme ends of it. Usually the best is living on the edge of a city, stuff is nearby, but so is nature. Not so inconvenient.

But like, even the most hardened city lovers are likely to find themselves strained with truly urban nightmares like Lagos or Mumbai or somewhere like that. Also east Asian megacities like Tokyo or Beijing or wherever tend to be fairly nice but ludicrously crowded in the main areas to a point that would drive an average westerner batty.

On the other hand you've probably never lived somewhere without indoor plumbing. Compared to digging your own whole to do your business, living in what op describes as a giant "toilet" is kind of a funny way of putting it. I've been to developing countries with almost no infrastructure, the world is your toilet, literally sometimes they'll stick a plank over a pit and you gotta go walk out to the middle and squat. Hope you don't fall in. I'll take a New York alley over that to be honest.