Are you looking for the advantages of living in a city because you have decided to move? In this post, you’ll discover the pros and cons of living in cities like Barcelona or Madrid, so you can decide if this is the lifestyle you want.

It’s a well-known fact that the debate over whether city life or suburban living is better is one that we’ll never fully agree on. There’s always someone with a compelling argument for either side.

That’s why today, we’ll help you decide if you also have trouble deciding between them, specifically with 10 benefits to living in the city, an information that will be useful for people who are moving to Barcelona with family or kids, or you are willing to come alone, and is just looking for tips for living in Barcelona as an expat.

Amenities

People that live in small villages that are far away from the busy life of the city might really hate this, but there’s nothing worse than getting home and realizing that you’ve forgotten to buy something you had planned to have for dinner. Now, if you lived in the city, it’s not that big of an issue. You can go to the nearest supermarket and get it. This applies to many other things, such as needing something, an emergency, etc. This is a good reason or advantage of living in the city.

You might think that this isn’t that big of an issue, but when you have to go through this on a daily basis, you might stress and feel overwhelmed.

Related to that, we wrote a post about the costs of living in Barcelona vs USA, in order as you can make an idea how cheap (or expensive) is the mediterranean city against the american country. Because if you decided to move to the catalan city (either if it’s for retiring in Barcelona or doing real estate investments), you will have to take into account, first, find your flat in Barcelona to have somewhere to live, but well… depending on the zone you choose, you will live differently: that’s why we created a blog article talking about the best neighborhoods to live in Barcelona.

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Especially if we have kids, commuting daily and relying on us to get them to school—since they can’t use public transportation on their own—can be quite stressful. Even if we think it won’t be too much of a hassle or seem stressful at first, it can add up over time. Additionally, having the school or university close to home means that if we’re running late one day, it’s not a major issue.

The same happens with work, we lose a bunch of time of our lives in the car or motorcycle just to get there, making us feel as if we worked extra hours.

Apart from school, university and work, the same applies to hospitals or doctors. It’s much better if it’s close to our home, just in case one day we need to go to an appointment if we feel bad. It wouldn’t be a nice idea to get a car or motorcycle if we’re sick: another of the several advantages of the city life.

Ambience

This might be the most subjective point of this whole entire list. But it really makes our quality of life much better, so that’s why we say that this is one of the advantages of living in cities. Being surrounded by families, seeing people on a daily basis, are things that some people might value more than others, that’s why we said that it depends on every person.

An example of things that we might not be able to experience if we chose to live in the countryside, it’s nightlife. We can agree that if we have to go out to the city to go out at night, we might not be able to get the car back. All in all, it makes it impossible to fully enjoy the experience. And talking about the countryside, if you come from a little village, you might live in a house, and then changing your life for living in a flat, can be a little bit claustrophobic. So for these cases, we have a list of properties with a lot of luxury homes in Barcelona for sale. Check them out!

Other activities are festivals, museums… If we live far away from the city, we might get lazy at the last minute because we have to get the car, find a place to park, etc.

Public transport

What are the advantages of living in a city? There’s nothing better than kids being independent, going to school, or hanging out with friends without relying on adults. Plus, if we move far from the city, having a driver’s license becomes almost essential to avoid long waits and delays.

Being able to move from one place to another rapidly and without the need of paying for gas or having to look for parking everywhere we go, will make us motivated to go visit places. Also, living in the city allows us to walk more. If we don’t want to get the train, metro or bus, we can always walk around as our means of transportation. This has many benefits for our health, and it’s not something that we can do in the countryside with nowhere to go.

More job opportunities

This is also a very obvious advantage. We can’t really find job opportunities for certain jobs if we live in a more rural area. Instead, if we live in the city, there are many more opportunities for us to choose from and therefore, being able to choose between different places to work at. If we’re lucky enough to find somewhere to work in rural areas, we don’t really have the choice but to get it, it’s not common at all to get a good opportunity in these kinds of places.

Safety

We already talked about this in the second point, but having a hospital nearby can really be helpful. Not only for appointments, but also because in the city, the whole infrastructure is prepared to always have an ambulance or police, that can help you in case you need it. If you live far away from the city, you might not get help as fast as someone that lives in the city would. Check out all the list of luxury apartments for sale in Barcelona we have for you, and choose the one it fits you better. Some of them are in the most luxury areas of the city, like in the most expensive streets in Barcelona, at the same time that we have some flats in another more modest zones, like for example if you want to live in Poblenou.

These are just the things that we have to consider if they are worth worrying about or not, when choosing between city life or a more rural life.

According to the topic of safety, we highly recommend you to analyse carefully all the zones in Barcelona, because each zone has their own characteristics. For example, if you decide to live in Sarrià (here some of our best flats for sale in Sarrià), Bonanova or you know someone who is living in Pedralbes (the neighborhood next to Sarrià: here some of the best houses for sale in Pedralbes), for sure you will know that these are the best three areas for living in Barcelona, if what you want it’s calm and peace. In our real state, we have a huge list of flats and penthouses for sale in Barcelona, and all of them are luxury. So, if you need a buyer agent in order to help you with your decision, we are here to serve you.

Delivery

These days, everyone uses Amazon and other delivery services for shopping and food orders. However, if you live quite far from the city, you might find that your deliveries don’t always make it directly to your door.

More property possibilities

In the city, we have a higher chance of finding a place to live sooner than if we had to look for a house in a rural area. This is because of all the amount of apartments that there are in the city in comparison to the countryside.

Shopping and dining

As we’ve mentioned before, being able to go to a wide variety of places to try food nearby, without the need of getting a car. For the second purpose “dining”, we extremely recommend you the district of Gracia. Living in Gracia, it can be one of your bests experiences if what you really like is to eat and explore new restaurants. This area is full of bars and restaurants where social life is extremely active, and you’ll have the opportunity to socialize and meet many people while enjoying yourself.

Lower maintenance costs

Last, but not least, there’s the lower maintenance. Taking care of an entire house is quite different from managing an apartment in a building. Living in the city can be much cheaper and might save us a lot of money in the long run.

As we’ve seen, city living has many advantages, but the final decision is up to you. Do you know what you prefer?

10 advantages of living in the city