I go to Lafayette and West Lafayette on occasion. I have a friend who lives up that way, so sometimes we meet there which is about halfway. It’s nice there. Carmel is nice, but it’s just too much for me. I couldn’t live there. I’ve become accustomed to the small town that I live in, with about 12,000 folks (but growing). I don’t miss the bigger city life at all. At all.
What I consider necessary, as I get older, is that there needs to be a high quality and robust healthcare industry, locally. Some - many - small towns just don’t have it.
For instance, a couple of anecdotal examples:
I have a brother who lives in a small town in Texas, barely 15,000 people. Some years back his first wife had to be helicoptered to a metro area medical facility to get the emergency care she needed, and she barely survived that trip.
I thought once of residing in the small Illinois town of Hoopeston (the housing prices are bargains) until I learned that many major medical things require getting down to Chamnaign, Illinois (about an hour away) to get the quality care needed.