There are some places that make you want to leave as soon as you set foot in them.
If it is the kind of life that you want to lead, there is nothing wrong with deciding that a small town is the place for you. The houses are probably cheaper than a lot of other places, and it is a less hectic pace of life than being in the big city. Being somewhere where everybody knows everybody isn't going to appeal to some, but for others, it is exactly what they want.
No doubt about it, when it is done right, the small-town attitude can be charming enough for even the most hardened city slicker to rethink what it is they are doing in the big smoke. That's what every Hallmark movie has always taught us, right?
Unfortunately, this isn't the reality for every place that just so happens to have a reduced population. In fact, much of the time, the reason that a town doesn't have that many people is that so many felt like the best option was to leave it behind. It takes a real effort to make any town or city a good place to live, no matter what the size, but if that effort isn't there, it tends to be magnified in those places where there aren't as many inhabitants. The things that simply don't work so well are made pretty obvious, and it isn't even like there are enough neighborhoods for there to be a way to ignore the bad parts now and then.