Cause major metros are expensive as hell, they usually soft-ban children and parenting, they are openly hostile to quick/reliable transportation, and generally depend on lots of labour from other slightly-poorer non-local people to remain viable.
If you carefully curate your life in such a way as to have very few responsibilities or needs, city living can be a lot of fun. I get why people like it, I liked it too. And if you are wealthy, you can buy your way out of a most of these problems.
But for regular, average people, making regular average wages, city living is mostly just a long list of painful drawbacks, and most regular people couldn't afford it even if they were willing to put up with all of that.
If you carefully curate your life in such a way as to have very few responsibilities or needs, city living can be a lot of fun. I get why people like it, I liked it too. And if you are wealthy, you can buy your way out of a most of these problems.
But for regular, average people, making regular average wages, city living is mostly just a long list of painful drawbacks, and most regular people couldn't afford it even if they were willing to put up with all of that.