I lived in one of the largest cities in the United States for a year. Prior to relocating, I grew up in a small suburb. Here’s a few pros/cons that I gathered from my experience.
Pros:
Convenience of sidewalks for trekking, and walking to the ATM or to get groceries.
Very nice, cheap and convenient public transportation.
Nice views.
Occasional nice accessible events.
Cons:
Panhandlers, loud people on the train plugging their YouTube music channel, kooks, and solictors. Anecdote: Once had a person follow me for 2 blocks to solict me to donate to something for sports, assault me by touching my shoes (although complementing them) and then threaten to hit me afterwards.
Delayed, or filled public transportation (specfically around 0900 and 1700). Also, having to be wary of which train to get on based on reputation, and which car to get in to. The first car with the conductor and not looking anyone in the eye + not holding a cell phone was the advise I learned from Reddit.
Pet and sometimes human waste on the sidewalks. Lots of apartments around, so people obviously have to walk their pets to get exercise and use the bathroom. Even though they clean up #2, it still leaves a mark, and #1 is still disgusting. I wished everyone would just have cats.
High cost of living. High taxs etc.
Construction. Always seemed like something was being worked on and it’d be annoying to have to adjust my path home due to it.
Aggresive drivers. Having to be extra careful crossing the road, because some will ignore basic driving principles & safety. Lots of honking.
Moving. Having to reverse a parking spot to load my rented moving truck, and navigating the truck through tiny streets was not fun. I recommend buying a ubox or similar to move and to hire a Registered Mover [0].
I’ve since moved back to suburbia due to the cons listed ^.