I had the opposite experience ;) And is not the big/small town thing. I actually moved from my 'perfect' place, and it was a 4000 people village :P I actually prefer that! Just my hometown, I don't know exactly why (I have ideas) rubs me the wrong way.
I have a cousin that her whole life always wanted to live close to her parents. She started to live 100 meters away from them. Then bought the land next to their house to build, etc.
I have always been an independent bastard. I love my family to death, but I want to be the furthest away from them. I am who I am, but different lives have different requirements. And different parents have different ways to be dealt with.
I can say here, I would love to have a more 'present' life with my parents. Do wood working projects with my father, or take my mother for coffee somewhere, but we are so different in the way we think, that 99.5% of the times, we just end up arguing (just Saturday evening, we had a family dinner with extended family, and I left their house after a screaming match with my father, no-one was right, we are just too different to ever understand each other)
I had the opposite experience ;) And is not the big/small town thing. I actually moved from my 'perfect' place, and it was a 4000 people village :P I actually prefer that! Just my hometown, I don't know exactly why (I have ideas) rubs me the wrong way.