Missing the Rust Belt

Having lived in an environment of utmost opulence for the past 10 months, I must say, I miss the Rust Belt, or at least what I experienced of it for two years. Sure, this area has a lot to offer: restaurants of every stripe, stores, malls, easy-access dry cleaners, pharmacies and so on. Even a certain degree of international culture, if one goes to the right places. Yet, something is missing here, and I miss that, whatever it is. The grass is greener here. The trees are lush. No chipped paint anywhere; everything is new. I've never been opposed to newness though. When in college, I was in an environment where the grass was very green, the surrounding fields lush, and the new houses quite new. Something else is missing. Perhaps it is nature. There are several parks here, some offering extensive trails. I've been on these trails, but still, it's not the same. Perhaps it's my own mentality, my own perspective of things--knowing as I do that these enclaves of nature are really artificial, well-tended as they are by park crews. I've often thought it is something in the people, something missing from the people here. Or perhaps, to put it in a different, less self-centered light, perhaps it is I who am lacking that which everyone else here has. I don't know. I just know that, whenever I go to a store, a restaurant, a cafe, a library, there is a disconnect. Not a negative disconnect necessarily but a definite one nonetheless. I'm wondering if it has to do with the fact that I did not grow up in a large suburban environment, or a rich one, that I grew up away from a new center of American growth. I have not made any new friends down here. The ones I have down here are the ones I had before coming.
In that respect, I am glad to leave here in the near future.

The Rust Belt has its downfalls: low income, lower job demand, and higher crime (although gang activity is on the rise here). But what I liked about the Rust Belt, when I was there, was the mellowness of it all. Some may call to mind the dilapidated buildings and see it as stagnation. But for me, and it perhaps it is the medieval in me, I see this as charm, and even a snapshot of history. And nature. Yes, there is the industry, some collapsed, some collapsing; but nature is still to be found. Nature once tamed is now left free, for lack of funds. There is corruption, but there is freedom. A connection with the real world, but a distance from all its hyper-activity. And the churches. For some reason, the churches of the Rust Belt suffer less desecration than those of healthier urban areas. High altars remain in many Catholic churches. Mighty cathedrals and cathedral-like churches, built in economically prosperous times, still stand, triumphantly above everything else.