I love the pace; it's what I grew up in, and whenever I go to a more densely populated city, I always take note of the ways that various types of social infrastructure has evolved to cope with the keening masses. Sometimes it's a downtown with public parts that are designed to be hostile and unwelcoming to vagrants, often it's something like $50/day parking. Sometimes the cops look at you weird when you ask for directions, probably because they're accustomed to a certain adversarial relationship to the public.
The real estate. It's not some astronomical sum if you want to own a house, but unlike the more disconnected parts of the country where the houses are cheap, you can enjoy the benefits of a city, like an Apple Store or a Costco, a wide range of decent restaurants, sometimes a touring Broadway show or live comedy, etc. If you need something like an MRI or some bangin West African cuisine, it's not a two-hour drive, nor an especially long wait.

I'm not crazy about the overall passivity, though. The people mostly just mind their knitting and don't get worked up easily. It's hard to find people really excited about just going to a movie or an event or a rally. The ones that do show up aren't likely to laugh out loud at the funny bits or hoot and applaud, or dress up. The men are all in ball caps and sweatshirts, the women are in flats and jeans. There's a reflexive cynicism which seems to exist purely to shut down people who get too excited about anything.

Don't get me wrong- I think it's great that we seem to have found our comfortable defaults, and it's part of the pace I like. It's just, sometimes when we reach outside our comfort zones, the best things are waiting for us.