Five years ago my wife Sarah and I decided we would leave Madison, Wisconsin to live in her hometown of Princeton, Illinois. Several of our acquaintances wondered why we would move away “to the middle of nowhere.” The truth is, our choice was to move to somewhere.

The tale of these two cities is rich with irony, with surprises and also with exactly what we expected. In many ways it illustrates the key messages of the Strong Towns movement.

First, Madison, with its spectacular farmers’ markets, Big Ten sports, the State Capitol and the University of Wisconsin. Downtown Madison is teeming with opera, symphonies, choirs and theaters, museums, street performers and more popular music and alcohol than a healthy human being should probably ever consume. On any given Friday or Saturday night there are hundreds of entertainment options. The intellectual, cultural and political overload can be overwhelming. That’s probably why hundreds of thousands of UW alumni have passed through four years or more on campus, then moved on, remembering the city with great fondness. They could come back to a sea of Badger red on football weekends, drink great local brews and see old friends. What a place!

Madison’s parks and bike paths are the envy of urban planners. But downtown streets through the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona have become a nightmare, and the beltline traffic on the outskirts of the city is no better. A recent headline: “Madison City Council Passes $40 Wheel Tax to Close Major Budget Hole.”

City and state politics are exhausting. In a city of strong neighborhoods and an increasingly diverse population, it seems like anything important takes forever to pass muster. Property taxes and the price of housing are often double what they are in rural Illinois.

For 25 years I was mostly happy to represent the University’s commitment to “The Wisconsin Idea” of serving the people of the state through applied education and social capital. Colleagues and I helped start the Dane Buy Local initiative, Dane County TimeBank, Community Food and Gardening Network and Little Free Library movement. All of those innovations, by the way, share practices often found in strong rural communities.

Our family loved Madison, especially the neighborhood where our kids grew up. Sitting on the front porch of our little bungalow every summer, we watched parents pushing strollers along the sidewalk and walking their dogs. We knew just about everybody and they knew us. Potlucks, picnics and block parties were all part of the picture.

But it wasn’t quite the same as Sarah’s hometown.

Princeton is a farming community of 7,600 off Exit 56 of Interstate 80, marked by four giant “Flags of Freedom.” Surrounded by soybeans and corn, Princeton is at the western reaches of what is now promoted as “Starved Rock Country.” The name makes sense, because the Starved Rock State Park attracts nearly three million visitors a year, most of whom come from within two to three hours away. Small cities and towns like Princeton—Ottawa, LaSalle, Oglesby, Peru, Mendota, Streator—can attract their share of those three million.

After centuries of going it alone, many of those communities are beginning to see their common interests. While they definitely want to see short-term visitors, they also are in the business of calling their wandering families and careerists back home to stay.