Again I funnily enough have the exact opposite experience. In my experience if you live near 1000 people there are a higher risk of there being "gossipy busybodies" than if you live near 100 people or 10. In my opinion the difference is not the amount of people that talk rumors, as it is likely always around the same percentage, but that they drown out in a big city. So I guess the question is, if that is true: Do you care about the rumor or about hearing the rumor?

All it takes to ruin it is one bad neighbor. I went from party and traffic noise, people trying to threaten me to back off when I complained of noise and drugs being sold to waving to people in the neighborhood, walking our dogs together, helping out when a car is broken down, etc. It is like night and day.