> A more outgoing person might seem agro, if that's not what you're used to.
That was my experience coming from a large town/small city to bigger places. Random dude I don't know started talking to me, that put me on alert. It was stressful. Why is this guy talking to strangers? Is he crazy? Is he sizing me up to attack me? It did not feel laid back.
There's a stereotype of small towns as being places where everybody talks to everybody, but my hometown was big enough that you didn't know everybody, and people only talked to who they knew. Maybe in really small towns people talk to everybody because they know everybody, and in cities people talk to strangers because they're always surrounded by strangers, but what was familiar (and hence "laid back") to me in my upbringing was to ignore people you didn't know. If you were curious about someone you didn't know, you'd wait until they were gone and then ask your friend, "Do you know who that was?" Any interaction with a stranger would be preceded by a sincere apology and a REALLY good excuse.
>NYC, Boston, northern Virginia, etc... always seemed like people were much more uptight and kept to themselves.
It kind of sounds like you're talking about different things.
A more outgoing person might seem agro, if that's not what you're used to. Or similarly, a more reserved person might seem rude.