If you are looking for "good work balance", one factor you may need to look into would be cost of living. We moved from a very high cost of living city to a much lower cost of living city (smaller city but with major cities 2-4 hours drive in 3 directions) - and currently we live in an area where the commute is not that bad for us (definitely nothing like the area we moved from, traffic-wise where at times, it seems like I could bike in the same amount of time to get to my location, although biking was definitely a much higher risk of injury due to the higher incidence of bike accidents).
In fact, even in my company, folks internally have noted that my site location has better work/life balance than our HQ location, and we have had lots of folks relocated to my site from HQ location specifically because of the lower cost of living and lower stress of daily life.
