“If you live away from centers of rabid competition, though, it will likely hurt your career, because in some measure you’ll fall asleep.”
To some extent, that’s probably true, but not in all professions or in all cases. There are people who are very self-motivating, who may do their best work in a vacuum of their own making, without distractions. There are also outlier islands of innovation. Fifteen minutes from where I live in “Nowheresville” (think: Rust Belt meets the Appalachians) is an environmental research station associated with a Flagship University two hours away. An acquaintance working there presents her findings at national and international conferences several times a year, and she just returned from a sabbatical on the West Coast. She’s certainly not falling asleep.
But the restaurant in Palo Alto? I agree we can’t replicate the crowd there, or the food. Sometimes that’s a very good thing and at others, yes I do feel a bit drowsy at the local diner 
And I wish I didn’t have to drive my daughter eighty miles across the mountains to find a decent ballet class…