Would you have wanted to live in Minas Ithil?

[Anguirel]

Well...I go to the Western Isles, or a Western Isle, Colonsay, twice a year, and I doubt I'll ever stop...

I would suggest that the citizens of Minas Ithil were in a rather more extreme version of that position (viz. they actually lived there all year round, as do crofters etc). They were bound my history, tradition and love to their native city, and to them, however grim the mountains, they were their mountains.

Not unlike my attitude to Oxford actually. It's small, hopelessly provincial, grey, dismal, and the air is incredibly unhealthy reducing me to a coughing, sneezing wreck much of the time, but I couldn't envisage living anywhere else, though ironically enough I go to boarding school and so do live somewhere else...