As someone who has lived in the area for 75% of their life and whose parents live in Towson, if you confine yourself to Cockeysville or anywhere that survives off of driving down York Rd, you just might go stir crazy. Especially if you're in your twenties. It's a sleepy little area.

I live sort of at the border of Roland Park and Hampden, work at UMB... where North Baltimore City and Baltimore County meets has so many lovely kind of "hybrid" suburban/city neighborhoods with lots of character and great schools around. You can get green space (Stony Run, Lake Roland, etc) and have access to loads of cultural aspects of Baltimore, restaurants, but still get that safety and quiet at times.

*edit: and places like hampden are gonna have that older 20s/starting families kind of feel, it feels very community oriented. i would love to live in the neighborhood directly east of moms in hampden if i was starting a family.