Ingress factions: only appears to be one group in my city

If you're talking about the "Regional Scores" section in the "Intel" section of the Ingress app or the "Regional Score" line on the Intel map, that score just displays the current status of the current running cycle. If you're living in a sparsely populated region that score won't change too much in the future but if you're not then it could be just a momentarily score. Watch it for further developments.

In any case your movements surely would be recognized by players of neighboring regions and if you insist on playing the game they surely will contact you because Ingress players always need players from neighboring regions for bigger fields and are in the lookout for persistent newcomers.

Ingress is still being consistently played by both its core players and the newcomers. Please don't hesitate to join this growing community.

When you join Ingress, your main focus is to level up quickly.

If there aren't many neutral portals around your place, and you choose to be underdog, you may have a difficult start - where you can only hack enemy portals but can't really capture anything or create links and fields.

If there are, I'd choose the underdog path, it's much more fun.

Use the intel map to decide.

Personally, I have a lot more fun in the enemy area.

That's were I make AP and I like to blow things up.

However, it might be difficult for beginners since before level 6 attacking portals is mostly useless.

But, once you're 6+, it's quite fun to go to a green (I'm blue) area destroy it all, capture, link, field!