The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Welcome and General Discussion => Topic started by: Villanelle on August 28, 2022, 03:28:14 PM
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If you could live anywhere in the US, where would you head? Any rationale beyond "it's where I live now" or "it's where my job is" would interest me. (The answer can absolutely be the place you currently live, if you love the place for reasons beyond inertia.)
Possible big life changes on the horizon, and they may include being able to choose where we live, or at least narrow down options to concentrate on a handful of areas. I find this terribly exciting, but also entirely overwhelming.
Right now, my dream location would probably be Coronado, CA, except that it is just way, way too expensive to buy or rent there so it probably wouldn't be in contention unless DH continues working and get a job that pays an insane amount. But I love the culture, I love a "small town Main Street" feel but with absolutely everything a big city has to offer within about 30 minutes. Nearly perfect weather year round keeps me happier and healthier. (I'm very sensitive to both heat and cold, and also quite reactive to mosquito bites so in Virginia I basically only go outside about 2 months of the year. lol) Being able to stroll to the beach and walk it, within about 10 minutes, is an extra bonus. Traffic sucks, but you can walk (or golf cart) just about anywhere. If only a moderate house didn't cost $2m! (Climate change is also a concern, though we'd likely be living far enough from the beach--$2m doesn't get you close to the sand!--that it wouldn't be as significant a factor.)
Where would you go, and why? What are the pros and cons of your choice?
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Good question, b/c I literally can't choose. My husband and I both have lived in, traveled to, and are attached in some way to so many great locations; and both dislike where we live (for his career). But now that we are attempting to figure out where to go for his retirement, we are really struggling and finding that there are big downsides to nearly all our ideas, and practical considerations are likely going to almost totally dictate where we go.
If money was no object at all, I've flirted with the idea of living on the Big Island of Hawaii, in one of the small towns near Melbourne or Sydney, in San Diego or Monterey CA, and in Santa Fe NM (or just bumming around Europe, which I've never visited, slow travel style). I also am very attached to places in the Caribbean (though I wouldn't want to live there unless I had a job I liked), and to Northern California (Mount Shasta area). I also really liked Virginia, where my sister lives.
But honestly, if money was no object I'd most likely be a snowbird (or as my husband says, Neotropical migrant), with one house in Wisconsin or the Pacific NW and one in Tucson AZ.
Realistically, we looked at Oregon (very expensive for retirees, gloomy weather, full of his relatives that he wants to avoid), Tucson (was our default option for years until the western states started fighting over water issues b/c of the megadrought, and AZ looks to get its water allotment cut back to something like what it was using when I first started college there, back in 1990! only with a much bigger population). Plus real estate remained super affordable there until about 3 years ago, when it shot up incredibly. So that's looking much less likely.
Our friends are scattered all over, but we are considering Silver City NM realistically, b/c of several friends there and it being still fairly affordable. But again, megadrought and water issues, plus wildfire risk (yay). Also a pain, the need to travel to Tucson or Phoenix for specialized medical care (which I need a fair amount of). Still, my friend who lives there does that every 2-3 months, and it's not like it sucks to go to Tucson, so, this remains a live possibility.
My one sister is in Virginia, which is beautiful and probably affordable, but my husband has negated anything in the Southeast on principle. My other family is still in Wisconsin, so that's a live possibility, but the winters fucking suck there. Plus, it's crazy expensive around Madison, but the property up north is starting to climb in value too (and is likely to do even more in the coming decades as rich people flee climate change related weather issues). On the other hand, no pending climate-change-related water shortage or dangerous heat waves on the horizon.
We'd likely have a lot more options if we were not also supporting my mother, but housing is going to have to include her somehow in a way that we are either not in the same building, or at least we have very private areas of the house, which means not a small house (apart from this issue, we'd be fine doing a more affordable 2/1.5 type of house. But as it is, it might be that cost of real estate limits us to very few options (or keeps us here in Texas where housing is so cheap). I hope not, though. A few more years will tell, lots of things are currently in flux with exactly how long my husband will work, and also whether I will inherit any share in a valuable property in the next few years, which could potentially change our equation a bit.
So short answer, I'm not sure.
ETA: I realize I didn't include any explanation as to WHY I love certain locations. Answer is, 90% of the time, landscape/nature related. I dislike being in the very conservative social/political area I'm in, but I could tolerate that if the land wasn't such a bleak disaster zone (plus, no public land here!)
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There's a problem with this question: The "if you could live anywhere" part implies that we are removing some obstacle to actually living there.
For example, we'll assume housing prices are the same as where you currently reside, or houses are free everywhere! I might try mansion life if it was free, or be the Beverly Hillbilly in a rich neighborhood if all things were equal. We can suspend more and more aspects of reality to make the move even more of a fantasy: We can write hurricanes and earthquakes out of the story. We can imagine everyone in the area we move to is reasonable, friendly, and similar to ourselves in ways that make connection easy. Why not presume that the West isn't running out of water, or that climate change will make many places uninhabitable within our lifetimes, and that millions of refugees won't be heading to northern climes within the next few decades, Maybe the thing about the place that would really improve our quality of life would be access to healthcare services, but everywhere in the U.S. is getting worse in this area except for anyone who doesn't have massive amounts of money.
If constrained by reality (e.g. you have to pay market price for a house, face natural disasters, and live with the policies enacted by the voters around you) then my maximizing choices would be very different. The 3000 square foot beach house near the ski slopes would be out, and a pragmatic but small midwestern Arts and Crafts duplex, restored to its original perfection in a neighborhood where kids play on the sidewalks, would be in.
If we removed the constraint about the U.S. then I might look very hard at places in Europe where there is an intersection between lifestyles that lead to physical fitness and availability of heatlhcare. Not turning out like the "average" American - broke and barely able to walk by the time they reach 60 - would be ideal.
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I really like where we live now, and might well choose to stay here if we won the lottery, but I might move to New Mexico instead...
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I am incredibly happy with where I am at in NW washington. It helps that my friends and family are all here and I've essentially lived my whole life here, besides 4 years for University studies, so i might be biased but it is awesome here and my town often pops up on "top" lists and FIRE dream town discussions. I'm not sure I'd choose anywhere else but Idaho & Montana do seem quite nice the times I've spent a few days there.
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I don’t really know how to answer this question, because to me it implies: a) money being no object; and b) being able to leave whenever it is no longer pleasant to live there.
With money as no object and being able to enjoy whatever I wanted, and to leave whenever I wanted, for wherever I wanted? NYC.
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New Hampshire or Maine. Beautiful, cool weather. Wonderful falls. Love the independent spirit of both places, and the beautiful nature. In retirement, I wouldn’t mind the snow, could stay inside by the fireplace and relax, or head south for the winter. I like the spirit of these places - civilized but not too liberal, and reasonably low cost of living, and the ability to have a lot of land.
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But also, maybe I'd buy a beach house on Sanibel and enjoy it before it's under water. I do love the beach.
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Del Mar CA
Rancho Santa Fe CA
Coronado CA
Laguna Beach CA
Maui HI
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After living in a red state for too long, I'll take ANY blue state (heck even a purple state). Totally worth it even for the HCOL. Red states don't take care of their citizens. This fact became so clear during COVID as the states were hiding numbers, not requiring masks, and we were unable to get accurate health information. And people here keep voting against their best interest, it's exhausting. I want out, but we're not done with our tour of duty yet. le sigh
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There's a problem with this question: The "if you could live anywhere" part implies that we are removing some obstacle to actually living there.
For example, we'll assume housing prices are the same as where you currently reside, or houses are free everywhere! I might try mansion life if it was free, or be the Beverly Hillbilly in a rich neighborhood if all things were equal. We can suspend more and more aspects of reality to make the move even more of a fantasy: We can write hurricanes and earthquakes out of the story. We can imagine everyone in the area we move to is reasonable, friendly, and similar to ourselves in ways that make connection easy. Why not presume that the West isn't running out of water, or that climate change will make many places uninhabitable within our lifetimes, and that millions of refugees won't be heading to northern climes within the next few decades, Maybe the thing about the place that would really improve our quality of life would be access to healthcare services, but everywhere in the U.S. is getting worse in this area except for anyone who doesn't have massive amounts of money.
If constrained by reality (e.g. you have to pay market price for a house, face natural disasters, and live with the policies enacted by the voters around you) then my maximizing choices would be very different. The 3000 square foot beach house near the ski slopes would be out, and a pragmatic but small midwestern Arts and Crafts duplex, restored to its original perfection in a neighborhood where kids play on the sidewalks, would be in.
If we removed the constraint about the U.S. then I might look very hard at places in Europe where there is an intersection between lifestyles that lead to physical fitness and availability of heatlhcare. Not turning out like the "average" American - broke and barely able to walk by the time they reach 60 - would be ideal.
Okay, rephrase as "since you could live anywhere in the US," though for some of our posters that may not be the case. I think things like market price, natural disasters, and public policy, are covered by the "pros and cons" portion of the questions.
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spring (April-May), fall (Oct-Nov): RVing North America
winter (Dec-Mar): tropical- ancestral home in SE Asia / southern Florida
summer (June-Sept): RVing North America West Coast / current home in SF Bay Area
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I really love New England and would probably stay here or at least in the northeast (New England doesn't technically include NY but there are several areas in NY that I would also consider). Currently have a beach shack on the CT shore line in a small town which I really enjoy, but other places where I would love to have a shack include the Lake Placid area of upstate NY, some of the Hudson River towns, Burlington VT/Lake Champlain area, North Conway NH, Nantucket (if money were no object) or Vineyard Haven, Cape Cod (Wellfleet/Eastham area or Chatham if money were no object) eastern North Fork of Long Island around Southhold/Greenport, Newport RI or environs (some of these would be if we ignore climate change), the Litchfield hills of CT and/or the Berkshires in MA, northern coast of Maine. Plus maybe a sailboat large enough to live on during the worst part of the winter and go south.
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IRL I would not move from where I am, because my three married kids and all my grandchildren live within two blocks of me. But if they didn't exist, I might move to Buffalo, NY. We lived there when we were first married. It's big enough to have the cultural amenities I want, but small enough to feel more cosy than a really big city. Plus, I love snow.
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I would go live by the library in Hoboken NJ if I could live anywhere. Hoboken is cute and very walkable. It's a party town but still has quiet pockets of older rowhomes. It's close enough to NYC that you can get there in minutes on the train or by bus. Con is that it's very expensive.
My backup city is where I plan to live: Baltimore MD. It's much cheaper than NYC or DC but still has a lot of interesting things going on. The weather is muggy in the summer but otherwise it's pretty good all year. The cold doesn't last long at all in the winter. I like that it's close enough to DC, NYC, Philly, and the beach to make weekend or day trips to somewhere else very feasible. I used to live in the Midwest and hated that I could drive for 8 hours and not really get anywhere different. Everything on the east coast is much closer together and more accessible by train, which is a big appeal for me.
I'd also like to live in Lewes DE for a time. If I was the kind of person to have a second home, that's where it would be. It's my ideal cute beach town. Cons are that it's probably pretty dead in the winter and that you'd have to be ok with tourists during the peak summer season. I think it'd be fun though and the beach has never been crowded when I've gone in the mornings in the summer. Most people seem to show up around noon and that's when I head out to go get lunch and ice cream. :D
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After living in a red state for too long, I'll take ANY blue state (heck even a purple state). Totally worth it even for the HCOL. Red states don't take care of their citizens. This fact became so clear during COVID as the states were hiding numbers, not requiring masks, and we were unable to get accurate health information. And people here keep voting against their best interest, it's exhausting. I want out, but we're not done with our tour of duty yet. le sigh
People underestimate the impact that living in a red state has on you. My sister has annoyed me a few times because she really has no clue. Sometimes it's obvious, but a lot of it is really subtle things. Yeah, the weather might be nice, but that doesn't make up for everything else that's lacking.
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I'm going through the same calculus, @Villanelle. Here are my current considerations:
1. Does the state consider me a full human being?
2. If the answer is currently yes, then is the state in danger of deciding I'm not a human being in the foreseeable future?
If the answers to 1 & 2 are satisfactory, then the next level of importance is:
3. Will my pension be taxed by the state?
4. Is the state projected to experience increased extreme weather, heat, or drought due to global warming? The answer to most states is 'yes,' so I put some vague, back of the napkin qualitative math into "how much is too much."
5. Snow!!?
6. Am I willing to live in, or near, the cities that will have VA healthcare?
For me, these questions have lead me towards the northern part of the NE. Right now my top contenders are Maine, Vermont, & New Hampshire, but I gotta say that eastern Connecticut is growing on me. I think I'll end up renting in my top pick for a year or two, then see how the winds take me. What heady freedom!
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I'm going through the same calculus, @Villanelle. Here are my current considerations:
1. Does the state consider me a full human being?
2. If the answer is currently yes, then is the state in danger of deciding I'm not a human being in the foreseeable future?
If the answers to 1 & 2 are satisfactory, then the next level of importance is:
3. Will my pension be taxed by the state?
4. Is the state projected to experience increased extreme weather, heat, or drought due to global warming? The answer to most states is 'yes,' so I put some vague, back of the napkin qualitative math into "how much is too much."
5. Snow!!?
6. Am I willing to live in, or near, the cities that will have VA healthcare?
For me, these questions have lead me towards the northern part of the NE. Right now my top contenders are Maine, Vermont, & New Hampshire, but I gotta say that eastern Connecticut is growing on me. I think I'll end up renting in my top pick for a year or two, then see how the winds take me. What heady freedom!
RE: 6, will you need access to VA healthcare? All of the Olds I know that are retired have TFL (Tricare for Life) and use the VA for almost nothing. (I think my dad, for example, goes there for his hearing aids because, as I understand it, since his hearing loss is service-connected, they are much cheaper. But for everything else, he and my mom see civilian providers, even though they live >45 minutes from a base and also from VA care.) They pay very low co-pays for things so it is worth $9 for a prescription, etc., to choose their providers. That's my approximate plan.
Now if I can just get DH to sign off on pulling the plug, even if that means he gets a civilian job instead of full retirement. I'm tired. The Navy has been doing a great job lately of arguing my case, by repeatedly kicking him in the metaphorical testicles. Hate seeing it happen, but I know it strengthens my GTFO case!
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Bellingham, WA. Not coincidentally, that's where we moved to after we asked this question of ourselves, and began investigating, about 5 years ago. >1 year in, it hasn't disappointed. Not without its problems, but pretty much as good as we could expect, given our priorities and desired lifestyle.
Twist my arm and give me infinite money, and I'd probably want a second home I could occasionally escape to during the winter...maybe Santa Barbara.
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After living in a red state for too long, I'll take ANY blue state (heck even a purple state). Totally worth it even for the HCOL. Red states don't take care of their citizens. This fact became so clear during COVID as the states were hiding numbers, not requiring masks, and we were unable to get accurate health information. And people here keep voting against their best interest, it's exhausting. I want out, but we're not done with our tour of duty yet. le sigh
People underestimate the impact that living in a red state has on you. My sister has annoyed me a few times because she really has no clue. Sometimes it's obvious, but a lot of it is really subtle things. Yeah, the weather might be nice, but that doesn't make up for everything else that's lacking.
I'd like to hear more about this.
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After living in a red state for too long, I'll take ANY blue state (heck even a purple state). Totally worth it even for the HCOL. Red states don't take care of their citizens. This fact became so clear during COVID as the states were hiding numbers, not requiring masks, and we were unable to get accurate health information. And people here keep voting against their best interest, it's exhausting. I want out, but we're not done with our tour of duty yet. le sigh
People underestimate the impact that living in a red state has on you. My sister has annoyed me a few times because she really has no clue. Sometimes it's obvious, but a lot of it is really subtle things. Yeah, the weather might be nice, but that doesn't make up for everything else that's lacking.
I'd like to hear more about this.
Willful, proud ignorance. Disdain and distrust of education. Disregard of human rights. Dismissal of women and children as lesser beings, and lets not even discuss how the disabled, mentally ill, or LGTBQ+ are treated. The casual cruelty to and disregard of animals. Suspicion of, or lack of interest in, anything different. Lack of diversity - in people, ideas, foods, clothing, anything. Lack of public investment in infrastructure, education, the arts. All just in passing, hinted at. There aren't usually big, obvious things.
These things are corrosive. They wear you down. And I live in a purple area, so it's blunted for me. I can tell you who lives in red areas on this forum. I won't, but I could. It shows.
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Twist my arm and give me infinite money, and I'd probably want a second home I could occasionally escape to during the winter...maybe Santa Barbara.
I'm starting to wonder if my retirement income will support a pied-a-tier in Boston or Washington DC. It turns out I hate, hate, hate living in the city (crowd, noise, chaos, traffic, trash, rats, casual cruelty) but I also really enjoy living in the city (the crowd! The transportation! The food! The convenience! The energy!).
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If money was absolutely no object and the location HAD to be in the USA, it would probably be HI or CA for us. Weather and access to nature/outdoor activities is our #1 priority.
That being said, if it didn't have to be in the US.....I would run like hell =D
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We are looking to FIRE to the Tennessee side of the Smoky Mountains. That would be my choice. Love to hike and having some of the best hiking available close by would be heaven. Add the lack of state income tax and dirt cheap property taxes (having lived in Nashville for five years I do agree with Sibley's point about red states not taking care of their citizens, but once FIRE'd our needs are low if we have the income to do what we need from investments) and this is what swings us away from the North Carolina side. We still have four seasons, which we love, but the bitter cold and massive snow we have now is not something we'd miss from up north.
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After living in a red state for too long, I'll take ANY blue state (heck even a purple state). Totally worth it even for the HCOL. Red states don't take care of their citizens. This fact became so clear during COVID as the states were hiding numbers, not requiring masks, and we were unable to get accurate health information. And people here keep voting against their best interest, it's exhausting. I want out, but we're not done with our tour of duty yet. le sigh
People underestimate the impact that living in a red state has on you. My sister has annoyed me a few times because she really has no clue. Sometimes it's obvious, but a lot of it is really subtle things. Yeah, the weather might be nice, but that doesn't make up for everything else that's lacking.
I'd like to hear more about this.
Willful, proud ignorance. Disdain and distrust of education. Disregard of human rights. Dismissal of women and children as lesser beings, and lets not even discuss how the disabled, mentally ill, or LGTBQ+ are treated. The casual cruelty to and disregard of animals. Suspicion of, or lack of interest in, anything different. Lack of diversity - in people, ideas, foods, clothing, anything. Lack of public investment in infrastructure, education, the arts. All just in passing, hinted at. There aren't usually big, obvious things.
These things are corrosive. They wear you down. And I live in a purple area, so it's blunted for me. I can tell you who lives in red areas on this forum. I won't, but I could. It shows.
Yeah, it's mostly psychological challenges, not life-challenges, for us, but we are white, relatively high income, etc.
One of the things that wears us out is the religiosity. Crosses in every third place of business, religious signs on walls of businesses, doctors that finish your appointment by asking if they can pray with you (or pray with you before your surgery!). Christian (ONLY) prayers printed in every news publication, public prayers required before every civic event, etc.
This is in a major university city btw. It's skin crawling.
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Twist my arm and give me infinite money, and I'd probably want a second home I could occasionally escape to during the winter...maybe Santa Barbara.
I'm starting to wonder if my retirement income will support a pied-a-tier in Boston or Washington DC. It turns out I hate, hate, hate living in the city (crowd, noise, chaos, traffic, trash, rats, casual cruelty) but I also really enjoy living in the city (the crowd! The transportation! The food! The convenience! The energy!).
Same here. I'm contemplating something walking distance from the far end of public transit outside of Boston or D.C. for this reason.
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Good question, b/c I literally can't choose. My husband and I both have lived in, traveled to, and are attached in some way to so many great locations; and both dislike where we live (for his career). But now that we are attempting to figure out where to go for his retirement, we are really struggling and finding that there are big downsides to nearly all our ideas, and practical considerations are likely going to almost totally dictate where we go.
If money was no object at all, I've flirted with the idea of living on the Big Island of Hawaii, in one of the small towns near Melbourne or Sydney, in San Diego or Monterey CA, and in Santa Fe NM (or just bumming around Europe, which I've never visited, slow travel style). I also am very attached to places in the Caribbean (though I wouldn't want to live there unless I had a job I liked), and to Northern California (Mount Shasta area). I also really liked Virginia, where my sister lives.
But honestly, if money was no object I'd most likely be a snowbird (or as my husband says, Neotropical migrant), with one house in Wisconsin or the Pacific NW and one in Tucson AZ.
Realistically, we looked at Oregon (very expensive for retirees, gloomy weather, full of his relatives that he wants to avoid), Tucson (was our default option for years until the western states started fighting over water issues b/c of the megadrought, and AZ looks to get its water allotment cut back to something like what it was using when I first started college there, back in 1990! only with a much bigger population). Plus real estate remained super affordable there until about 3 years ago, when it shot up incredibly. So that's looking much less likely.
Our friends are scattered all over, but we are considering Silver City NM realistically, b/c of several friends there and it being still fairly affordable. But again, megadrought and water issues, plus wildfire risk (yay). Also a pain, the need to travel to Tucson or Phoenix for specialized medical care (which I need a fair amount of). Still, my friend who lives there does that every 2-3 months, and it's not like it sucks to go to Tucson, so, this remains a live possibility.
My one sister is in Virginia, which is beautiful and probably affordable, but my husband has negated anything in the Southeast on principle. My other family is still in Wisconsin, so that's a live possibility, but the winters fucking suck there. Plus, it's crazy expensive around Madison, but the property up north is starting to climb in value too (and is likely to do even more in the coming decades as rich people flee climate change related weather issues). On the other hand, no pending climate-change-related water shortage or dangerous heat waves on the horizon.
We'd likely have a lot more options if we were not also supporting my mother, but housing is going to have to include her somehow in a way that we are either not in the same building, or at least we have very private areas of the house, which means not a small house (apart from this issue, we'd be fine doing a more affordable 2/1.5 type of house. But as it is, it might be that cost of real estate limits us to very few options (or keeps us here in Texas where housing is so cheap). I hope not, though. A few more years will tell, lots of things are currently in flux with exactly how long my husband will work, and also whether I will inherit any share in a valuable property in the next few years, which could potentially change our equation a bit.
So short answer, I'm not sure.
ETA: I realize I didn't include any explanation as to WHY I love certain locations. Answer is, 90% of the time, landscape/nature related. I dislike being in the very conservative social/political area I'm in, but I could tolerate that if the land wasn't such a bleak disaster zone (plus, no public land here!)
I'm contemplating Virginia as the furthest south I'm willing to end up staying. Purple state is an improvement on Red State constantly making the news for ever increasing levels of stupidity.
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After living in a red state for too long, I'll take ANY blue state (heck even a purple state). Totally worth it even for the HCOL. Red states don't take care of their citizens. This fact became so clear during COVID as the states were hiding numbers, not requiring masks, and we were unable to get accurate health information. And people here keep voting against their best interest, it's exhausting. I want out, but we're not done with our tour of duty yet. le sigh
People underestimate the impact that living in a red state has on you. My sister has annoyed me a few times because she really has no clue. Sometimes it's obvious, but a lot of it is really subtle things. Yeah, the weather might be nice, but that doesn't make up for everything else that's lacking.
I'd like to hear more about this.
Willful, proud ignorance. Disdain and distrust of education. Disregard of human rights. Dismissal of women and children as lesser beings, and lets not even discuss how the disabled, mentally ill, or LGTBQ+ are treated. The casual cruelty to and disregard of animals. Suspicion of, or lack of interest in, anything different. Lack of diversity - in people, ideas, foods, clothing, anything. Lack of public investment in infrastructure, education, the arts. All just in passing, hinted at. There aren't usually big, obvious things.
These things are corrosive. They wear you down. And I live in a purple area, so it's blunted for me. I can tell you who lives in red areas on this forum. I won't, but I could. It shows.
Yeah, it's mostly psychological challenges, not life-challenges, for us, but we are white, relatively high income, etc.
One of the things that wears us out is the religiosity. Crosses in every third place of business, religious signs on walls of businesses, doctors that finish your appointment by asking if they can pray with you (or pray with you before your surgery!). Christian (ONLY) prayers printed in every news publication, public prayers required before every civic event, etc.
This is in a major university city btw. It's skin crawling.
We are white, high income too and I would dispute the life-challenges. Lived in Williamson County, TN (was listed as one of the top 25 richest counties in the US) and the lack of property taxes meant we had to send toilet paper and cleaning supplies to the schools each spring when they ran out of money. Amounted to about $1,500 in "donations" per child per school year so that they could clean the bathrooms etc. Those without kids never saw this and did not understand that lack of taxing at proper levels means things get impacted.
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After living in a red state for too long, I'll take ANY blue state (heck even a purple state). Totally worth it even for the HCOL. Red states don't take care of their citizens. This fact became so clear during COVID as the states were hiding numbers, not requiring masks, and we were unable to get accurate health information. And people here keep voting against their best interest, it's exhausting. I want out, but we're not done with our tour of duty yet. le sigh
People underestimate the impact that living in a red state has on you. My sister has annoyed me a few times because she really has no clue. Sometimes it's obvious, but a lot of it is really subtle things. Yeah, the weather might be nice, but that doesn't make up for everything else that's lacking.
And then those same people moving from blue states like California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, etc. vote for the things that made them want to leave in the first place. Don't like high crime? Don't vote for a DA that chooses not to prosecute crimes. Don't like high local/state taxes? Don't vote for a bunch of extra government services. Idaho is not California and Texas is not New Jersey.
Between our first past the post voting system and gerrymandering it's practically impossible to change the dominant political party in a state/city. So, the most effective vote anyone has is voting with their feet. If you want to live in a place where homeless drug addicts are passed out on the sidewalk, then by all means move to San Franisco. If you want to live in a place where taxes are low and the government isn't involved much in your life then move to rural Montana, Wyoming, Utah, etc.
Back to the original topic I probably would have said someplace like Boise, ID up until a few years ago. Weather isn't too hot or too cold, lots of outdoors stuff around and a large enough area to have decent medical and other services available. I've only passed through it a couple times while driving so I don't have a strong feeling that it would be a good fit. However, with the recent influx of people (mostly from blue west coast cities) the home prices have become ridiculous.
My wife visited Sioux Falls, SD and that was a nice city. However, we visited in July. I'm not sure I'd want to live there in January. Same with the rest of the great plains. Mountain west is definitely where we'd like to be but preferably in a red state so that eliminates NM and CO. Montana is a bit too cold and isolated and we're Catholic not Mormon, so Utah is a pass. That leaves Wyoming and Idaho. I've never been to Cheyenne, but I'd like to check it out sometime.
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HI is really quite nice, but you either have to accept super high housing prices (on Oahu), very rural settings with poor health care infrastructure, etc (other islands), and generally high prices. (I laugh about the food budgets that people post here.) I don't know anywhere else in the US you could beat the climate, it's never too warm, never too cold, you can have your pick from very wet to quite dry, it's not plagued by wildfire smoke as seems to be the rule in CA these days, the ocean is always warm enough to go for a swim, and always nearby.
The state of HI is super blue, but we're seeing some of the drawbacks from that complete lack of competition here as in a bloated and infuriatingly inefficient bureaucracy and corruption. And everything rusts.
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If I could live anywhere it would be somewhere on the coast in northern California or Oregon, or on the east coast (preferred) anywhere north of New Jersey. I want the beach life but still want cold/cool weather.
I'm currently in Utah because my wife and I have great paying jobs, but I absolutely F*&%ing hate the desert and would leave tomorrow if the wifey were cool with it.
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Certainly is an interesting question, and a tough one. I've lived in seven states (don't care about colors, went to were the career took me) and still don't have a obvious answer.
North Georgia (Dahlonega and the surrounding area), except for distance to major airport
Greater Cincy area (somewhat ditto due to decline of Cincy airport as I understand it)
Somewhere in greater Lexington, KY area
Would love to find a place with a little elevation, but still moderate weather (gee wouldn't most people?)
The list of "not living there" is quite long though...
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I would love to live in the San Diego area. Great weather, beautiful beaches, tons of fun family-friendly activities.
Cons: high housing costs, high risk of drought (expected to be even more impacted by climate change the rest of CA).
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After living in a red state for too long, I'll take ANY blue state (heck even a purple state). Totally worth it even for the HCOL. Red states don't take care of their citizens. This fact became so clear during COVID as the states were hiding numbers, not requiring masks, and we were unable to get accurate health information. And people here keep voting against their best interest, it's exhausting. I want out, but we're not done with our tour of duty yet. le sigh
People underestimate the impact that living in a red state has on you. My sister has annoyed me a few times because she really has no clue. Sometimes it's obvious, but a lot of it is really subtle things. Yeah, the weather might be nice, but that doesn't make up for everything else that's lacking.
And then those same people moving from blue states like California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, etc. vote for the things that made them want to leave in the first place. Don't like high crime? Don't vote for a DA that chooses not to prosecute crimes.
Riiiiiight.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3274797-we-have-a-murder-problem-in-america-especially-in-red-states/
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Coronado/San Diego for the same reasons others have mentioned.
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We pretty much DO live in the place we want to live in. It is small town Missouri, with an easy driving distance of St. Louis. We have no family we have to stick around for.
When we retired we were living in the city of St. Louis I started looking around for perhaps a weekend place. Thought about moving across states. But I know I do not want to live north of Highway 80 where it gets super cold. I hate the desert West, so I won’t move anywhere near a desert.
I really really like historic architecture, so I need some old buildings to look at.
I love New England and love New Hampshire and Vermont. But it’s too cold. We are serious gardeners and the growing season is just too short there. I do not know how those people even grow things like dahlias. If something magical happened and I could grow everything I wanted to grow in New Hampshire, I might move there and then just go to a warm weather place for a couple months in January and February. I absolutely adore all those ancient structures in New England.
The gardener’s Mecca is western Oregon and that would be the place we would consider most seriously.
There’s a sad lack of architecture in the towns I would consider, though, such as Corvallis, and all those towns in the Willamette Valley. I wouldn’t touch Portland because $500,000 for a dumb two bedroom ranch circa 1962? Oh hell. no, Even though we could afford it. And then, the rioting and crime looks too much like St. Louis.
For me both coasts are very attractive, New England on the east and western Oregon and Washington on the west. I think there’s too many trees in Washington though, I’m not keen on a bunch of trees on my property, haha, tho true.
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New Hampshire or Maine. Beautiful, cool weather. Wonderful falls. Love the independent spirit of both places, and the beautiful nature. In retirement, I wouldn’t mind the snow, could stay inside by the fireplace and relax, or head south for the winter. I like the spirit of these places - civilized but not too liberal, and reasonably low cost of living, and the ability to have a lot of land.
I agree with everything you say.
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Coastal California. Good weather, people are nice, fewer crazies trying to take my rights away. Main issue is the water supply, that’ll have to be sorted out.
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We're looking to relocate out of the gulf coast area and out of the deep south. All the places I've wanted to move in the past have become unaffordable in the last decade or so. Bend, Boise, Austin, Portland are all off the list now. I grew up in Ohio so I have some interest in going back there just to have a look around. Madison, WI seems like a really cool town but probably out of our price range. New England looks good. Virginia seems nice. I like living in a walkable/bikeable city. I like living close to MTB trails. I don't like sweltering in the summer. I'm sure there is a website that can take my criteria and give me a list of possibilities.
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Twist my arm and give me infinite money, and I'd probably want a second home I could occasionally escape to during the winter...maybe Santa Barbara.
I'm starting to wonder if my retirement income will support a pied-a-tier in Boston or Washington DC. It turns out I hate, hate, hate living in the city (crowd, noise, chaos, traffic, trash, rats, casual cruelty) but I also really enjoy living in the city (the crowd! The transportation! The food! The convenience! The energy!).
Amsterdam.
The bikeability and person-centric design certainly makes it look like a dream to get around. If I ever have to live in a big city again, it's got to be one where I can stay out of a car and sitting in car traffic. Already wasted too much of my life doing that.
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Twist my arm and give me infinite money, and I'd probably want a second home I could occasionally escape to during the winter...maybe Santa Barbara.
I'm starting to wonder if my retirement income will support a pied-a-tier in Boston or Washington DC. It turns out I hate, hate, hate living in the city (crowd, noise, chaos, traffic, trash, rats, casual cruelty) but I also really enjoy living in the city (the crowd! The transportation! The food! The convenience! The energy!).
Amsterdam.
The bikeability and person-centric design certainly makes it look like a dream to get around. If I ever have to live in a big city again, it's got to be one where I can stay out of a car and sitting in car traffic. Already wasted too much of my life doing that.
There's a part of me that says I could choose to move to a walkable area now, in my 40s, and possibly add 5 happy and productive years to my life due to the increased exercise. The problem is that walkable areas are so much more expensive that I'd need to work another 5 years of my life to pay for living there.
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My wife and I were just discussing this: After traveling around the US this year, we came to the conclusion that we are very happy staying put right where we live now, in northeastern New Jersey. While my wife would not mind a slightly warmer climate, even in the next twenty years, we are going to see temperatures creeping up. So she will get the warmer climate even without moving. (See https://fitzlab.shinyapps.io/cityapp/)
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If you want to live in a place where homeless drug addicts are passed out on the sidewalk, then by all means move to San Franisco. If you want to live in a place where taxes are low and the government isn't involved much in your life then move to rural Montana, Wyoming, Utah, etc.
I live in a very red city in a very red state. We have plenty of homeless drug addicts passed out on the sidewalk; it's all the local paper can talk about. Constant police harassment and demolishing tent cities does not seem to be an effective solution. I suspect the reason is simple: the wealth concentrated in cities leads to waste, which makes it easier for people with nothing to find food and necessities.
I grew up in a town of 2,000. I suspect the reason there don't seem to be as many homeless drug addicts there is because they live in shacks and RVs in the woods. No zoning and no one moving people out of unsafe housing means they are "housed" even if that means the roof is falling in and they heat with a DIY barrel stove that will eventually burn the house down.
Also, in a small town, they aren't nameless addicts who live under the viaduct. They are "town druggies" who your mom went to high school with.
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If you could live anywhere in the US, where would you head? Any rationale beyond "it's where I live now" or "it's where my job is" would interest me. (The answer can absolutely be the place you currently live, if you love the place for reasons beyond inertia.)
Possible big life changes on the horizon, and they may include being able to choose where we live, or at least narrow down options to concentrate on a handful of areas. I find this terribly exciting, but also entirely overwhelming.
Right now, my dream location would probably be Coronado, CA, except that it is just way, way too expensive to buy or rent there so it probably wouldn't be in contention unless DH continues working and get a job that pays an insane amount. But I love the culture, I love a "small town Main Street" feel but with absolutely everything a big city has to offer within about 30 minutes. Nearly perfect weather year round keeps me happier and healthier. (I'm very sensitive to both heat and cold, and also quite reactive to mosquito bites so in Virginia I basically only go outside about 2 months of the year. lol) Being able to stroll to the beach and walk it, within about 10 minutes, is an extra bonus. Traffic sucks, but you can walk (or golf cart) just about anywhere. If only a moderate house didn't cost $2m! (Climate change is also a concern, though we'd likely be living far enough from the beach--$2m doesn't get you close to the sand!--that it wouldn't be as significant a factor.)
Where would you go, and why? What are the pros and cons of your choice?
If I could only live in one place, my #1 choice would be Encinitas, CA (near D street). I lived there for two years (2005-2006).
If I could have two separate homes and split time between two homes, my choices would be
Koloa, HI (Kauai) and Breckenridge, CO.
I lived on Kauai for 4 years (2015-2019) and lived in Breckenridge, CO for 6 months (2003-2004). More than likely, this will become reality after my son graduates from high school in 13 years. We have the house in Koloa, HI, but probably need at least 10 years to save up for a place in Breckenridge, CO. Within the next two years, I will be buying a place in Fairplay, CO, which is about 30 minutes south of Breckenridge.
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HI is really quite nice, but you either have to accept super high housing prices (on Oahu), very rural settings with poor health care infrastructure, etc (other islands), and generally high prices. (I laugh about the food budgets that people post here.) I don't know anywhere else in the US you could beat the climate, it's never too warm, never too cold, you can have your pick from very wet to quite dry, it's not plagued by wildfire smoke as seems to be the rule in CA these days, the ocean is always warm enough to go for a swim, and always nearby.
The state of HI is super blue, but we're seeing some of the drawbacks from that complete lack of competition here as in a bloated and infuriatingly inefficient bureaucracy and corruption. And everything rusts.
When I lived in San Diego I thought the overall weather was better than Kauai. For Kauai, it gets really hot and humid in July-September. We run A/C units at night to sleep. Without it, we really struggled to sleep. When I lived in San Diego, I never felt the need to use A/C or struggled with my sleep. Both places were about the same distance to the beach (about 2.5-3 miles). San Diego does get much warmer when you are more than 5 miles inland. Overall, I prefer Kauai because it's less crowded than San Diego. However, if you are only looking at weather, I think San Diego has the best weather overall (12 months/year).
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Great question. I think I'd want to be somewhere that is close to both a major metro (where I could reasonably expect most major acts to come through) and to a great national park. San Francisco, Seattle, and Nashville come to mind.
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Patagonia AZ, a cute little village near the Mexican border, is exactly where I'd love to live.
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San Diego seems to be a popular choice on this thread. Ive lived here for 36 years and I can confirm it is a great place to live.
Expensive but worth every penny if you can afford it. Gas prices are some of the highest in the country, I paid $4.99 for regular just yesterday but that can be mitigated with the right car. Housing prices are out of sight along the coast but you can live just 20 miles inland and pay a reasonable( relative I know) price and enjoy a lot more sunshine and open space. Income taxes aren't high if you're retired and Property taxes are low compared to other states.
I live 12 miles from the beach and can mountain bike and hike a 1200ft peak right out my back door, or golf at a dozen courses within a half hour. OP, you dont need to live along the coast, you can drive there anytime.
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Willful, proud ignorance. Disdain and distrust of education. Disregard of human rights. Dismissal of women and children as lesser beings, and lets not even discuss how the disabled, mentally ill, or LGTBQ+ are treated. The casual cruelty to and disregard of animals. Suspicion of, or lack of interest in, anything different. Lack of diversity - in people, ideas, foods, clothing, anything. Lack of public investment in infrastructure, education, the arts. All just in passing, hinted at. There aren't usually big, obvious things.
These things are corrosive. They wear you down. And I live in a purple area, so it's blunted for me. I can tell you who lives in red areas on this forum. I won't, but I could. It shows.
FWIW, I also live in a red state (Texas). Some of this is true. I really dislike our broad Government policy on the big hot button issues. I think our governor sucks and our AG is a psycho.
But most of what you list is unfamiliar to me. Texas and California have the same number of tier 1 research universities despite Texas having 10 million fewer people. Texas leads the nation in wind energy production, and it's not even close. Nearly half of our energy generation is clean. Check back in 10 years and I think we'll be world-beaters on this front.
We didn't get there by not investing in education and infrastructure. Our neighbors to the north, Oklahoma, have a universal pre-K program. Florida does too.
Racially, the deep south is much more diverse than blue strongholds like Washington or Oregon.
It's more complicated than red state/blue state.
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San Diego seems to be a popular choice on this thread. Ive lived here for 36 years and I can confirm it is a great place to live.
Expensive but worth every penny if you can afford it. Gas prices are some of the highest in the country, I paid $4.99 for regular just yesterday but that can be mitigated with the right car. Housing prices are out of sight along the coast but you can live just 20 miles inland and pay a reasonable( relative I know) price and enjoy a lot more sunshine and open space. Income taxes aren't high if you're retired and Property taxes are low compared to other states.
I live 12 miles from the beach and can mountain bike and hike a 1200ft peak right out my back door, or golf at a dozen courses within a half hour. OP, you dont need to live along the coast, you can drive there anytime.
Sent from my SM-A205U using Tapatalk
Might be worth noting to those not familiar with southern CA that while 20 miles inland will get you much better house prices, you are not getting "San Diego" weather. 10-15 degrees hotter in the summer and fall. In some locations (e.g. Escondido) it could even be 20-25 degrees hotter. 5 months straight of temps over 80 would be killer for me and my family. Obviously, some people like temps in the 80s and 90s, especially if it's drier, but it's not for everyone.
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San Diego seems to be a popular choice on this thread. Ive lived here for 36 years and I can confirm it is a great place to live.
Expensive but worth every penny if you can afford it. Gas prices are some of the highest in the country, I paid $4.99 for regular just yesterday but that can be mitigated with the right car. Housing prices are out of sight along the coast but you can live just 20 miles inland and pay a reasonable( relative I know) price and enjoy a lot more sunshine and open space. Income taxes aren't high if you're retired and Property taxes are low compared to other states.
I live 12 miles from the beach and can mountain bike and hike a 1200ft peak right out my back door, or golf at a dozen courses within a half hour. OP, you dont need to live along the coast, you can drive there anytime.
Sent from my SM-A205U using Tapatalk
Might be worth noting to those not familiar with southern CA that while 20 miles inland will get you much better house prices, you are not getting "San Diego" weather. 10-15 degrees hotter in the summer and fall. In some locations (e.g. Escondido) it could even be 20-25 degrees hotter. 5 months straight of temps over 80 would be killer for me and my family. Obviously, some people like temps in the 80s and 90s, especially if it's drier, but it's not for everyone.
Good to know! Still though, being a 20 mile drive from nice temperatures is still nice. Where I live, we've had three months of 100 degree highs. 20 miles away you get... more 100 degree highs!
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San Diego seems to be a popular choice on this thread. Ive lived here for 36 years and I can confirm it is a great place to live.
Expensive but worth every penny if you can afford it. Gas prices are some of the highest in the country, I paid $4.99 for regular just yesterday but that can be mitigated with the right car. Housing prices are out of sight along the coast but you can live just 20 miles inland and pay a reasonable( relative I know) price and enjoy a lot more sunshine and open space. Income taxes aren't high if you're retired and Property taxes are low compared to other states.
I live 12 miles from the beach and can mountain bike and hike a 1200ft peak right out my back door, or golf at a dozen courses within a half hour. OP, you dont need to live along the coast, you can drive there anytime.
Sent from my SM-A205U using Tapatalk
Might be worth noting to those not familiar with southern CA that while 20 miles inland will get you much better house prices, you are not getting "San Diego" weather. 10-15 degrees hotter in the summer and fall. In some locations (e.g. Escondido) it could even be 20-25 degrees hotter. 5 months straight of temps over 80 would be killer for me and my family. Obviously, some people like temps in the 80s and 90s, especially if it's drier, but it's not for everyone.
Good to know! Still though, being a 20 mile drive from nice temperatures is still nice. Where I live, we've had three months of 100 degree highs. 20 miles away you get... more 100 degree highs!
Indeed. There are medical reasons in my family to avoid hot climates, and I had to paint a broad brush over the entire (non-Pacific coastal) southern and central portions of the country with a big "NOPE" when choosing where we would live. I had an offer to interview for a prestigious position in Austin. Sorry, Texas, can't do it.
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Indeed. There are medical reasons in my family to avoid hot climates, and I had to paint a broad brush over the entire (non-Pacific coastal) southern and central portions of the country with a big "NOPE" when choosing where we would live. I had an offer to interview for a prestigious position in Austin. Sorry, Texas, can't do it.
For sure, I get it. If I were dream-casting (like we're doing in this thread) I probably wouldn't pick where I live now. But boy does my savings rate really love the fact that we're paying down a 2014 LCOL mortgage refi'd at 2021 rates.
Those savings buy a lot of plane tickets :)
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San Diego seems to be a popular choice on this thread. Ive lived here for 36 years and I can confirm it is a great place to live.
Expensive but worth every penny if you can afford it. Gas prices are some of the highest in the country, I paid $4.99 for regular just yesterday but that can be mitigated with the right car. Housing prices are out of sight along the coast but you can live just 20 miles inland and pay a reasonable( relative I know) price and enjoy a lot more sunshine and open space. Income taxes aren't high if you're retired and Property taxes are low compared to other states.
I live 12 miles from the beach and can mountain bike and hike a 1200ft peak right out my back door, or golf at a dozen courses within a half hour. OP, you dont need to live along the coast, you can drive there anytime.
Sent from my SM-A205U using Tapatalk
Might be worth noting to those not familiar with southern CA that while 20 miles inland will get you much better house prices, you are not getting "San Diego" weather. 10-15 degrees hotter in the summer and fall. In some locations (e.g. Escondido) it could even be 20-25 degrees hotter. 5 months straight of temps over 80 would be killer for me and my family. Obviously, some people like temps in the 80s and 90s, especially if it's drier, but it's not for everyone.
Good to know! Still though, being a 20 mile drive from nice temperatures is still nice. Where I live, we've had three months of 100 degree highs. 20 miles away you get... more 100 degree highs!
I live at 5100 ft. in Pueblo West, CO. It's a high of 92 degrees today with a low of 59 degrees tonight. In my opinion, it's pretty awesome. If you are getting tired of the 90's, you can drive one hour to the local mountains for a hike and the temp drops by 20 degrees. If you drive 2 hours, you can get a 30 degree differential.
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I live at 5100 ft. in Pueblo West, CO. It's a high of 92 degrees today with a low of 59 degrees tonight. In my opinion, it's pretty awesome. If you are getting tired of the 90's, you can drive one hour to the local mountains for a hike and the temp drops by 20 degrees. If you drive 2 hours, you can get a 30 degree differential.
I25 Colorado should have my my initial list. Satisfies my criteria with the proximity to Denver and the Rockies.
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Twist my arm and give me infinite money, and I'd probably want a second home I could occasionally escape to during the winter...maybe Santa Barbara.
You'll need the infinite money. It's beautiful here, but insanely expensive. And getting worse.
As everyone else noted, places they have considered have gotten "unaffordable". Well, that is becoming true all over.
With the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer - you've got wealthy buying second homes, people opting for AirBNBs to bring in income (decreasing rental stock), and industrial investors. This happens everywhere, even in my small home town, housing prices have gone up...just not like SB.
The thing that depresses me is not only that my friends are finding it hard to stay (priced out of buying), but also people are being priced out of renting. It's ALWAYS been expensive here, but a local economy that prices out anyone making less than $150k is not healthy. Rents of over $5000 for a 2BR? The median household income is $81,000. It used to be $65k a few years ago, but so many people have left because they are priced out.
We own our home, not quite outright, but close.
At our current income, we cannot technically afford our own home, currently valued at $1.36M. (2BR, 1BA, 1100 sf, no garage, 75 years old).
Legit every house that sells in my neighborhood soon has 1-2 Teslas in the driveway. My neighbor likes to joke "go home LA!"
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So, I guess I'd stay here or maybe go up the coast a bit - Pismo, Morro Bay.
Or upstate NY. I hate winter, but I'm looking for a blue state with a more normal economy.
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Willful, proud ignorance. Disdain and distrust of education. Disregard of human rights. Dismissal of women and children as lesser beings, and lets not even discuss how the disabled, mentally ill, or LGTBQ+ are treated. The casual cruelty to and disregard of animals. Suspicion of, or lack of interest in, anything different. Lack of diversity - in people, ideas, foods, clothing, anything. Lack of public investment in infrastructure, education, the arts. All just in passing, hinted at. There aren't usually big, obvious things.
These things are corrosive. They wear you down. And I live in a purple area, so it's blunted for me. I can tell you who lives in red areas on this forum. I won't, but I could. It shows.
FWIW, I also live in a red state (Texas). Some of this is true. I really dislike our broad Government policy on the big hot button issues. I think our governor sucks and our AG is a psycho.
But most of what you list is unfamiliar to me. Texas and California have the same number of tier 1 research universities despite Texas having 10 million fewer people. Texas leads the nation in wind energy production, and it's not even close. Nearly half of our energy generation is clean. Check back in 10 years and I think we'll be world-beaters on this front.
We didn't get there by not investing in education and infrastructure. Our neighbors to the north, Oklahoma, have a universal pre-K program. Florida does too.
Racially, the deep south is much more diverse than blue strongholds like Washington or Oregon.
It's more complicated than red state/blue state.
Are you sure about your comment about Texas v. Calif research universities? Here's a link to a list of the top 25 research universities in the country. Five are in Ca, none are in Texas. Three of the five in Ca are state schools to boot. Texas GDP is only 57% of Californias last year. State pride is fine, I have it too.
https://www.gradschoolcenter.com/top-research-universities/
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Well, I know we wouldn't stay here...
But the list of possible destinations is long, and yeah would totally depend on if the economic obstacles were removed from the equation.
NYC (at least for a couple of years)
Seattle
San Diego
Victoria, BC
Yeah..I guess we want to live on water where it's not super hot.
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Are you sure about your comment about Texas v. Calif research universities? Here's a link to a list of the top 25 research universities in the country. Five are in Ca, none are in Texas. Three of the five in Ca are state schools to boot. Texas GDP is only 57% of Californias last year. State pride is fine, I have it too.
https://www.gradschoolcenter.com/top-research-universities/
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It’s a term of art based on some threshold (I think) of research and awarding doctoral degrees, not a claim about status or quality. I suspect that American industry and academia would have no problem choosing between the loss of all the ones in Texas and the loss of Stanford, but (IMHO) Texas-boosters often may focus on volume, not quality.
The point under contention was whether red states invest in education. Texas noticed it was lacking in tier 1 research universities in the mid 2000s and they made the investments to fix that.
You can appeal to some vague "quantity over quality" if you want, but the investment was made.
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San Diego seems to be a popular choice on this thread. Ive lived here for 36 years and I can confirm it is a great place to live.
Expensive but worth every penny if you can afford it. Gas prices are some of the highest in the country, I paid $4.99 for regular just yesterday but that can be mitigated with the right car. Housing prices are out of sight along the coast but you can live just 20 miles inland and pay a reasonable( relative I know) price and enjoy a lot more sunshine and open space. Income taxes aren't high if you're retired and Property taxes are low compared to other states.
I live 12 miles from the beach and can mountain bike and hike a 1200ft peak right out my back door, or golf at a dozen courses within a half hour. OP, you dont need to live along the coast, you can drive there anytime.
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I've lived in various places in inland San Diego, in addition to a brief stint in Coronado. It was good, but it got very hot, and most areas aren't very walkable. One appeal of the beach areas is that they also tend to be walkable. Then there is the fact that they are cooler. Also, when I could walk and have my toes in the sand in 8 minutes, I actually did it. I got so much more exercise because I could do it in a way I enjoyed--walking or jogging, or even occasional yoga, on the beach. If I had to drive? I didn't go.
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Interesting how many people mention the northeast, which is one of two areas (the other being NW) where I haven't spent much time in my life. Part of me thinks the NE sounds like a decent fit (minus the winters, but I could deal with that, I think). But choosing the one region I've never lived or spent meaningful time is also scary. I suppose it wouldn't have to be forever and if one of us hated it we could always bail in a few years.
It definitely stays on the list, at least.
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San Diego seems to be a popular choice on this thread. Ive lived here for 36 years and I can confirm it is a great place to live.
Expensive but worth every penny if you can afford it. Gas prices are some of the highest in the country, I paid $4.99 for regular just yesterday but that can be mitigated with the right car. Housing prices are out of sight along the coast but you can live just 20 miles inland and pay a reasonable( relative I know) price and enjoy a lot more sunshine and open space. Income taxes aren't high if you're retired and Property taxes are low compared to other states.
I live 12 miles from the beach and can mountain bike and hike a 1200ft peak right out my back door, or golf at a dozen courses within a half hour. OP, you dont need to live along the coast, you can drive there anytime.
Sent from my SM-A205U using Tapatalk
Might be worth noting to those not familiar with southern CA that while 20 miles inland will get you much better house prices, you are not getting "San Diego" weather. 10-15 degrees hotter in the summer and fall. In some locations (e.g. Escondido) it could even be 20-25 degrees hotter. 5 months straight of temps over 80 would be killer for me and my family. Obviously, some people like temps in the 80s and 90s, especially if it's drier, but it's not for everyone.
Good to know! Still though, being a 20 mile drive from nice temperatures is still nice. Where I live, we've had three months of 100 degree highs. 20 miles away you get... more 100 degree highs!
I live at 5100 ft. in Pueblo West, CO. It's a high of 92 degrees today with a low of 59 degrees tonight. In my opinion, it's pretty awesome. If you are getting tired of the 90's, you can drive one hour to the local mountains for a hike and the temp drops by 20 degrees. If you drive 2 hours, you can get a 30 degree differential.
Careful... you're going to attract outsiders!
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San Diego seems to be a popular choice on this thread. Ive lived here for 36 years and I can confirm it is a great place to live.
Expensive but worth every penny if you can afford it. Gas prices are some of the highest in the country, I paid $4.99 for regular just yesterday but that can be mitigated with the right car. Housing prices are out of sight along the coast but you can live just 20 miles inland and pay a reasonable( relative I know) price and enjoy a lot more sunshine and open space. Income taxes aren't high if you're retired and Property taxes are low compared to other states.
I live 12 miles from the beach and can mountain bike and hike a 1200ft peak right out my back door, or golf at a dozen courses within a half hour. OP, you dont need to live along the coast, you can drive there anytime.
Sent from my SM-A205U using Tapatalk
Might be worth noting to those not familiar with southern CA that while 20 miles inland will get you much better house prices, you are not getting "San Diego" weather. 10-15 degrees hotter in the summer and fall. In some locations (e.g. Escondido) it could even be 20-25 degrees hotter. 5 months straight of temps over 80 would be killer for me and my family. Obviously, some people like temps in the 80s and 90s, especially if it's drier, but it's not for everyone.
Good to know! Still though, being a 20 mile drive from nice temperatures is still nice. Where I live, we've had three months of 100 degree highs. 20 miles away you get... more 100 degree highs!
I live at 5100 ft. in Pueblo West, CO. It's a high of 92 degrees today with a low of 59 degrees tonight. In my opinion, it's pretty awesome. If you are getting tired of the 90's, you can drive one hour to the local mountains for a hike and the temp drops by 20 degrees. If you drive 2 hours, you can get a 30 degree differential.
Careful... you're going to attract outsiders!
Good point.
I forgot to mention that it totally sucks here.
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Interesting how many people mention the northeast…
Speaking of the northeast (or “New England” as we tend to call it)…
We deliberately chose Maine after living in 7 different states and three countries. We love winter activities, and for it scores highly on the personal combination of attributes we look for in a permanent place to live. Among those attributes are outdoor activities (including hiking and skiing), how liveable it will be in 50 years (climate change), cost of living, distance from family, ocean/lake access (especially kayaking), solid restaurants, vibrant regenerative farming/gardening community, a culture of independent owner/operator or small businesses, climate, and population density. In all those areas it scores at or near the top for us.
But of course there are some dark corners. As drug addiction has come up, Maine has been hard hit by the opioid epidemic (and prior to that methamphetamines). It’s particularly bad in the more rural counties where we’ve lived and worked. Also on the negative side of the ledger - Maine ranks high in overall poverty rate and in child poverty in particular. Wealth distribution can be at an extreme, with much of the southern, coastal areas populated by the very affluent and just ten miles inland are communities where the median household income is around $35k. It’s jarring, and driving through the state ito’s acutely obvious that the ‘have-nots’ outnumber the well-to-do by a large multiple.
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Interesting how many people mention the northeast, which is one of two areas (the other being NW) where I haven't spent much time in my life. Part of me thinks the NE sounds like a decent fit (minus the winters, but I could deal with that, I think). But choosing the one region I've never lived or spent meaningful time is also scary. I suppose it wouldn't have to be forever and if one of us hated it we could always bail in a few years.
It definitely stays on the list, at least.
I'd recommend a vacation in New England at different times of the year. The seasons all have a unique flavor. The summers are gorgeous. I can't imagine anyone hating those. Fall too. It's beautiful. Winter is long. I could see how winter could be a deal breaker for people who aren't into winter sports, but to me there's enough going on that even those who will spend winter mostly inside can still have a good time. Places cater to the skiers and such, so there's plenty of live music, winter festivals, and other events going on.
The big one in my mind to worry about, at least in Maine and northern NH, is spring. It's muddy, and sometimes really cold (think snow in April), and other times loaded with black flies, who are rather unpleasant little jerks. And lots of businesses are closed or have reduced hours because the tourists aren't around. If you can still have fun in spring despite all that, you're golden.
I also saw Virginia mentioned a few times, and that's where I live most of the time. The purple-ness of the state is a bit of an illusion, in my opinion. Or at least it's very uneven. Northern Virginia and Richmond are blue, but the rest of the state is RED. I'm in the Richmond area, but in one of the red-dominated counties around it because I prefer a more rural setting but needed access to the city for work. I personally can't wait to move away. I hate the gross, humid summers and the allergies that seem to run from March until October.
I'm currently in VA (National Capital area) and the winters definitely bother me less than the summers. Of course, New England's winters are going to be much more severe and longer, but I think if I had mild summers and fewer mosquitos and other pests (so I'm going to need to google those black flies!) that like to munch on me, I'd probably be okay.
And I also very much agree that VA isn't purple. It's red and blue. Even in NoVA, people are still incredibly upset if a prominent statue of Robert E. Lee is moved or a street named after a confederate war "hero" is renamed. I find that gross and uncomfortable for a place I'd call home.
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The defensiveness of all too many residents regarding many of those topics also becomes wearisome.
Just double-checked. Turns out you're right. Texas has zero tier one research universities, not 11. We actually invest negative dollars into education which explains why we're all defensive morons. =D
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I live in a red state. I love my job and there are some lovely people here. But I started looking into FIRE because red state policies are chipping away at my natural optimism and good nature. We are lucky in that we have been able to get out of this state often enough to get a break. My partner and I have done good work here, for anyone willing to do the work I encourage that. But don’t go too long term. My experience is with 2 different red states for almost 2 decades, maybe this is not true in all red states and I hope there are changes in the future. But I only have my experiences, so these are the main things that have chipped away at us:
1. Fear
2. Control
3. Binary thinking
4. Selfishness
Fear: Fear of “the other” (in all its forms @Sibley has a good list). Personal example, a woman I know asked me “You don’t have a gun? Aren’t you scared?” (for the record no, I’m not scared).
Control: This is the other side of fear. @Sibley mentioned animal abuse and it’s not often spoken about, but it is true and utterly depressing. Consequently we have spent a good deal of our own money on this issue as well as the environmental one. Control extends to your mind, body, and thoughts. Examples: healthcare (especially women’s), your body (especially women’s), your sexual orientation, your rights to simply talk about your life/family (can’t say gay or discuss US history with regards to slavery), forcing religion in public schools/on the public, monopolies (forcing you to pay one company to get energy, internet, or whatever), privatized profits but public losses (i.e. propping up big business even if it literally kills us).
Binary Thinking: This might come down to critical thinking, but it is really hard to have conversations with people when they are unable to deal with nuance (2 bucket thinking). Examples, you are a christian or a heathen, gay or straight, I root for “fill in the blank” so you are my enemy. This dichotomy is not good for the US as a whole. I don’t want to say I’d rather live in a blue state versus a red one (let’s put aside the fact that I mentioned purple).
Selfishness/Supremacy: This is pretty self-explanatory; the “I’ve got mine” mindset is rampant at every level. Personal example: I was at a Meet Your Legislature event and some guy said he was upset because he did not think it would be fair if a (citizen) vote in California was worth the same as his (our votes are about 30X CA). Mind you, I live in a red, red, this wasn’t going to happen but this guy got so upset about the idea that someone in CA might be equal to him “some day” in terms of voting. I will not discuss the other part to this as you are all smart enough to know the issue.
I’ve warned people here at MMM to carefully research their LCOL area. Low taxes often means you’re out of luck when something goes wrong. After a storm roads/bridges are not rebuilt/cleaned up for a long time, sometimes they are just closed and that will cost you time and money (maybe even your life). Things like kids just not getting lunch at school is normalized. Thank you @caracarn for mentioning that issue. Just because it’s not taxed, doesn’t mean the issue goes away. And often someone pays for it (the costs eventually “trickles down” to the citizens of the state in one way or another in the form of high crime rates, rising healthcare costs, home value declining etc [or the citizens of a blue state pays for it]).
@wenchsenior already mentioned the psychological toll of being bombarded with religious propaganda. Living in a blue state I never knew anyone’s religion, nobody ever asked. Why are we forced to encounter billboards that tell us to read the bible, that depict false healthcare propaganda, or ones that tell us we are going to hell? I am just trying to peacefully drive down a public road (see control above).
“They leave you alone in red states,” would be truly laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. Aside from all of the above, if you also like to pay double for energy and subpar services because of the monopolies, the school systems are lacking, some states utility company buy solar excess energy from homeowners then sell is back to the same home for more than double the cost (and this is legal and it's a monopoly...), red state government often “leave citizens alone” when industry is trying to kill them with pollution and other nonsense, if you like your public forests to be sold to corporation and deep drilling with "proprietary ingredients" leading to all sorts of health and environmental problems. And if you like being “left alone” by your state government, you may have enjoyed living in my state during COVID where the numbers were hidden and the information was sparse and unreliable. People would get all up in your face and yell at you if you wore a mask (see control above) I could go on.
I would like to live in a place where people value expertise, education, and accomplishments. A place with a growth mindset where people are kind and have basic manners and respect their neighbors regardless of differences. I want to pay taxes that support after school programs, public school lunches, and the basic needs of people. Body autonomy is considered a human right and whatever happens at home or as part of a membership (religious or secular) is private. Where supporting people over corporations was a point of pride not the genesis of an argument. If there is such a location it is not in the red states I have lived in.
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Patagonia AZ, a cute little village near the Mexican border, is exactly where I'd love to live.
Aw, Patagonia! I have similar fondness for Portal, which I love but it's SO tiny, and of course Jerome, though that is somewhat touristy. Or Bisbee. Oh, Arizona.
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I live in a red state. I love my job and there are some lovely people here. But I started looking into FIRE because red state policies are chipping away at my natural optimism and good nature. We are lucky in that we have been able to get out of this state often enough to get a break. My partner and I have done good work here, for anyone willing to do the work I encourage that. But don’t go too long term. My experience is with 2 different red states for almost 2 decades, maybe this is not true in all red states and I hope there are changes in the future. But I only have my experiences, so these are the main things that have chipped away at us:
1. Fear
2. Control
3. Binary thinking
4. Selfishness
Fear: Fear of “the other” (in all its forms @Sibley has a good list). Personal example, a woman I know asked me “You don’t have a gun? Aren’t you scared?” (for the record no, I’m not scared).
Control: This is the other side of fear. @Sibley mentioned animal abuse and it’s not often spoken about, but it is true and utterly depressing. Consequently we have spent a good deal of our own money on this issue as well as the environmental one. Control extends to your mind, body, and thoughts. Examples: healthcare (especially women’s), your body (especially women’s), your sexual orientation, your rights to simply talk about your life/family (can’t say gay or discuss US history with regards to slavery), forcing religion in public schools/on the public, monopolies (forcing you to pay one company to get energy, internet, or whatever), privatized profits but public losses (i.e. propping up big business even if it literally kills us).
Binary Thinking: This might come down to critical thinking, but it is really hard to have conversations with people when they are unable to deal with nuance (2 bucket thinking). Examples, you are a christian or a heathen, gay or straight, I root for “fill in the blank” so you are my enemy. This dichotomy is not good for the US as a whole. I don’t want to say I’d rather live in a blue state versus a red one (let’s put aside the fact that I mentioned purple).
Selfishness/Supremacy: This is pretty self-explanatory; the “I’ve got mine” mindset is rampant at every level. Personal example: I was at a Meet Your Legislature event and some guy said he was upset because he did not think it would be fair if a (citizen) vote in California was worth the same as his (our votes are about 30X CA). Mind you, I live in a red, red, this wasn’t going to happen but this guy got so upset about the idea that someone in CA might be equal to him “some day” in terms of voting. I will not discuss the other part to this as you are all smart enough to know the issue.
I’ve warned people here at MMM to carefully research their LCOL area. Low taxes often means you’re out of luck when something goes wrong. After a storm roads/bridges are not rebuilt/cleaned up for a long time, sometimes they are just closed and that will cost you time and money (maybe even your life). Things like kids just not getting lunch at school is normalized. Thank you @caracarn for mentioning that issue. Just because it’s not taxed, doesn’t mean the issue goes away. And often someone pays for it (the costs eventually “trickles down” to the citizens of the state in one way or another in the form of high crime rates, rising healthcare costs, home value declining etc [or the citizens of a blue state pays for it]).
@wenchsenior already mentioned the psychological toll of being bombarded with religious propaganda. Living in a blue state I never knew anyone’s religion, nobody ever asked. Why are we forced to encounter billboards that tell us to read the bible, that depict false healthcare propaganda, or ones that tell us we are going to hell? I am just trying to peacefully drive down a public road (see control above).
“They leave you alone in red states,” would be truly laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. Aside from all of the above, if you also like to pay double for energy and subpar services because of the monopolies, the school systems are lacking, some states utility company buy solar excess energy from homeowners then sell is back to the same home for more than double the cost (and this is legal and it's a monopoly...), red state government often “leave citizens alone” when industry is trying to kill them with pollution and other nonsense, if you like your public forests to be sold to corporation and deep drilling with "proprietary ingredients" leading to all sorts of health and environmental problems. And if you like being “left alone” by your state government, you may have enjoyed living in my state during COVID where the numbers were hidden and the information was sparse and unreliable. People would get all up in your face and yell at you if you wore a mask (see control above) I could go on.
I would like to live in a place where people value expertise, education, and accomplishments. A place with a growth mindset where people are kind and have basic manners and respect their neighbors regardless of differences. I want to pay taxes that support after school programs, public school lunches, and the basic needs of people. Body autonomy is considered a human right and whatever happens at home or as part of a membership (religious or secular) is private. Where supporting people over corporations was a point of pride not the genesis of an argument. If there is such a location it is not in the red states I have lived in.
Yup, this all tracks to my experience in Texas.
One thing I will say, people are super friendly here in a casual way, so some of the deep cruelty and indifference that exists en-masse is quite hidden on first glance.
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I would like to live in a place where people value expertise, education, and accomplishments. A place with a growth mindset where people are kind and have basic manners and respect their neighbors regardless of differences. I want to pay taxes that support after school programs, public school lunches, and the basic needs of people. Body autonomy is considered a human right and whatever happens at home or as part of a membership (religious or secular) is private. Where supporting people over corporations was a point of pride not the genesis of an argument. If there is such a location it is not in the red states I have lived in.
Growth mindset strikes me as interesting here. Net migration, be it of people, fortune 500 companies, and even film and entertainment is all away from the coasts, and to the sunbelt right now.
Respect/manners/kindness is a hard one to reconcile. Because there's what's happening on a policy level, and then there are day to day interactions. On the one hand, any state that is stripping away reproductive rights, or trying to marginalize the right to vote, is extremely hostile and unfriendly. No argument there.
But on an interpersonal level, the South and Midwest tend to rank high on the "friendliness" or "neighborly" scale, while the coasts rank low. My CA and WA friends always remark on how warm and engaging people are here in the South.
So yeah, a very hard one to reconcile. Is Oregon, with its blue government, a state that is more respectful to differences than Mississippi, even though it is an order of magnitude less racially diverse? This is why I think it's more complicated.
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<snip>
“They leave you alone in red states,” would be truly laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. Aside from all of the above, if you also like to pay double for energy and subpar services because of the monopolies, the school systems are lacking, some states utility company buy solar excess energy from homeowners then sell is back to the same home for more than double the cost (and this is legal and it's a monopoly...), red state government often “leave citizens alone” when industry is trying to kill them with pollution and other nonsense, if you like your public forests to be sold to corporation and deep drilling with "proprietary ingredients" leading to all sorts of health and environmental problems. And if you like being “left alone” by your state government, you may have enjoyed living in my state during COVID where the numbers were hidden and the information was sparse and unreliable. People would get all up in your face and yell at you if you wore a mask (see control above) I could go on.
I would like to live in a place where people value expertise, education, and accomplishments. A place with a growth mindset where people are kind and have basic manners and respect their neighbors regardless of differences. I want to pay taxes that support after school programs, public school lunches, and the basic needs of people. Body autonomy is considered a human right and whatever happens at home or as part of a membership (religious or secular) is private. Where supporting people over corporations was a point of pride not the genesis of an argument. If there is such a location it is not in the red states I have lived in.
They leave you alone if you are a white male. Or a post menopausal white female.
My entire career has been in IT. Praying nothing goes wrong is not a valid IT support strategy. Assuming nothing will go wrong is also not a valid IT support strategy in the long run.
Ectopic pregnancies happen. Defects incompatible with life happen. Miscarriages sometimes require follow up treatment.
The tragic stories which have unfolded in the last couple months have convinced my grown daughter that when her temporary job assignment is complete, she'll be looking for something permanent in a place where she doesn't have to worry about restricted options if something does go wrong.
Since my "If I could live anywhere" priorities when I move will include not having my state be a source of potential medical issues if my daughter or possible future daughter-in-law is visiting, that line of thinking is going to be coming into play for me as well.
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But on an interpersonal level, the South and Midwest tend to rank high on the "friendliness" or "neighborly" scale, while the coasts rank low. My CA and WA friends always remark on how warm and engaging people are here in the South.
I have never lived in a blue state, but I am in the southern end of the Midwest and while I've always heard it's "so friendly," in my experience, it can be quite unfriendly.
The Ku Klux Klan leaves leaflets in my mailbox filled with psychotic nonsense about the Jews. That's not friendly.
My neighbor built a snowman, dressed it as Joe Biden, hung a "Let's Go Brandon" sign on it, and then proceeded to do increasingly rude things to it until it melted. (I had to explain what this all meant to my then-8-year-old). That's not friendly.
Street preachers holding signs listing everyone who's going to hell isn't friendly. They're downtown every weekend where I live.
Many of my co-workers noticeably cooled toward me when they determined I wasn't religious.
My son had a very unpleasant experience at school when he shared his enthusiasm for learning about the Big Bang, and his teacher told him she "didn't really believe in all that," and his classmates told him he was wrong, and God created the world. He came home ashamed and dejected.
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I live in a red state. I love my job and there are some lovely people here. But I started looking into FIRE because red state policies are chipping away at my natural optimism and good nature. We are lucky in that we have been able to get out of this state often enough to get a break. My partner and I have done good work here, for anyone willing to do the work I encourage that. But don’t go too long term. My experience is with 2 different red states for almost 2 decades, maybe this is not true in all red states and I hope there are changes in the future. But I only have my experiences, so these are the main things that have chipped away at us:
1. Fear
2. Control
3. Binary thinking
4. Selfishness
Fear: Fear of “the other” (in all its forms @Sibley has a good list). Personal example, a woman I know asked me “You don’t have a gun? Aren’t you scared?” (for the record no, I’m not scared).
Control: This is the other side of fear. @Sibley mentioned animal abuse and it’s not often spoken about, but it is true and utterly depressing. Consequently we have spent a good deal of our own money on this issue as well as the environmental one. Control extends to your mind, body, and thoughts. Examples: healthcare (especially women’s), your body (especially women’s), your sexual orientation, your rights to simply talk about your life/family (can’t say gay or discuss US history with regards to slavery), forcing religion in public schools/on the public, monopolies (forcing you to pay one company to get energy, internet, or whatever), privatized profits but public losses (i.e. propping up big business even if it literally kills us).
Binary Thinking: This might come down to critical thinking, but it is really hard to have conversations with people when they are unable to deal with nuance (2 bucket thinking). Examples, you are a christian or a heathen, gay or straight, I root for “fill in the blank” so you are my enemy. This dichotomy is not good for the US as a whole. I don’t want to say I’d rather live in a blue state versus a red one (let’s put aside the fact that I mentioned purple).
Selfishness/Supremacy: This is pretty self-explanatory; the “I’ve got mine” mindset is rampant at every level. Personal example: I was at a Meet Your Legislature event and some guy said he was upset because he did not think it would be fair if a (citizen) vote in California was worth the same as his (our votes are about 30X CA). Mind you, I live in a red, red, this wasn’t going to happen but this guy got so upset about the idea that someone in CA might be equal to him “some day” in terms of voting. I will not discuss the other part to this as you are all smart enough to know the issue.
I’ve warned people here at MMM to carefully research their LCOL area. Low taxes often means you’re out of luck when something goes wrong. After a storm roads/bridges are not rebuilt/cleaned up for a long time, sometimes they are just closed and that will cost you time and money (maybe even your life). Things like kids just not getting lunch at school is normalized. Thank you @caracarn for mentioning that issue. Just because it’s not taxed, doesn’t mean the issue goes away. And often someone pays for it (the costs eventually “trickles down” to the citizens of the state in one way or another in the form of high crime rates, rising healthcare costs, home value declining etc [or the citizens of a blue state pays for it]).
@wenchsenior already mentioned the psychological toll of being bombarded with religious propaganda. Living in a blue state I never knew anyone’s religion, nobody ever asked. Why are we forced to encounter billboards that tell us to read the bible, that depict false healthcare propaganda, or ones that tell us we are going to hell? I am just trying to peacefully drive down a public road (see control above).
“They leave you alone in red states,” would be truly laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. Aside from all of the above, if you also like to pay double for energy and subpar services because of the monopolies, the school systems are lacking, some states utility company buy solar excess energy from homeowners then sell is back to the same home for more than double the cost (and this is legal and it's a monopoly...), red state government often “leave citizens alone” when industry is trying to kill them with pollution and other nonsense, if you like your public forests to be sold to corporation and deep drilling with "proprietary ingredients" leading to all sorts of health and environmental problems. And if you like being “left alone” by your state government, you may have enjoyed living in my state during COVID where the numbers were hidden and the information was sparse and unreliable. People would get all up in your face and yell at you if you wore a mask (see control above) I could go on.
I would like to live in a place where people value expertise, education, and accomplishments. A place with a growth mindset where people are kind and have basic manners and respect their neighbors regardless of differences. I want to pay taxes that support after school programs, public school lunches, and the basic needs of people. Body autonomy is considered a human right and whatever happens at home or as part of a membership (religious or secular) is private. Where supporting people over corporations was a point of pride not the genesis of an argument. If there is such a location it is not in the red states I have lived in.
Yep.
I left a red state at 18 and never looked back.
It has only gotten worse there over time.
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I would like to live in a place where people value expertise, education, and accomplishments. A place with a growth mindset where people are kind and have basic manners and respect their neighbors regardless of differences. I want to pay taxes that support after school programs, public school lunches, and the basic needs of people. Body autonomy is considered a human right and whatever happens at home or as part of a membership (religious or secular) is private. Where supporting people over corporations was a point of pride not the genesis of an argument. If there is such a location it is not in the red states I have lived in.
Growth mindset strikes me as interesting here. Net migration, be it of people, fortune 500 companies, and even film and entertainment is all away from the coasts, and to the sunbelt right now.
Respect/manners/kindness is a hard one to reconcile. Because there's what's happening on a policy level, and then there are day to day interactions. On the one hand, any state that is stripping away reproductive rights, or trying to marginalize the right to vote, is extremely hostile and unfriendly. No argument there.
But on an interpersonal level, the South and Midwest tend to rank high on the "friendliness" or "neighborly" scale, while the coasts rank low. My CA and WA friends always remark on how warm and engaging people are here in the South.
So yeah, a very hard one to reconcile. Is Oregon, with its blue government, a state that is more respectful to differences than Mississippi, even though it is an order of magnitude less racially diverse? This is why I think it's more complicated.
100% agree that respect/manners/kindness is complicated and nuanced topic. I'm curious about the data in these "nice studies" are they polls of citizens or visitors? People visiting an area may just be misinterpreting the culture. In my experience, I have not found people to be any nicer in the south/midwest than northeast (having lived in all of these regions), but I have found them all to be culturally different. There seems to be a difference in urban and rural areas in all regions. Here is an example of a misinterpreted cultural interaction: Getting through something quickly and not making small talk is respecting someone else's time in the Northeast, but that may seem rude by someone in the South where the cultural convention is to stay and chat. I'm not a cultural anthropologists but I know there are a whole hosts of reasons for the cultural differences. When I moved cultural zones I had to learn the new culture and it gave me a fuller understanding of how easy it is to misunderstand intentions.
So I try to stay away from that kind of ambiguous stuff, my personal conception of nice is in deeds and with the bigger picture stuff. I'd rather someone not use all their "nice points" on me by holding the door if it meant they were going to vote for laws that will kill me. To me, that is not nice. But your point is well received, everyone's experience is different.
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The outskirts of Portland, Oregon are perfect for me and where I eventually managed to end up. The winter rain can get oppressive some years, which makes winter a great time to travel. Summers are beautiful and it’s a great place to garden my heart out. I’m not right in the intense parts of the city, but all the great restaurants and such are a short drive away when I want them. The trade off is a cheaper and quieter day to day life. Tons of nature and green all year. It has its share of problems, but is still the best fit for me that I can think of.
I’m the past, I would have wanted to live in California, near Berkeley or Davis. Or maybe Sonoma County. But the climate has made those areas pretty unlivable in recent years. You can’t go outside in Davis in the summertime anymore without breathing smoke. And the East Bay has gotten too crowded for my tastes. I grew up in California and always thought I’d end up back there.
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Well I recently moved to the Bay Area (north bay) and it may just be perfect for me. Close to a city but with lots of nature. I’m likely to stay for a good long while.
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I would say the Pacific Northwest, for a whole bunch of reasons. Which is actually where I live right now. So, I kinda hit the lottery.
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I currently live in Seattle and I love it - except for the no-spring thing that nobody tells you about. Winter is ok but just way too long. But I'm staying. Might travel south a bit more often this year to get some light and warmth.
Anywhere else... first it'd absolutely have to be a true-blue State and city. Non negotiable. My first choice would probably be Northern California, which has the best mix of perfect weather and beautiful scenery. Santa Cruz would probably be it, but other than that, somewhere along the coast, up to SF.
I'm not so familiar with the rest of the country, but I think I'd like Denver. Mountains are awesome. Again, the weather is nice.
Then Washington DC if I wanted to get back to city life. I love visiting there. Or somewhere on the East Coast, north of DC.
I love San Diego. But honestly, the desert and dry scenery of SoCal just wears on me after a while. I need more trees and flowers.
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If I could live anywhere, I wouldn't choose the US, but if I have to choose within the US, probably somewhere in Alaska.
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If money was no object, my hometown of NYC of course. Mainly because I just love it there (something about the energy of the place I guess since that's where I was born) and I also have family and friends there. If money was an object, however, maybe somewhere in New England like Vermont or New Hampshire. Probably a college town as the schools tend to be decent and there's usually a good amount of cultural stuff going on. But my husband doesn't drive so that could be very limiting. I also really hate the idea of being dependent on a car to get around which rules out most of the US apart from my hometown.
But I'm pretty happy living where I live in Italy. Not perfect here but I wouldn't want to move back to the US with my health issues. And the current political situation there is worrying. Not to mention the whole gun thing.
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I guess in dream land, my dream would be Austin. Mainly because my brother lives there and it seems like a place that would accommodate all our current hobbies and give the kids a good education. I also like the idea of not having to deal with winter weather. But I also haven't explored anywhere else, beyond participating in these types of threads. Realistically, we will likely never leave Southern NH, as we have managed to build a small community here for ourselves and we are centrally located to a lot of amenities. I'm not a fan of driving in winter weather, but that can be mitigated a bit, and I'm thinking that our winters may change over the next few decades such that winters weather will not be a big concern for me anymore.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
This was fascinating - when I entered my preferences, my current county of residence in New Jersey was one of the main recommendations :-)
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
Lol. Based on that, I won't be living in the US.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
This was fun!
I've always suspected I would like Minnesota (I visited Minneapolis/St. Paul once, in 2000). This calculator seems to agree. But given my interest in being near family, it looks like I could also hop a few counties north or south and feel a little more at home.
Funny story: when I was still attempting to date, I kept getting matches just across the state line, and I was like... why are there so many of these handsome, progressive, outdoorsy guys my age, but always 100 miles away from me? Every picture was a man in a kayak or a riding mountain bike. It turns out there is an up-and-coming liberal area with lots of outdoor tourism just over the border. My local options tend to be either group photos of men in starched shirts in wine bars, or truck selfies of bearded men in ball caps and mirrored sunglasses. Funny what a difference 100 miles can make.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
Thanks for that link. I suspect it will come in handy for narrowing focus.
It puts my current location as being one of the better options for me in the Midwest, politics aside. Interesting.
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That tool was interesting. It has me as in one of my ideal spots now. Other options are Georgia and North Carolina (politics ignored).
It's kind of funny if I want adults with BAs over 30% and above average test scores my county literally sits by itself in the middle of the country.
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We are looking to FIRE to the Tennessee side of the Smoky Mountains. That would be my choice. Love to hike and having some of the best hiking available close by would be heaven. Add the lack of state income tax and dirt cheap property taxes (having lived in Nashville for five years I do agree with Sibley's point about red states not taking care of their citizens, but once FIRE'd our needs are low if we have the income to do what we need from investments) and this is what swings us away from the North Carolina side. We still have four seasons, which we love, but the bitter cold and massive snow we have now is not something we'd miss from up north.
Nowhere prettier (to me) in the US than this area, don't know if I could talk the family into it though. I imagine you can get decent healthcare and more diversity than elsewhere in the area in Knoxville, and I'd be willing to check out the political climate there a bit more closely before giving up on it for voting differently than I do much of the time.
My wife's stance (which is hard for me to argue with) is that if healthcare is our number one concern than we should just stay here and forgo living where we want. No amount of healthcare will make us immortal, and neither of us wants any extraordinary measures to keep us alive in a state of existence where we're just bed ridden or something anyway, would be better to just be gone, so her point is our desires meant that anything catastrophic we're likely not going to do a whole lot of healthcare anyway, so it should not be a key decider. YMMV.
Until recently the political climate was of less concern but now with extremes we are weighing the fact that given we are moderates we'd likely be just living our life and not associating with a lot of people if we moved down there.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
Very cool. Puts me where I live now, with just a couple of other counties along the west coast. One of them was my second choice when we were drilling down to final location.
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Currently live in the Madison, WI area and love it. Granted the winters can suck for a couple months, the area just has so much going for it. Very bikeable city, and not too big, not too small. Has an absurd number of high quality restaurants given its size and a massive farmer's market each Saturday. The politics are wacky as its the state capital with a major research university in the city limits. The area is seeing a booming tech sector recently as well.
Otherwise, the driftless area of SW Wisconsin/SE Minnesota is gorgeous and at the moment, have my sights set on towns within that region for a potential future move. I also loved San Diego during my time there; though it is expensive. In a perfect world, I'd have my winter/San Diego house and upper midwest house.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
I got halfway through the tool, just doing weather-related criteria, and I had eliminated 100% of the places on the map.
This is consistent with my lived experience, since I've spent the vast majority of my life living in San Diego and SF/Oakland and am often unhappy with the weather because it has failed to be perfect on a given day.
Perhaps if I could live anywhere in the US I should live in the place where the weather is the absolute shittiest (for me, that would be somewhere humid and very hot in summer and very cold in winter, with lots of mosquitoes whenever possible) to reset my internal thermometer.
There are many many days where I sit in awe of the lovely weather I'm enjoying, but there are also more than a handful of days that I'm resentful of the cold in winter (or summer!) or either the undesirably overcast day or the undesirable heat in summer. It's easy to say I should be able to just appreciate where I live with a change in attitude without having to actually move and live somewhere terrible, but my attempts to appreciate here more seems to have coincided with an increase in resentment at the "bad" days instead.
I'm surprised others on this thread living in nice-weather areas seem to be able to continue their appreciation for it year after year. Doesn't the hedonic treadmill apply for weather for all of you, too?
When I put criteria into that calculator that are the opposite of what I want, it's giving me lots of KS, MO and southern IA/IL, so I guess I have my marching orders.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
I got halfway through the tool, just doing weather-related criteria, and I had eliminated 100% of the places on the map.
This is consistent with my lived experience, since I've spent the vast majority of my life living in San Diego and SF/Oakland and am often unhappy with the weather because it has failed to be perfect on a given day.
Perhaps if I could live anywhere in the US I should live in the place where the weather is the absolute shittiest (for me, that would be somewhere humid and very hot in summer and very cold in winter, with lots of mosquitoes whenever possible) to reset my internal thermometer.
There are many many days where I sit in awe of the lovely weather I'm enjoying, but there are also more than a handful of days that I'm resentful of the cold in winter (or summer!) or either the undesirably overcast day or the undesirable heat in summer. It's easy to say I should be able to just appreciate where I live with a change in attitude without having to actually move and live somewhere terrible, but my attempts to appreciate here more seems to have coincided with an increase in resentment at the "bad" days instead.
I'm surprised others on this thread living in nice-weather areas seem to be able to continue their appreciation for it year after year. Doesn't the hedonic treadmill apply for weather for all of you, too?
When I put criteria into that calculator that are the opposite of what I want, it's giving me lots of KS, MO and southern IA/IL, so I guess I have my marching orders.
When I lived in a place with great weather all the time, I suppose I didn't really actively appreciate it. I just didn't notice the weather. I didn't think about it. But living in other places, I have to think about about the weather. And I hate that. So maybe there was some hedonistic adaptation, given that I rarely thought, "Wow, the weather here is pretty much perfect, again." But not having to think about the weather is a gift, too. Just more of a passive one. I loath the, "if I'm going for a walk, I need to check to see if it might rain in the next 20 minutes". I hate being afraid to walk my dogs because the sidewalks are icy. I hate lugging a massive coat everywhere, and then carrying it around when I'm inside and still roasting, because even if it is 35* out, places heat up to 70, so it is impossible to dress comfortably. I hate that I don't think I've had fewer than 5 mosquito bites at any given time since June.
In San Diego, I may never have thought, "Gosh, I'm so fortunate to live in a place with this weather," but I also didn't ever think about any of the above things, either.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
Apparently there are a couple counties in New Mexico and Montana for me . . . and that's it. :P
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When I put criteria into that calculator that are the opposite of what I want, it's giving me lots of KS, MO and southern IA/IL, so I guess I have my marching orders.
Come visit me in Missouri in July, or mid-February. We'll fix your hedonic adaptation! The horrible weather does make you appreciate the good days! Although in my three years in the UK, I never got tired of it always being a perfectly reasonable temperature. Two weeks in a sundress, a month or two in a coat, and the rest of the year between a sweater and a long-sleeved T-shirt was basically paradise for me!
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
That was fun. I can't check "no wildfires" or SB falls off the list.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
Pretty accurate, it basically showed most of Wyoming, Idaho, and western Montana with some scattered places in western Virgina and a few counties in Georgia and Tennessee. Not really interested in the east coast or south so it just reinforces somewhere in the northern part of the mountain west.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
Very Cool. Apparently cheaper parts of Idaho, Utah & Colorado would be my ideal.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
I got halfway through the tool, just doing weather-related criteria, and I had eliminated 100% of the places on the map.
I do think the data in the tool for weather is a little off, for what it's worth, or at least not very consistent/clear from the description. "Day temp in summer" doesn't allow you to choose below 78, but in my location there is no month that has a high temp averaging above 74 (and the tool actually eliminates it below 84, I discovered). It is very rarely 84 in my location...so maybe that temperature is a +2 sigma or something?
San Francisco is the only major US city with cooler summer temperatures than Bellingham, and somehow in the tool it doesn't make the cut until 82 F. 80s are super rare there.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
This tool is so funny! Out of 12 counties it picked for me, one is where I live now. I was very surprised lol.
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That map mostly gave me locations in northern Vermont, which makes sense since I used to live right on the border of northern Vermont and it's one of my favourite places.
I'm pretty much okay with anything in terms of weather. I'm from a Nordic family, so I don't believe in bad weather, just the wrong clothes.
Extreme weather really sucks when you have no choice but to drive in it, or if the region doesn't have the infrastructure to cope with it. Weather in and of itself though doesn't bother me as long as I have a reliable way to stay safe.
Forest fires though? Having just spent a summer on an island with a raging fire nearby?? Yeah, those I could do without.
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Currently live in the Madison, WI area and love it. Granted the winters can suck for a couple months, the area just has so much going for it. Very bikeable city, and not too big, not too small. Has an absurd number of high quality restaurants given its size and a massive farmer's market each Saturday. The politics are wacky as its the state capital with a major research university in the city limits. The area is seeing a booming tech sector recently as well.
Otherwise, the driftless area of SW Wisconsin/SE Minnesota is gorgeous and at the moment, have my sights set on towns within that region for a potential future move. I also loved San Diego during my time there; though it is expensive. In a perfect world, I'd have my winter/San Diego house and upper midwest house.
I was just looking at real estate in New Glarus and Mineral Point last weekend. I love SW WI.
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I'm pretty much okay with anything in terms of weather. I'm from a Nordic family, so I don't believe in bad weather, just the wrong clothes.
Cold weather is no biggie - add the right clothes. But hot, humid weather is a whole other thing. Once you're naked and have shorn all your body hair off the options for cooling become more limited. : P
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I'm pretty much okay with anything in terms of weather. I'm from a Nordic family, so I don't believe in bad weather, just the wrong clothes.
Cold weather is no biggie - add the right clothes. But hot, humid weather is a whole other thing. Once you're naked and have shorn all your body hair off the options for cooling become more limited. : P
Yeah, it gets insanely hot in Ottawa, but I have AC in my house, so as long as I can escape into AC, especially to sleep, I kind of like cooking in the soup-y heat when I go outside.
There has been no AC at my place for the past year though, so I was happy to escape to the much milder summer in Newfoundland, where there were only 2 days of "hmm...it's a bit hot."
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
I got halfway through the tool, just doing weather-related criteria, and I had eliminated 100% of the places on the map.
This is consistent with my lived experience, since I've spent the vast majority of my life living in San Diego and SF/Oakland and am often unhappy with the weather because it has failed to be perfect on a given day.
Perhaps if I could live anywhere in the US I should live in the place where the weather is the absolute shittiest (for me, that would be somewhere humid and very hot in summer and very cold in winter, with lots of mosquitoes whenever possible) to reset my internal thermometer.
There are many many days where I sit in awe of the lovely weather I'm enjoying, but there are also more than a handful of days that I'm resentful of the cold in winter (or summer!) or either the undesirably overcast day or the undesirable heat in summer. It's easy to say I should be able to just appreciate where I live with a change in attitude without having to actually move and live somewhere terrible, but my attempts to appreciate here more seems to have coincided with an increase in resentment at the "bad" days instead.
I'm surprised others on this thread living in nice-weather areas seem to be able to continue their appreciation for it year after year. Doesn't the hedonic treadmill apply for weather for all of you, too?
When I put criteria into that calculator that are the opposite of what I want, it's giving me lots of KS, MO and southern IA/IL, so I guess I have my marching orders.
I definitely appreciated every nice day when I lived in MN and WI. When I was in the Caribbean (I didn't live there, but would do long work stints), I was always concerned with low pressure systems that could disrupt work with extensive rain b/c there are few things as miserable as a group of biologists trapped indoors when time is running out to collect data, and I don't miss that crabbiness. Also, there was hurricane risk, and indeed we rode out two hurricanes that obviously disrupted work.
When I worked in CA, and living in AZ and TX, I definitely took the sun for granted to an extent that weather rarely factored into any planning, unless it was monsoon season in AZ (then it must be factored in, but mostly it's very exciting rather than annoying). But I enjoy clouds and rain now in a way that I most definitely never did growing up the Midwest.
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I'm pretty much okay with anything in terms of weather. I'm from a Nordic family, so I don't believe in bad weather, just the wrong clothes.
Cold weather is no biggie - add the right clothes. But hot, humid weather is a whole other thing. Once you're naked and have shorn all your body hair off the options for cooling become more limited. : P
Depends? If the streets are too icy to walk or bike and it's too cold to stand outside waiting for the bus, you are pretty much stuck at home for two months if you don't drive. I don't actually mind the heat.
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Cold weather is no biggie - add the right clothes. But hot, humid weather is a whole other thing. Once you're naked and have shorn all your body hair off the options for cooling become more limited. : P
Depends? If the streets are too icy to walk or bike and it's too cold to stand outside waiting for the bus, you are pretty much stuck at home for two months if you don't drive. I don't actually mind the heat.
In my experience, places that have that kind of weather often enough for it to be a concern usually know how to manage it and keep the sidewalks passable. Won't help much with bikes unless you get one of those fat tire ones though.
I cycled in Quebec year-round and didn't need a fat-tire. Studded snow tires for bicycles are amazing, and not terribly expensive (unlike fat-tire bikes, which are absurdly expensive). Given the choice for commuting, i'd go studded on my standard commuter bike. The trickiest part of winter cycling is balancing outwear so you don't freeze or sweat. Handling snow/ice is pretty easy.
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Cold weather is no biggie - add the right clothes. But hot, humid weather is a whole other thing. Once you're naked and have shorn all your body hair off the options for cooling become more limited. : P
Depends? If the streets are too icy to walk or bike and it's too cold to stand outside waiting for the bus, you are pretty much stuck at home for two months if you don't drive. I don't actually mind the heat.
In my experience, places that have that kind of weather often enough for it to be a concern usually know how to manage it and keep the sidewalks passable. Won't help much with bikes unless you get one of those fat tire ones though.
I cycled in Quebec year-round and didn't need a fat-tire. Studded snow tires for bicycles are amazing, and not terribly expensive (unlike fat-tire bikes, which are absurdly expensive). Given the choice for commuting, i'd go studded on my standard commuter bike. The trickiest part of winter cycling is balancing outwear so you don't freeze or sweat. Handling snow/ice is pretty easy.
For me the tricky part of winter cycling was when it warmed up a little and I could dodge ice puddles on the way to work, but then snowed while I was there so I no longer knew where the ice was. That and reynauds made it difficult to lock my bike when i got to my destination. So much simpler to keep hands warm and stay upright while walking.
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I'm surprised others on this thread living in nice-weather areas seem to be able to continue their appreciation for it year after year. Doesn't the hedonic treadmill apply for weather for all of you, too?
But you see, I watch the news! And vacation.
In fact, I've been to the Northeast a couple of times (visiting family) - the flooding, the mosquitoes, and the humidity in the summer -yee haw, no thanks.
Ice and snowstorms in the winter.
Plus, I can follow it from afar, and appreciate my own weather every day.
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Cold weather is no biggie - add the right clothes. But hot, humid weather is a whole other thing. Once you're naked and have shorn all your body hair off the options for cooling become more limited. : P
Depends? If the streets are too icy to walk or bike and it's too cold to stand outside waiting for the bus, you are pretty much stuck at home for two months if you don't drive. I don't actually mind the heat.
In my experience, places that have that kind of weather often enough for it to be a concern usually know how to manage it and keep the sidewalks passable. Won't help much with bikes unless you get one of those fat tire ones though.
Again, proper gear manages this just fine. Studded boots and studded bike tires make even the iciest surfaces manageable. The fat bikes are for trail biking in the deep snow. For icy and snowy city streets, studded tires are best, although some people swear by slick racing tires.
DH runs and bikes all winter, and we have some incredibly harsh, inhospitable weather.
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For icy and snowy city streets, studded tires are best, although some people swear by slick racing tires.
Totally depends on where you're riding.
Studded tires are great for ice. Skinny tires with a slight tread pattern work great to punch through snow and slush though, and roll a hell of a lot faster than studs on clear roads. Here in Toronto we tend to salt very early and the temperatures usually warm up enough that things melt down to tarmac most of the winter long.
Keeping your bike components functioning through the deluge of salt all winter is a whole other issue though.
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For icy and snowy city streets, studded tires are best, although some people swear by slick racing tires.
Totally depends on where you're riding.
Studded tires are great for ice. Skinny tires with a slight tread pattern work great to punch through snow and slush though, and roll a hell of a lot faster than studs on clear roads. Here in Toronto we tend to salt very early and the temperatures usually warm up enough that things melt down to tarmac most of the winter long.
Keeping your bike components functioning through the deluge of salt all winter is a whole other issue though.
That makes sense. DH is in Ottawa where there's a lot of ice even though we salt like crazy, it's often too cold for it to work.
He buys cheap used bikes that he doesn't mind sacrificing to the winter-riding gods. Although he extends their lives as much as possible through thorough cleaning.
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If I could live anywhere, I wouldn't choose the US, but if I have to choose within the US, probably somewhere in Alaska.
Fascinating. Could you share why you chose Alaska? And any specific place there?
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If I could live anywhere, I wouldn't choose the US, but if I have to choose within the US, probably somewhere in Alaska.
Fascinating. Could you share why you chose Alaska? And any specific place there?
I'm not American, so I wouldn't choose anywhere in Alaska specifically, but I do plan on living in the Canadian remote north at some point. It's a geographically stunning area, and culturally very interesting.
I have a house in a similar kind of remote, geographically and culturally distinct region, so it's a kind of lifestyle I already know I thrive in.
I like small communities with extreme winters, they tend to create a more cohesive and cooperative community culture because everyone is collectively doing battle with a force bigger than themselves. Having a big, nasty, common foe makes for a well-bonded social fabric.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
Thanks for sharing this, it puts me in a similar place. I pretty much already knew that, but I like how the calculator breaks it down to specific counties.
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Cold weather is no biggie - add the right clothes. But hot, humid weather is a whole other thing. Once you're naked and have shorn all your body hair off the options for cooling become more limited. : P
Depends? If the streets are too icy to walk or bike and it's too cold to stand outside waiting for the bus, you are pretty much stuck at home for two months if you don't drive. I don't actually mind the heat.
In my experience, places that have that kind of weather often enough for it to be a concern usually know how to manage it and keep the sidewalks passable. Won't help much with bikes unless you get one of those fat tire ones though.
Again, proper gear manages this just fine. Studded boots and studded bike tires make even the iciest surfaces manageable. The fat bikes are for trail biking in the deep snow. For icy and snowy city streets, studded tires are best, although some people swear by slick racing tires.
DH runs and bikes all winter, and we have some incredibly harsh, inhospitable weather.
Same. I have a variety of traction devices for icy/snowy conditions.
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Based on the tool JLee shared, I am also in the right place. I could also live in a small portion of Oregon, but otherwise I belong in the northeast.
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
No Joke,
After narrowing things down i live in one of the 3 recommended counties, i guess we found our happy place
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
That was fun. I can't check "no wildfires" or SB falls off the list.
Me too… my current county makes the list until I click no wildfires. Still, this is a cool link, thanks JLee!
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
That was fun. I can't check "no wildfires" or SB falls off the list.
Me too… my current county makes the list until I click no wildfires. Still, this is a cool link, thanks JLee!
Me three! politics, sun, mountains, a reasonably educated populace and decent schools really seems to narrow it down!
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As with so many others here, that tool (thanks for sharing, @JLee!) told me what I already suspected. The coasts and a few scattered other areas were recommended. If I started getting picky about natural (or semi-natural) disasters, then there was nothing, but that's largely because I think most of them are about equally awful so I wouldn't rule out just one.
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For icy and snowy city streets, studded tires are best, although some people swear by slick racing tires.
Totally depends on where you're riding.
Studded tires are great for ice. Skinny tires with a slight tread pattern work great to punch through snow and slush though, and roll a hell of a lot faster than studs on clear roads. Here in Toronto we tend to salt very early and the temperatures usually warm up enough that things melt down to tarmac most of the winter long.
Keeping your bike components functioning through the deluge of salt all winter is a whole other issue though.
That makes sense. DH is in Ottawa where there's a lot of ice even though we salt like crazy, it's often too cold for it to work.
He buys cheap used bikes that he doesn't mind sacrificing to the winter-riding gods. Although he extends their lives as much as possible through thorough cleaning.
So, in my fair city, the main streets are plowed and salted, but for water quality reasons residential streets are plowed but not salted, and after a few days they are a sheet of ice.
I value my bones, and I will not walk on that ice no matter what my footwear is. When I was 40 I would have done it (and I've trudged over a lot of ice and snow) but not now. It makes for a long winter.
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So, in my fair city, the main streets are plowed and salted, but for water quality reasons residential streets are plowed but not salted, and after a few days they are a sheet of ice.
I value my bones, and I will not walk on that ice no matter what my footwear is. When I was 40 I would have done it (and I've trudged over a lot of ice and snow) but not now. It makes for a long winter.
My city is the same. In some ways it's worse when you aren't far enough north to have snows that stay frozen.
Have you ever tried YakTrax? I rely on them for navigating ice sheets. But I am "only" 40 and can still risk it.
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So, in my fair city, the main streets are plowed and salted, but for water quality reasons residential streets are plowed but not salted, and after a few days they are a sheet of ice.
I value my bones, and I will not walk on that ice no matter what my footwear is. When I was 40 I would have done it (and I've trudged over a lot of ice and snow) but not now. It makes for a long winter.
My city is the same. In some ways it's worse when you aren't far enough north to have snows that stay frozen.
Have you ever tried YakTrax? I rely on them for navigating ice sheets. But I am "only" 40 and can still risk it.
It's actually less slippery to bike with studded winter bike tires than it is to walk. Just don't put your feet down and you'll be OK. :P
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For icy and snowy city streets, studded tires are best, although some people swear by slick racing tires.
Totally depends on where you're riding.
Studded tires are great for ice. Skinny tires with a slight tread pattern work great to punch through snow and slush though, and roll a hell of a lot faster than studs on clear roads. Here in Toronto we tend to salt very early and the temperatures usually warm up enough that things melt down to tarmac most of the winter long.
Keeping your bike components functioning through the deluge of salt all winter is a whole other issue though.
That makes sense. DH is in Ottawa where there's a lot of ice even though we salt like crazy, it's often too cold for it to work.
He buys cheap used bikes that he doesn't mind sacrificing to the winter-riding gods. Although he extends their lives as much as possible through thorough cleaning.
So, in my fair city, the main streets are plowed and salted, but for water quality reasons residential streets are plowed but not salted, and after a few days they are a sheet of ice.
I value my bones, and I will not walk on that ice no matter what my footwear is. When I was 40 I would have done it (and I've trudged over a lot of ice and snow) but not now. It makes for a long winter.
This past winter was my first time owning dogs, and thus my first time having reason to venture out into the cold, snow, and wet. I found it quite scary at night when we'd had a thaw (or light cold rain) during the day. Some sidewalks were shoveled and salted, others just shoveled, and still others ignored entirely. It felt quite treacherous. Walking in the streets felt slightly less dangerous from a slip-and-fall perspective, but only slightly. The blacktop hold the heat better. I don't think the streets here are salted.
This is partly why I just don't go out much in winter.
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For icy and snowy city streets, studded tires are best, although some people swear by slick racing tires.
Totally depends on where you're riding.
Studded tires are great for ice. Skinny tires with a slight tread pattern work great to punch through snow and slush though, and roll a hell of a lot faster than studs on clear roads. Here in Toronto we tend to salt very early and the temperatures usually warm up enough that things melt down to tarmac most of the winter long.
Keeping your bike components functioning through the deluge of salt all winter is a whole other issue though.
That makes sense. DH is in Ottawa where there's a lot of ice even though we salt like crazy, it's often too cold for it to work.
He buys cheap used bikes that he doesn't mind sacrificing to the winter-riding gods. Although he extends their lives as much as possible through thorough cleaning.
So, in my fair city, the main streets are plowed and salted, but for water quality reasons residential streets are plowed but not salted, and after a few days they are a sheet of ice.
I value my bones, and I will not walk on that ice no matter what my footwear is. When I was 40 I would have done it (and I've trudged over a lot of ice and snow) but not now. It makes for a long winter.
This past winter was my first time owning dogs, and thus my first time having reason to venture out into the cold, snow, and wet. I found it quite scary at night when we'd had a thaw (or light cold rain) during the day. Some sidewalks were shoveled and salted, others just shoveled, and still others ignored entirely. It felt quite treacherous. Walking in the streets felt slightly less dangerous from a slip-and-fall perspective, but only slightly. The blacktop hold the heat better. I don't think the streets here are salted.
This is partly why I just don't go out much in winter.
That's so sad! Winter is a lovely time to be outside. As Sadie mentioned, there are a variety of different sorts of cleats available that you can try for getting better grip in winter:
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81caTa7jWmL._AC_SL1500_.jpg)
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
I got halfway through the tool, just doing weather-related criteria, and I had eliminated 100% of the places on the map.
This is consistent with my lived experience, since I've spent the vast majority of my life living in San Diego and SF/Oakland and am often unhappy with the weather because it has failed to be perfect on a given day.
Perhaps if I could live anywhere in the US I should live in the place where the weather is the absolute shittiest (for me, that would be somewhere humid and very hot in summer and very cold in winter, with lots of mosquitoes whenever possible) to reset my internal thermometer.
There are many many days where I sit in awe of the lovely weather I'm enjoying, but there are also more than a handful of days that I'm resentful of the cold in winter (or summer!) or either the undesirably overcast day or the undesirable heat in summer. It's easy to say I should be able to just appreciate where I live with a change in attitude without having to actually move and live somewhere terrible, but my attempts to appreciate here more seems to have coincided with an increase in resentment at the "bad" days instead.
I'm surprised others on this thread living in nice-weather areas seem to be able to continue their appreciation for it year after year. Doesn't the hedonic treadmill apply for weather for all of you, too?
When I put criteria into that calculator that are the opposite of what I want, it's giving me lots of KS, MO and southern IA/IL, so I guess I have my marching orders.
Turns out, that when I live in a place with "perfect" weather, I end up depressed and unhappy. I may not like winter, but I do need it.
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Like others have reported, the tool JLee provided nailed it for me. I live in Oregon and the tool returned two recommended counties for me, both in Oregon and one is the county in which I live. Crazy!
For what it’s worth, we moved here specifically after researching different places to live and this area checked most of our boxes. Glad to see that it still holds true.
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Within the next two years, I will be buying a place in Fairplay, CO, which is about 30 minutes south of Breckenridge.
I just passed through Fairplay last week. I've gone through the area regularly my entire life, but hadn't been in four years. I really noticed that the town was looking nicer this time (more interesting shops, buildings getting fixed up).
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This is a fun tool - https://www.movemap.io/explore/us
It basically puts me where I am (northeastern-ish US) or the PNW.
I got halfway through the tool, just doing weather-related criteria, and I had eliminated 100% of the places on the map.
This is consistent with my lived experience, since I've spent the vast majority of my life living in San Diego and SF/Oakland and am often unhappy with the weather because it has failed to be perfect on a given day.
Perhaps if I could live anywhere in the US I should live in the place where the weather is the absolute shittiest (for me, that would be somewhere humid and very hot in summer and very cold in winter, with lots of mosquitoes whenever possible) to reset my internal thermometer.
There are many many days where I sit in awe of the lovely weather I'm enjoying, but there are also more than a handful of days that I'm resentful of the cold in winter (or summer!) or either the undesirably overcast day or the undesirable heat in summer. It's easy to say I should be able to just appreciate where I live with a change in attitude without having to actually move and live somewhere terrible, but my attempts to appreciate here more seems to have coincided with an increase in resentment at the "bad" days instead.
I'm surprised others on this thread living in nice-weather areas seem to be able to continue their appreciation for it year after year. Doesn't the hedonic treadmill apply for weather for all of you, too?
When I put criteria into that calculator that are the opposite of what I want, it's giving me lots of KS, MO and southern IA/IL, so I guess I have my marching orders.
Turns out, that when I live in a place with "perfect" weather, I end up depressed and unhappy. I may not like winter, but I do need it.
And so, are you now in the "perfect for you" place? And if so, do you maintain the same level of appreciation for it year after year?
It's funny - people are of course different, and there's no one right place for everyone (thank goodness!). At the same time, preferences are obviously not spread out evenly among all geographies. When I lived in San Diego, particularly in my post-college years, I made tons of other post-college friends that had move to SD from TX, VA, AL, ID - just about anywhere you could name, because they wanted to live in the "perfect" weather. But then I'd lose all those friends when they decided to move back home, definitely often partly because they were nostalgic and/or missed family, but also a lot of "I miss having four seasons". Whatever four seasons was for them (which obviously vary widely between, e.g., AL and ID). It was kind of sad to make lots of good friends only to have them leave after 3-4 years, but I am grateful that not everyone really wants to live in the places that are considered perfect. Still too many, but could be worse!
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Currently live in the Madison, WI area and love it. Granted the winters can suck for a couple months, the area just has so much going for it. Very bikeable city, and not too big, not too small. Has an absurd number of high quality restaurants given its size and a massive farmer's market each Saturday. The politics are wacky as its the state capital with a major research university in the city limits. The area is seeing a booming tech sector recently as well.
Otherwise, the driftless area of SW Wisconsin/SE Minnesota is gorgeous and at the moment, have my sights set on towns within that region for a potential future move. I also loved San Diego during my time there; though it is expensive. In a perfect world, I'd have my winter/San Diego house and upper midwest house.
I was just looking at real estate in New Glarus and Mineral Point last weekend. I love SW WI.
I'm outing myself more than I have in the past here, but I live in Mineral Point.
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Currently live in the Madison, WI area and love it. Granted the winters can suck for a couple months, the area just has so much going for it. Very bikeable city, and not too big, not too small. Has an absurd number of high quality restaurants given its size and a massive farmer's market each Saturday. The politics are wacky as its the state capital with a major research university in the city limits. The area is seeing a booming tech sector recently as well.
Otherwise, the driftless area of SW Wisconsin/SE Minnesota is gorgeous and at the moment, have my sights set on towns within that region for a potential future move. I also loved San Diego during my time there; though it is expensive. In a perfect world, I'd have my winter/San Diego house and upper midwest house.
I was just looking at real estate in New Glarus and Mineral Point last weekend. I love SW WI.
I'm outing myself more than I have in the past here, but I live in Mineral Point.
So, honestly, how annoying are the tourists? :she asks having been a tourist multiple times there: And also, do you go to Madison for medical care or is there something closer?
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Btw, anyone who is real estate hunting in SE MN/SW WI and wants a small town with that kind of old fashioned 'feel' should check out Buffalo MN. I haven't spent substantial time there in about 15 years, but it was sooooo charming back then.
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For icy and snowy city streets, studded tires are best, although some people swear by slick racing tires.
Totally depends on where you're riding.
Studded tires are great for ice. Skinny tires with a slight tread pattern work great to punch through snow and slush though, and roll a hell of a lot faster than studs on clear roads. Here in Toronto we tend to salt very early and the temperatures usually warm up enough that things melt down to tarmac most of the winter long.
Keeping your bike components functioning through the deluge of salt all winter is a whole other issue though.
That makes sense. DH is in Ottawa where there's a lot of ice even though we salt like crazy, it's often too cold for it to work.
He buys cheap used bikes that he doesn't mind sacrificing to the winter-riding gods. Although he extends their lives as much as possible through thorough cleaning.
So, in my fair city, the main streets are plowed and salted, but for water quality reasons residential streets are plowed but not salted, and after a few days they are a sheet of ice.
I value my bones, and I will not walk on that ice no matter what my footwear is. When I was 40 I would have done it (and I've trudged over a lot of ice and snow) but not now. It makes for a long winter.
This past winter was my first time owning dogs, and thus my first time having reason to venture out into the cold, snow, and wet. I found it quite scary at night when we'd had a thaw (or light cold rain) during the day. Some sidewalks were shoveled and salted, others just shoveled, and still others ignored entirely. It felt quite treacherous. Walking in the streets felt slightly less dangerous from a slip-and-fall perspective, but only slightly. The blacktop hold the heat better. I don't think the streets here are salted.
This is partly why I just don't go out much in winter.
That's so sad! Winter is a lovely time to be outside. As Sadie mentioned, there are a variety of different sorts of cleats available that you can try for getting better grip in winter:
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81caTa7jWmL._AC_SL1500_.jpg)
Thanks. We don't get severe winters here so the the unsafe days are limited, but maybe that also makes them more unsafe since we are somewhat ill-equipped to deal with them. I was shocked when 2 inches of snow was enough to close some workplaces and schools. But I think I need to invest in something like this since this winter I'll still want to walk the dogs every night we can. (We adopted them in March, when winter was mostly over.) Do you recommend or have experience with this specific product? Or a similar one?
Last winter on the icy days I wore the winter boots that served me well when I lived in Germany, but while they are quite warm, they traction seems no better (or perhaps even less good) than regular sneakers.
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For icy and snowy city streets, studded tires are best, although some people swear by slick racing tires.
Totally depends on where you're riding.
Studded tires are great for ice. Skinny tires with a slight tread pattern work great to punch through snow and slush though, and roll a hell of a lot faster than studs on clear roads. Here in Toronto we tend to salt very early and the temperatures usually warm up enough that things melt down to tarmac most of the winter long.
Keeping your bike components functioning through the deluge of salt all winter is a whole other issue though.
That makes sense. DH is in Ottawa where there's a lot of ice even though we salt like crazy, it's often too cold for it to work.
He buys cheap used bikes that he doesn't mind sacrificing to the winter-riding gods. Although he extends their lives as much as possible through thorough cleaning.
So, in my fair city, the main streets are plowed and salted, but for water quality reasons residential streets are plowed but not salted, and after a few days they are a sheet of ice.
I value my bones, and I will not walk on that ice no matter what my footwear is. When I was 40 I would have done it (and I've trudged over a lot of ice and snow) but not now. It makes for a long winter.
This past winter was my first time owning dogs, and thus my first time having reason to venture out into the cold, snow, and wet. I found it quite scary at night when we'd had a thaw (or light cold rain) during the day. Some sidewalks were shoveled and salted, others just shoveled, and still others ignored entirely. It felt quite treacherous. Walking in the streets felt slightly less dangerous from a slip-and-fall perspective, but only slightly. The blacktop hold the heat better. I don't think the streets here are salted.
This is partly why I just don't go out much in winter.
That's so sad! Winter is a lovely time to be outside. As Sadie mentioned, there are a variety of different sorts of cleats available that you can try for getting better grip in winter:
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81caTa7jWmL._AC_SL1500_.jpg)
Thanks. We don't get severe winters here so the the unsafe days are limited, but maybe that also makes them more unsafe since we are somewhat ill-equipped to deal with them. I was shocked when 2 inches of snow was enough to close some workplaces and schools. But I think I need to invest in something like this since this winter I'll still want to walk the dogs every night we can. (We adopted them in March, when winter was mostly over.) Do you recommend or have experience with this specific product? Or a similar one?
Last winter on the icy days I wore the winter boots that served me well when I lived in Germany, but while they are quite warm, they traction seems no better (or perhaps even less good) than regular sneakers.
Those specific ones I just grabbed for the photo - they look a lot like the Microspikes ones that a friend of mine who works as a courier uses on icy days. I've also got some friends who run in the winter using Yaktrax on snow . . . not sure if they're as good on ice.
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For icy and snowy city streets, studded tires are best, although some people swear by slick racing tires.
Totally depends on where you're riding.
Studded tires are great for ice. Skinny tires with a slight tread pattern work great to punch through snow and slush though, and roll a hell of a lot faster than studs on clear roads. Here in Toronto we tend to salt very early and the temperatures usually warm up enough that things melt down to tarmac most of the winter long.
Keeping your bike components functioning through the deluge of salt all winter is a whole other issue though.
That makes sense. DH is in Ottawa where there's a lot of ice even though we salt like crazy, it's often too cold for it to work.
He buys cheap used bikes that he doesn't mind sacrificing to the winter-riding gods. Although he extends their lives as much as possible through thorough cleaning.
So, in my fair city, the main streets are plowed and salted, but for water quality reasons residential streets are plowed but not salted, and after a few days they are a sheet of ice.
I value my bones, and I will not walk on that ice no matter what my footwear is. When I was 40 I would have done it (and I've trudged over a lot of ice and snow) but not now. It makes for a long winter.
Interesting. I can comfortably walk on sheer ice with studded footwear. DH runs on ice with Yak Traks.
And I have a genetic condition that makes it extremely easy for me to get injured, so I'm EXTREMELY cautious about falls, but I have no fear of falling on ice as long as I have proper studs. I prefer the boots that have them built in. They're the most secure.
It's my fear of falling that made me discover the most effective footwear for ice.
ETA, the ones GuitarStv posted are extreme. Yak Tracks are very popular, and even then, they're overkill for a lot of situations. Little studs are usually plenty to handle studs.
Just so a quick search online and you will see tons of options.
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For icy and snowy city streets, studded tires are best, although some people swear by slick racing tires.
Totally depends on where you're riding.
Studded tires are great for ice. Skinny tires with a slight tread pattern work great to punch through snow and slush though, and roll a hell of a lot faster than studs on clear roads. Here in Toronto we tend to salt very early and the temperatures usually warm up enough that things melt down to tarmac most of the winter long.
Keeping your bike components functioning through the deluge of salt all winter is a whole other issue though.
That makes sense. DH is in Ottawa where there's a lot of ice even though we salt like crazy, it's often too cold for it to work.
He buys cheap used bikes that he doesn't mind sacrificing to the winter-riding gods. Although he extends their lives as much as possible through thorough cleaning.
So, in my fair city, the main streets are plowed and salted, but for water quality reasons residential streets are plowed but not salted, and after a few days they are a sheet of ice.
I value my bones, and I will not walk on that ice no matter what my footwear is. When I was 40 I would have done it (and I've trudged over a lot of ice and snow) but not now. It makes for a long winter.
This past winter was my first time owning dogs, and thus my first time having reason to venture out into the cold, snow, and wet. I found it quite scary at night when we'd had a thaw (or light cold rain) during the day. Some sidewalks were shoveled and salted, others just shoveled, and still others ignored entirely. It felt quite treacherous. Walking in the streets felt slightly less dangerous from a slip-and-fall perspective, but only slightly. The blacktop hold the heat better. I don't think the streets here are salted.
This is partly why I just don't go out much in winter.
That's so sad! Winter is a lovely time to be outside. As Sadie mentioned, there are a variety of different sorts of cleats available that you can try for getting better grip in winter:
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81caTa7jWmL._AC_SL1500_.jpg)
Thanks. We don't get severe winters here so the the unsafe days are limited, but maybe that also makes them more unsafe since we are somewhat ill-equipped to deal with them. I was shocked when 2 inches of snow was enough to close some workplaces and schools. But I think I need to invest in something like this since this winter I'll still want to walk the dogs every night we can. (We adopted them in March, when winter was mostly over.) Do you recommend or have experience with this specific product? Or a similar one?
Last winter on the icy days I wore the winter boots that served me well when I lived in Germany, but while they are quite warm, they traction seems no better (or perhaps even less good) than regular sneakers.
I wore exactly those while backpacking on a glacier for a couple of days and can confirm I did not fall at all. I switched off with my husband, who is not as clumsy as I am, because I did fall wearing these kind: https://www.amazon.com/STABILicers-Traction-Cleat-Tread-Black/dp/B000GUCDDG/ref=asc_df_B000GUCDDG/. Not sure if those might still be sufficient for your purposes - they felt ok when flat, but I didn't feel very stable or confident on an incline.
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I walk every day year round, and live in Minnesota. I bought these toward the end of the season last year, and they worked super well. Better than the Yaktrax and Icetrax I have used in the past, for sure.
https://www.amazon.com/ICETRAX-Winter-Grips-Shoes-Boots/dp/B07ZJPXRG8
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There are some towns in NH that vote at midnight on the night of the New Hampshire primaries. That would be a very cool place to live I think.
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I walk every day year round, and live in Minnesota. I bought these toward the end of the season last year, and they worked super well. Better than the Yaktrax and Icetrax I have used in the past, for sure.
https://www.amazon.com/ICETRAX-Winter-Grips-Shoes-Boots/dp/B07ZJPXRG8
Thanks! I love a specific recommendation as there are so many options!
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I walk every day year round, and live in Minnesota. I bought these toward the end of the season last year, and they worked super well. Better than the Yaktrax and Icetrax I have used in the past, for sure.
https://www.amazon.com/ICETRAX-Winter-Grips-Shoes-Boots/dp/B07ZJPXRG8
Thanks! I love a specific recommendation as there are so many options!
You’re welcome! That’s why I commented. I’ve gone through a few types, and have also struggled to find good ones among all the options.
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It sounds funny to say, but no amount of money or freedom from any obligations would convince me to live anywhere else other than where I am now (CO, between Denver and Boulder). Some reasons why I love it:
1. Lots o sun
2. See # 1 above
3. Beautiful, quiet trails within walking, running, or biking distance
4. Great community - for me the right mix of respecting differences and privacy while being genuinely friendly and rallying together/providing support to others in times of need
5. Four seasons, with winter being entirely manageable because we get nice fluffy snow that melts quickly
6. Easy access to major city (Denver) and small city (Boulder) whenever desired
7. Blue, but not hyper partisan or progressive
8. Low humidity means no mosquitos or mold, both of which I had to deal with in past places I've lived
No place is perfect though, and we definitely have drawbacks:
1. Biggest is lack of water (scenery can be brownish, no big bodies of water for swimming, and may portend arid post-apocalyptic warzone in near future)
2. We may officially be HCOL now
3. Sometimes a little humidity is nice, esp. in the winter, when if you're not careful your hands will crack wide open from dryness
Now if the question is where would I want to have a money-is-no-object place as a second home, then that would be somewhere in the LA/OC/Carlsbad area. Love SoCal too.
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So, honestly, how annoying are the tourists? :she asks having been a tourist multiple times there: And also, do you go to Madison for medical care or is there something closer?
I honestly don't mind the tourists at all. We don't get so many that it's disruptive, and they help us have more good local businesses.
For healthcare, we have two really good small clinics in town and a solid regional hospital seven miles away in Dodgeville. People do go in to the Madison hospitals for more complicated/specialized stuff.
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Incline Village, NV.
All the benefits of Lake Tahoe living without the scourge of CA's politics/taxation.
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I walk every day year round, and live in Minnesota. I bought these toward the end of the season last year, and they worked super well. Better than the Yaktrax and Icetrax I have used in the past, for sure.
https://www.amazon.com/ICETRAX-Winter-Grips-Shoes-Boots/dp/B07ZJPXRG8
Thanks! I love a specific recommendation as there are so many options!
Me too, thank you for the recommendation! I don't need them now, but I have favorited them since we plan on moving to a colder climate.
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I live in what is called the upper valley which is a swath of
Towns by the CT River in Vermont and Nh. Hanover NH (Dartmouth college) is the hub of the area. We love it here and will probably never move after FIRE. It’s a cool mix of Rural with interesting things to do in the larger towns. Plus it’s optimal day trip location as you can get to the ocean and Boston in 2 hours. The economy is surprisingly strong because Dartmouth alumna LOVE Dartmouth and move back with their companies and patents just to be near Dartmouth? It helps as a fallback for part time work and also a possibility the kids will have employment opportunities should they choose to stay as adults.
Other places we like but are more isolated:
Peacham, VT
Craftsbury, VT
Blue hill, ME
Brooklin, ME
Brooksville, ME
Camden, ME
Rockport,ME
If we had all the $$$$ and didn’t have to worry about anything
Little Compton, RI
Wellfleet, MA
Truro, MA
Ipswich, MA
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I know someone who just moved from near Hancock NH to Brooklin ME and they love it. Definitely more remote though - takes half a day to get to an international airport hub…
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I live in what is called the upper valley which is a swath of
Towns by the CT River in Vermont and Nh. Hanover NH (Dartmouth college) is the hub of the area. We love it here and will probably never move after FIRE. It’s a cool mix of Rural with interesting things to do in the larger towns. Plus it’s optimal day trip location as you can get to the ocean and Boston in 2 hours. The economy is surprisingly strong because Dartmouth alumna LOVE Dartmouth and move back with their companies and patents just to be near Dartmouth? It helps as a fallback for part time work and also a possibility the kids will have employment opportunities should they choose to stay as adults.
Other places we like but are more isolated:
Peacham, VT
Craftsbury, VT
Blue hill, ME
Brooklin, ME
Brooksville, ME
Camden, ME
Rockport,ME
If we had all the $$$$ and didn’t have to worry about anything
Little Compton, RI
Wellfleet, MA
Truro, MA
Ipswich, MA
I worked in Hanover for a few years around 2010 - it's a nice area if you don't mind NH weather.
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I worked in Hanover for a few years around 2010 - it's a nice area if you don't mind NH weather.
Every Canadian east of the Rockies is killing themselves laughing at this. ;-)
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I worked in Hanover for a few years around 2010 - it's a nice area if you don't mind NH weather.
Every Canadian east of the Rockies is killing themselves laughing at this. ;-)
If ya don’t like the weather in the north country, wait a minute. It’ll change.
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I worked in Hanover for a few years around 2010 - it's a nice area if you don't mind NH weather.
Every Canadian east of the Rockies is killing themselves laughing at this. ;-)
People often ask how we like the Maine winter.
Our stock response is: “it’s a lot milder and shorter”
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
I have. I grew up in semi-rural areas. My first job out of grad school was to a semi-rural area, as well. I left for the city and am so much happier.
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I worked in Hanover for a few years around 2010 - it's a nice area if you don't mind NH weather.
Every Canadian east of the Rockies is killing themselves laughing at this. ;-)
People often ask how we like the Maine winter.
Our stock response is: “it’s a lot milder and shorter”
Well you were in Quebec City - which is well North of Montreal or Ottawa and a lot colder and snowier. Are Maine winters really that easy? I thought they would be comparable to Montreal, except close to the coast where it would be more like Halifax or St. John.
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
Twice in my life I’ve lived in very rural areas, and then moved to an urban location. Both times the move was a huge QOL upgrade for us, even as our lodging expenses more than doubled.
We still love some aspects of rural living, which probably explains why we are now living in a very small town about 20 minutes from a medium city and 5 minutes from the nearest dairy farm. Unique spot where we get some of everything (including HCOL).
So… sorta?
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
I grew up partially in an exurban area and moved to the city and my life got so much better. It's a lot to do with the correlation of exurban/rural areas with racism, misogyny, extreme Christianity, etc. that made me miserable, but since not *all* rural areas are that way, I am sort of interested in finding out if I would like living rural if there was an absence of those things.
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
I grew up living in a very rural area where the nearest sizeable town was 7,000 people. LOVED it (but I was a kid).
Moved to the Madison area (small city) for a few years as a teenager and LOVED it.
Moved to Tucson, large city in a radically different climate, for college, and LOVED it.
Worked regularly in remote rural or wilderness areas on and off as a young adult. LOVED it.
Moved to Minneapolis/St Paul (huge city) for about 2 years as a young adult. It was ok.
Moved to a small city in Texas (same approximate size as Madison but about one-one hundredth as cool), where I've been living for 20 years. STRONGLY DISLIKE it.
I really think it depends on where the place is, rather than how big. I might even like a really big city under some circumstances, though it's clearly not my natural preference, which is to be able to get far away from people.
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I noticed I slept much better after moving from an isolated farm house to an apartment complex. I just feel safer with people around I guess.
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I recently moved from a "downtown" area, old-style Main Street type vibe that was part of a large metro area, to a suburb of the same metro area. It was a definitely QOL downgrade. We moved when spouse's work moved as just about anything else would have been a long commute, so it made sense, but I'm definitely less happy out in the 'burbs, with large, lovely homes, chain restaurants, and basically nothing walkable from anything else.
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
I grew up in a small village that was close to a major city. I've lived in all sorts of different population densities in my life. I currently have two homes, one in a small village and one in a major city. I own another property in a small 70K person city that I'm considering relocating to at some point.
In general though, I'm someone who is tremendously adaptable and extremely comfortable with change. I like radical lifestyle changes on a regular basis.
I would lose my bloody mind if I lived in generally the same size/kind of place my entire life.
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down south to a red state.
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So, in my fair city, the main streets are plowed and salted, but for water quality reasons residential streets are plowed but not salted, and after a few days they are a sheet of ice.
I value my bones, and I will not walk on that ice no matter what my footwear is. When I was 40 I would have done it (and I've trudged over a lot of ice and snow) but not now. It makes for a long winter.
My city is the same. In some ways it's worse when you aren't far enough north to have snows that stay frozen.
Have you ever tried YakTrax? I rely on them for navigating ice sheets. But I am "only" 40 and can still risk it.
I do have Yak Trax, and they are helpful for making it down the street, but not so great for long walks, and a big nuisance to take on and off if I'm going to the library.
I mean, I do walk 3 blocks to and from the elementary school every day in the winter, but it's precarious and a lot depends on whether people have done their shoveling.
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So, honestly, how annoying are the tourists? :she asks having been a tourist multiple times there: And also, do you go to Madison for medical care or is there something closer?
I honestly don't mind the tourists at all. We don't get so many that it's disruptive, and they help us have more good local businesses.
For healthcare, we have two really good small clinics in town and a solid regional hospital seven miles away in Dodgeville. People do go in to the Madison hospitals for more complicated/specialized stuff.
I have another, more specialized question, which you might or might not have an answer to.
While researching the whole Iowa Co area, one of my big challenges is that I really need access to a pool for lap swimming, and I think that's likely to rule out most of the area. Then yesterday I ran across pictures of an incredible looking fitness facility with a pool (Comer Activity Center) in Dodgeville. I guess it was built by the Land's End founder? Anyway, it doesn't have a typical gym website so I'm wondering if it's private? Or only for use by Land's End people? And if so, that seems crazy, but not as crazy I guess as having a state of the art gym in a town of ~4,000 people.
Do you know if regular people can use that facility? And if not, do you know of any year round pools (like YMCA) type pools in the area? UGH, if I had another 300K to burn, I'd just chuck this idea of living in the country and move to the planned community in Middleton right near the Harbour Athletic club, but money is a definite limiting factor. Assuming I settled on moving to WI at all.
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
I grew up in low-density outer-ring suburbia in the PNW, did undergrad in a pretty rural college town, and then grad school in Manhattan. Up until then I had always been very uncomfortable when visiting big cities, and I went to NYC somewhat begrudgingly in order to work with a specific professor. But my prior conception of big city life, based only on being a tourist, had been extremely misleading. I always felt anxious and uncomfortable as a tourist in cities, but actually living in NYC, I could settle in and get to know the neighborhoods I frequented at a more intimate level. I've since learned to appreciate other cities much more as a tourist, but there's really nothing like living there to get comfortable in a city. Since leaving NYC, I very much want to get back to dense urban living as soon as possible.
I would honestly go so far as to suggest basically all people should live in a big city for a couple years at some point in their life. There's a set of trade-offs from suburban/rural living, and I think status quo bias makes those trade-offs seem much worse when low-density living is all one has ever known. Private space is more scarce and therefore more expensive, so the same amount of money will get you a small apartment instead of a house with a yard... but in exchange you get much better public space. You don't get to drive and park your car wherever you want for free, but you can walk for basically any regular errands and have transit to reach destinations further away. You might need to feel slightly more cautious about watching your personal belongings in public, but you get to be in a vibrant, communal space where you feel connected to other people. I frankly think suburban living is associated with the atomization, loneliness, social anxiety, and general fear of other people that is becoming all too common in this country. I had to experience city living for myself in order to discover I'm actually just much happier when I spend time in a walkable city, in close contact with a lot of other people.
All the walking is great for overall health and happiness, compared to clown-car life. Also, financially speaking, being able to go fully car-free goes a long way towards compensating for higher cost of living in other categories. Frankly, MMM was a contributing factor to me considering the benefits to car-free urban life. And I think in this community, his emphasis on minimizing driving is one of the most oft-ignored tenet, because people rightfully say, "it's not safe/practical to walk/bike where I live." Well then, move somewhere it's safe and practical.
My answer to this thread is without a doubt New York City, specifically somewhere in Manhattan or the close-in neighborhoods of Brooklyn. I lived in upper Manhattan already and I wouldn't choose to go back to the same neighborhoods I lived in, but maybe Morningside Heights (around Columbia). I'd never want to live in midtown, but I'd love to get to know lower Manhattan up close for a little while. For now I'd be aiming for hipper/younger neighborhoods, but I like the Upper West Side a lot and would probably be happy to settle there when I'm older.
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
I grew up in low-density outer-ring suburbia in the PNW, did undergrad in a pretty rural college town, and then grad school in Manhattan. Up until then I had always been very uncomfortable when visiting big cities, and I went to NYC somewhat begrudgingly in order to work with a specific professor. But my prior conception of big city life, based only on being a tourist, had been extremely misleading. I always felt anxious and uncomfortable as a tourist in cities, but actually living in NYC, I could settle in and get to know the neighborhoods I frequented at a more intimate level. I've since learned to appreciate other cities much more as a tourist, but there's really nothing like living there to get comfortable in a city. Since leaving NYC, I very much want to get back to dense urban living as soon as possible.
I would honestly go so far as to suggest basically all people should live in a big city for a couple years at some point in their life. There's a set of trade-offs from suburban/rural living, and I think status quo bias makes those trade-offs seem much worse when low-density living is all one has ever known. Private space is more scarce and therefore more expensive, so the same amount of money will get you a small apartment instead of a house with a yard... but in exchange you get much better public space. You don't get to drive and park your car wherever you want for free, but you can walk for basically any regular errands and have transit to reach destinations further away. You might need to feel slightly more cautious about watching your personal belongings in public, but you get to be in a vibrant, communal space where you feel connected to other people. I frankly think suburban living is associated with the atomization, loneliness, social anxiety, and general fear of other people that is becoming all too common in this country. I had to experience city living for myself in order to discover I'm actually just much happier when I spend time in a walkable city, in close contact with a lot of other people.
All the walking is great for overall health and happiness, compared to clown-car life. Also, financially speaking, being able to go fully car-free goes a long way towards compensating for higher cost of living in other categories. Frankly, MMM was a contributing factor to me considering the benefits to car-free urban life. And I think in this community, his emphasis on minimizing driving is one of the most oft-ignored tenet, because people rightfully say, "it's not safe/practical to walk/bike where I live." Well then, move somewhere it's safe and practical.
My answer to this thread is without a doubt New York City, specifically somewhere in Manhattan or the close-in neighborhoods of Brooklyn. I lived in upper Manhattan already and I wouldn't choose to go back to the same neighborhoods I lived in, but maybe Morningside Heights (around Columbia). I'd never want to live in midtown, but I'd love to get to know lower Manhattan up close for a little while. For now I'd be aiming for hipper/younger neighborhoods, but I like the Upper West Side a lot and would probably be happy to settle there when I'm older.
I 100% agree with you re the tradeoffs between low-density and high-density living, and public vs. private space.
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
I grew up in low-density outer-ring suburbia in the PNW, did undergrad in a pretty rural college town, and then grad school in Manhattan. Up until then I had always been very uncomfortable when visiting big cities, and I went to NYC somewhat begrudgingly in order to work with a specific professor. But my prior conception of big city life, based only on being a tourist, had been extremely misleading. I always felt anxious and uncomfortable as a tourist in cities, but actually living in NYC, I could settle in and get to know the neighborhoods I frequented at a more intimate level. I've since learned to appreciate other cities much more as a tourist, but there's really nothing like living there to get comfortable in a city. Since leaving NYC, I very much want to get back to dense urban living as soon as possible.
I would honestly go so far as to suggest basically all people should live in a big city for a couple years at some point in their life. There's a set of trade-offs from suburban/rural living, and I think status quo bias makes those trade-offs seem much worse when low-density living is all one has ever known. Private space is more scarce and therefore more expensive, so the same amount of money will get you a small apartment instead of a house with a yard... but in exchange you get much better public space. You don't get to drive and park your car wherever you want for free, but you can walk for basically any regular errands and have transit to reach destinations further away. You might need to feel slightly more cautious about watching your personal belongings in public, but you get to be in a vibrant, communal space where you feel connected to other people. I frankly think suburban living is associated with the atomization, loneliness, social anxiety, and general fear of other people that is becoming all too common in this country. I had to experience city living for myself in order to discover I'm actually just much happier when I spend time in a walkable city, in close contact with a lot of other people.
All the walking is great for overall health and happiness, compared to clown-car life. Also, financially speaking, being able to go fully car-free goes a long way towards compensating for higher cost of living in other categories. Frankly, MMM was a contributing factor to me considering the benefits to car-free urban life. And I think in this community, his emphasis on minimizing driving is one of the most oft-ignored tenet, because people rightfully say, "it's not safe/practical to walk/bike where I live." Well then, move somewhere it's safe and practical.
I would add that you don't have to live in a big city to get this. I'm currently hanging out in Edinburgh, UK in a neighborhood where almost nobody owns a car or drives. But it isn't a "big city," it only has ~500k residents. To bring this back on topic I would imagine that San Francisco, where I have visited in the past but not nearly as much, is similar (only ~875k residents).
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
I grew up in low-density outer-ring suburbia in the PNW, did undergrad in a pretty rural college town, and then grad school in Manhattan. Up until then I had always been very uncomfortable when visiting big cities, and I went to NYC somewhat begrudgingly in order to work with a specific professor. But my prior conception of big city life, based only on being a tourist, had been extremely misleading. I always felt anxious and uncomfortable as a tourist in cities, but actually living in NYC, I could settle in and get to know the neighborhoods I frequented at a more intimate level. I've since learned to appreciate other cities much more as a tourist, but there's really nothing like living there to get comfortable in a city. Since leaving NYC, I very much want to get back to dense urban living as soon as possible.
I would honestly go so far as to suggest basically all people should live in a big city for a couple years at some point in their life. There's a set of trade-offs from suburban/rural living, and I think status quo bias makes those trade-offs seem much worse when low-density living is all one has ever known. Private space is more scarce and therefore more expensive, so the same amount of money will get you a small apartment instead of a house with a yard... but in exchange you get much better public space. You don't get to drive and park your car wherever you want for free, but you can walk for basically any regular errands and have transit to reach destinations further away. You might need to feel slightly more cautious about watching your personal belongings in public, but you get to be in a vibrant, communal space where you feel connected to other people. I frankly think suburban living is associated with the atomization, loneliness, social anxiety, and general fear of other people that is becoming all too common in this country. I had to experience city living for myself in order to discover I'm actually just much happier when I spend time in a walkable city, in close contact with a lot of other people.
All the walking is great for overall health and happiness, compared to clown-car life. Also, financially speaking, being able to go fully car-free goes a long way towards compensating for higher cost of living in other categories. Frankly, MMM was a contributing factor to me considering the benefits to car-free urban life. And I think in this community, his emphasis on minimizing driving is one of the most oft-ignored tenet, because people rightfully say, "it's not safe/practical to walk/bike where I live." Well then, move somewhere it's safe and practical.
My answer to this thread is without a doubt New York City, specifically somewhere in Manhattan or the close-in neighborhoods of Brooklyn. I lived in upper Manhattan already and I wouldn't choose to go back to the same neighborhoods I lived in, but maybe Morningside Heights (around Columbia). I'd never want to live in midtown, but I'd love to get to know lower Manhattan up close for a little while. For now I'd be aiming for hipper/younger neighborhoods, but I like the Upper West Side a lot and would probably be happy to settle there when I'm older.
I 100% agree with you re the tradeoffs between low-density and high-density living, and public vs. private space.
Thank you all for your thoughts. Other than college, I have lived in a couple of smaller non-walkable cities and fairly rural areas. I'm considering what to do eventually when the kids leave (still a ways away). I don't mind reduced home space - would like it to be honest. I really want walkability and accessibilty of cool things from hiking to ethnic grocery stores, but hugely crowded areas (bumping into people every few feet on a walk) make me feel a bit overwhelmed. Apartments are OK - sound carrying is my biggest drawback with them, but I think I could live with it. All of that to say, I feel like I would really appreciate many of the public space improvements mentioned above but be challenged, at least somewhat, if there was heavy crowds and a little by apartments. It's nice to see that many enjoyed the tradeoffs from rural to urban. Anyways, sorry for derailing things!
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While I miss walkability of urban areas and there is a tangible reduced risks of driving, I have found the spirit of the people of northern New England to be much more mustachian and frugal than the people I knew when I lived in cities. We all haul our trash/recycling to the transfer station Saturday mornings, solve a lot of issues during town meeting, heat with wood from our land, potluck parties are the norm, etc. my kids go back and see their friends in the more urban place we used to live and it’s all about consumption with those kids. I am glad we got away from it, even though we have to drive a bit more.
But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
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Further responses: yes, density is really the key metric rather than size. I’d also say it’s more accurate to think of living in a neighborhood rather than in a city. A lot of “big cities” are a whole bunch of sprawl, and a lot of small cities have great walkable neighborboods. Living in the same city can obviously be a vastly different experience from different neighborhoods. I personally would want to live somewhere with multiple contiguous walkable neighborhoods for easy access to more amenities and just for variety’s sake, but there’s still a lot of benefit to living in a walkable neighborhood even if it’s surrounded by car-centric sprawl.
Density doesn’t just mean building height, it can also just be smaller lots and narrower streets, so you can get these benefits without highrise/downtown vibes. Lots of neighborboods outside the core in the “bit cities” are dense with rowhouses and multi-plexes. Montreal is a really beautiful example of great urban density spread throughout the city, not just a core surrounded by car-dominated sprawl.
In regards to apartments, I think a lot of people get turned off apartment living when they live in cheap apartments during their student years. Nicer buildings will generally have more much better sound insulation.
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
I grew up in low-density outer-ring suburbia in the PNW, did undergrad in a pretty rural college town, and then grad school in Manhattan. Up until then I had always been very uncomfortable when visiting big cities, and I went to NYC somewhat begrudgingly in order to work with a specific professor. But my prior conception of big city life, based only on being a tourist, had been extremely misleading. I always felt anxious and uncomfortable as a tourist in cities, but actually living in NYC, I could settle in and get to know the neighborhoods I frequented at a more intimate level. I've since learned to appreciate other cities much more as a tourist, but there's really nothing like living there to get comfortable in a city. Since leaving NYC, I very much want to get back to dense urban living as soon as possible.
I would honestly go so far as to suggest basically all people should live in a big city for a couple years at some point in their life. There's a set of trade-offs from suburban/rural living, and I think status quo bias makes those trade-offs seem much worse when low-density living is all one has ever known. Private space is more scarce and therefore more expensive, so the same amount of money will get you a small apartment instead of a house with a yard... but in exchange you get much better public space. You don't get to drive and park your car wherever you want for free, but you can walk for basically any regular errands and have transit to reach destinations further away. You might need to feel slightly more cautious about watching your personal belongings in public, but you get to be in a vibrant, communal space where you feel connected to other people. I frankly think suburban living is associated with the atomization, loneliness, social anxiety, and general fear of other people that is becoming all too common in this country. I had to experience city living for myself in order to discover I'm actually just much happier when I spend time in a walkable city, in close contact with a lot of other people.
All the walking is great for overall health and happiness, compared to clown-car life. Also, financially speaking, being able to go fully car-free goes a long way towards compensating for higher cost of living in other categories. Frankly, MMM was a contributing factor to me considering the benefits to car-free urban life. And I think in this community, his emphasis on minimizing driving is one of the most oft-ignored tenet, because people rightfully say, "it's not safe/practical to walk/bike where I live." Well then, move somewhere it's safe and practical.
My answer to this thread is without a doubt New York City, specifically somewhere in Manhattan or the close-in neighborhoods of Brooklyn. I lived in upper Manhattan already and I wouldn't choose to go back to the same neighborhoods I lived in, but maybe Morningside Heights (around Columbia). I'd never want to live in midtown, but I'd love to get to know lower Manhattan up close for a little while. For now I'd be aiming for hipper/younger neighborhoods, but I like the Upper West Side a lot and would probably be happy to settle there when I'm older.
Great post.
Most of my formative years were spent on SoCal, so I'm sure that affected my view on cars. But when we first moved to the urban main street location I mentioned earlier, there was only street parking. DH could take public transport (2 options in case one method was down, even) to work nearly all of the time. And still, I was pretty anxious about only having one car. I think the only reason I talked myself into it was ultimately the knowledge that if it was terrible, we could easilya nd pretty quickly buy a second car.
And then our car would sit for sometimes weeks at a time. We'd occasionally drive it around the block for the sake of the battery and because technically, it wasn't supposed to stay on the public street more than 72 hours (though we never saw anyone with a street parking permit, which locals were issued by city hall with proof of address). I loved living there. I'm a pretty extreme introvert, but I still loved knowing the neighborhood and the neighbors, even if usually that just meant a waive and a nod. It has become my favored form of neighborhood, when feasible with our other choices.
I've also live in Japan, and while we didn't live in Tokyo, I did fine it terribly overwhelming. (I'm sure there were language and cultural issues at play there, too.) Many people around me loved it, and I loved some things about it, but never felt at ease there. I always felt like I was sort of missing something--the key to unlock the enjoyment that so many others got there. I wonder if part of that is related to what you mention, and if living there would have eventually felt at least somewhat different.
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So, in my fair city, the main streets are plowed and salted, but for water quality reasons residential streets are plowed but not salted, and after a few days they are a sheet of ice.
I value my bones, and I will not walk on that ice no matter what my footwear is. When I was 40 I would have done it (and I've trudged over a lot of ice and snow) but not now. It makes for a long winter.
My city is the same. In some ways it's worse when you aren't far enough north to have snows that stay frozen.
Have you ever tried YakTrax? I rely on them for navigating ice sheets. But I am "only" 40 and can still risk it.
I do have Yak Trax, and they are helpful for making it down the street, but not so great for long walks, and a big nuisance to take on and off if I'm going to the library.
I mean, I do walk 3 blocks to and from the elementary school every day in the winter, but it's precarious and a lot depends on whether people have done their shoveling.
Try boots with the spikes that can be easily flipped.
https://www.yellowshoes.com/products/iceridge?variant=28240615276616
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It's interesting how many people indicate liking the people generally around them/their home. I don't hate it, but I sure don't like it. I don't even like to take walks in our neighborhood when there are a lot of people out and about (even though in the abstract, I like the idea that the people in the neighborhood are getting outside to our little park down the street, exercising, etc.) I know my husband has come close to throwing punches while trying to just shop for 10 minutes in big city bodegas, or trying to walk down big city streets during rush hour, b/c he cannot tolerate how strangers will come so close and brush against him. I am not quite that sensitive, but I similarly just find other people in my field of view, or within 6 feet of me, kind of...off putting. It's not b/c I don't want people looking at me (which I don't care about at all) and it's not b/c I feel actively unsafe or anxious. It's more like they distract me from things I really want to be looking at, b/c I feel I have to kind of remain 'aware' of what people in my vicinity are doing, and that makes me very tired and irritated. It's better if people are around me but sitting quietly or moving very slowly. So I can and do live in higher density areas (and for energy efficiency, I feel I SHOULD do it), but I doubt I'll ever enjoy it. Tolerating it is what I aim for. ETA: I should also point out that I love the concept of walkability, both in abstract and in practice, and that conflicts with my desire to see as few people as possible.
I think the only time I really enjoy being around strangers in any capacity is during a concert/show/movie/sporting event, but honestly even then sometimes I dislike it. Classes started last week on the university campus, and I was torn between sort of enjoying it b/c the first autumn week reminds me nostalgically of my freshman year of college, and being constantly irritated at how many people were suddenly everywhere, scurrying and loitering LOL (in the immortal words of Principal Snyder: "One day the campus is completely bare, empty. The next, there are children everywhere... Like locusts, crawling around, mindlessly bent on feeding and mating.")
Part of this might be that I've never had a sense of 'community' except associated with work, or small groups of friends. I do not associate that feeling remotely with random people in my neighborhood or on the streets I walk. I definitely attach myself emotionally to places (ecology, geology, landscape, even buildings) more than the people associated with the place.
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It's interesting how many people indicate liking the people generally around them/their home. I don't hate it, but I sure don't like it. I don't even like to take walks in our neighborhood when there are a lot of people out and about (even though in the abstract, I like the idea that the people in the neighborhood are getting outside to our little park down the street, exercising, etc.) I know my husband has come close to throwing punches while trying to just shop for 10 minutes in big city bodegas, or trying to walk down big city streets during rush hour, b/c he cannot tolerate how strangers will come so close and brush against him. I am not quite that sensitive, but I similarly just find other people in my field of view, or within 6 feet of me, kind of...off putting. It's not b/c I don't want people looking at me (which I don't care about at all) and it's not b/c I feel actively unsafe or anxious. It's more like they distract me from things I really want to be looking at, b/c I feel I have to kind of remain 'aware' of what people in my vicinity are doing, and that makes me very tired and irritated. It's better if people are around me but sitting quietly or moving very slowly. So I can and do live in higher density areas (and for energy efficiency, I feel I SHOULD do it), but I doubt I'll ever enjoy it. Tolerating it is what I aim for. ETA: I should also point out that I love the concept of walkability, both in abstract and in practice, and that conflicts with my desire to see as few people as possible.
I think the only time I really enjoy being around strangers in any capacity is during a concert/show/movie/sporting event, but honestly even then sometimes I dislike it. Classes started last week on the university campus, and I was torn between sort of enjoying it b/c the first autumn week reminds me nostalgically of my freshman year of college, and being constantly irritated at how many people were suddenly everywhere, scurrying and loitering LOL (in the immortal words of Principal Snyder: "One day the campus is completely bare, empty. The next, there are children everywhere... Like locusts, crawling around, mindlessly bent on feeding and mating.")
Part of this might be that I've never had a sense of 'community' except associated with work, or small groups of friends. I do not associate that feeling remotely with random people in my neighborhood or on the streets I walk. I definitely attach myself emotionally to places (ecology, geology, landscape, even buildings) more than the people associated with the place.
Oh, I don't think I could ever live in the heart of a huge city where sidewalks at certain times of day are full of people pressed together like sardines if I had to be out in that. Thankfully, there are small cities, or parts of large cities that never get that congested. And as a non-employed person, I could avoid being out in rush-hour walking times most of the time, so it would be less of an issue.
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I have another, more specialized question, which you might or might not have an answer to.
While researching the whole Iowa Co area, one of my big challenges is that I really need access to a pool for lap swimming, and I think that's likely to rule out most of the area. Then yesterday I ran across pictures of an incredible looking fitness facility with a pool (Comer Activity Center) in Dodgeville. I guess it was built by the Land's End founder? Anyway, it doesn't have a typical gym website so I'm wondering if it's private? Or only for use by Land's End people? And if so, that seems crazy, but not as crazy I guess as having a state of the art gym in a town of ~4,000 people.
Do you know if regular people can use that facility? And if not, do you know of any year round pools (like YMCA) type pools in the area? UGH, if I had another 300K to burn, I'd just chuck this idea of living in the country and move to the planned community in Middleton right near the Harbour Athletic club, but money is a definite limiting factor. Assuming I settled on moving to WI at all.
I'll send you a PM.
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Here is another thread about where to live
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/post-fire/how-to-choose-where-to-live-127459/
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It's interesting how many people indicate liking the people generally around them/their home. I don't hate it, but I sure don't like it. I don't even like to take walks in our neighborhood when there are a lot of people out and about (even though in the abstract, I like the idea that the people in the neighborhood are getting outside to our little park down the street, exercising, etc.) I know my husband has come close to throwing punches while trying to just shop for 10 minutes in big city bodegas, or trying to walk down big city streets during rush hour, b/c he cannot tolerate how strangers will come so close and brush against him. I am not quite that sensitive, but I similarly just find other people in my field of view, or within 6 feet of me, kind of...off putting. It's not b/c I don't want people looking at me (which I don't care about at all) and it's not b/c I feel actively unsafe or anxious. It's more like they distract me from things I really want to be looking at, b/c I feel I have to kind of remain 'aware' of what people in my vicinity are doing, and that makes me very tired and irritated. It's better if people are around me but sitting quietly or moving very slowly. So I can and do live in higher density areas (and for energy efficiency, I feel I SHOULD do it), but I doubt I'll ever enjoy it. Tolerating it is what I aim for. ETA: I should also point out that I love the concept of walkability, both in abstract and in practice, and that conflicts with my desire to see as few people as possible.
I think the only time I really enjoy being around strangers in any capacity is during a concert/show/movie/sporting event, but honestly even then sometimes I dislike it. Classes started last week on the university campus, and I was torn between sort of enjoying it b/c the first autumn week reminds me nostalgically of my freshman year of college, and being constantly irritated at how many people were suddenly everywhere, scurrying and loitering LOL (in the immortal words of Principal Snyder: "One day the campus is completely bare, empty. The next, there are children everywhere... Like locusts, crawling around, mindlessly bent on feeding and mating.")
Part of this might be that I've never had a sense of 'community' except associated with work, or small groups of friends. I do not associate that feeling remotely with random people in my neighborhood or on the streets I walk. I definitely attach myself emotionally to places (ecology, geology, landscape, even buildings) more than the people associated with the place.
I'm similar. If I am running or hiking on the trails near my house and get to a point where the 360-degree view to the horizon includes beautiful scenery but no people, that's my happy place. :)
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We did this Where-To-Live exercise a few years back (my thread is somewhere here on the forum).
We grew up in the upper midwest -- Wisconsin/Iowa -- and lived there a long time as adults. We were just done with the winters and the high taxes. So we came up with our "must-haves" for our new location: 1. Milder climate; 2. Lower taxes and COL; 3. More nature/trail access; 4. Blue or purple state. With help from the forum input we identified a handful of great places that ticked all our boxes and we visited them. The winner was Asheville, NC. We moved here and it has not disappointed; we love it. The weather is excellent 10 to 11 months out of the year. Real estate prices have skyrocketed since we bought, however, so it's a lot less affordable than it was five years ago.
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We did this Where-To-Live exercise a few years back (my thread is somewhere here on the forum).
We grew up in the upper midwest -- Wisconsin/Iowa -- and lived there a long time as adults. We were just done with the winters and the high taxes. So we came up with our "must-haves" for our new location: 1. Milder climate; 2. Lower taxes and COL; 3. More nature/trail access; 4. Blue or purple state. With help from the forum input we identified a handful of great places that ticked all our boxes and we visited them. The winner was Asheville, NC. We moved here and it has not disappointed; we love it. The weather is excellent 10 to 11 months out of the year. Real estate prices have skyrocketed since we bought, however, so it's a lot less affordable than it was five years ago.
Nice! Asheville was certainly a place we considered when planning our move, but it's just too hot for us from June - September. Otherwise, it would've ticked a lot of boxes.
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We did this Where-To-Live exercise a few years back (my thread is somewhere here on the forum).
We grew up in the upper midwest -- Wisconsin/Iowa -- and lived there a long time as adults. We were just done with the winters and the high taxes. So we came up with our "must-haves" for our new location: 1. Milder climate; 2. Lower taxes and COL; 3. More nature/trail access; 4. Blue or purple state. With help from the forum input we identified a handful of great places that ticked all our boxes and we visited them. The winner was Asheville, NC. We moved here and it has not disappointed; we love it. The weather is excellent 10 to 11 months out of the year. Real estate prices have skyrocketed since we bought, however, so it's a lot less affordable than it was five years ago.
Nice! Asheville was certainly a place we considered when planning our move, but it's just too hot for us from June - September. Otherwise, it would've ticked a lot of boxes.
Yeah, weather is definitely relative. For us the summers are cooler and less humid than where we were living in the upper midwest.
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We've had a week of tolerable weather here in Texas and now it doesn't seem so bad.
The more I think about it, the more "money is no object" really does a lot of lifting here. If money is no object, then there is the temptation to just pick the richest zipcode you can find. Obviously, people are paying a lot of money to live there, so it must be a pretty valuable (however you want to define value) place to live.
Living in San Francisco can be really cool, or abject misery depending upon how much of an "object" money is. Ditto for Appalachia. Do I live in a shrinking and economically depressed former coal town with bad roads? Or do I have a ranch in the mountains?
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We've had a week of tolerable weather here in Texas and now it doesn't seem so bad.
The more I think about it, the more "money is no object" really does a lot of lifting here. If money is no object, then there is the temptation to just pick the richest zipcode you can find. Obviously, people are paying a lot of money to live there, so it must be a pretty valuable (however you want to define value) place to live.
Living in San Francisco can be really cool, or abject misery depending upon how much of an "object" money is. Ditto for Appalachia. Do I live in a shrinking and economically depressed former coal town with bad roads? Or do I have a ranch in the mountains?
Yeah, I definitely didn't intend this to be a "money is no object" conversation. I think that needs to be factored into the pros and cons of a place. In some ways, having lived largely in HCOL places, my meter for what is "expensive" has been calibrated higher than average. And since we own in a H/VHCOL area (formerly our home, now a rental) and have seen significant appreciation at that price point, it helps us in being able to afford some more expensive cities. I still wouldn't even consider SF or NYC, and it also rules out my dream location of Coronado, CA, but it makes cities like Denver look somewhat unremarkable, price-wise.
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
Long long ago and far away...
When I graduated from college, I moved to the DC area, inside the beltway. I lived there for 5 years, all in Arlington, from Rosslyn to Crystal City/Pentagon City.
It was awesome.
I grew up in VERY rural NW PA, went to college in the 'burgh, which was at least a city.
I used the metro a lot, walked there from my apartments. By the end, I was walking to work every morning - it was about a mile, almost all of it underground. It was a great place to be in your 20s. Many of my friends still live in the area.
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A lot of these responses talk about moving towards cities as a positive place to live/change of location (NYC, etc.). Has anyone moved from a rural/semi-rural environment to a larger city and had positive experiences with it? Just curious if, as people have relocated, they have relocated to areas of similar population density or if they've jumped into an entirely different one and had a positive experience with it.
I grew up in low-density outer-ring suburbia in the PNW, did undergrad in a pretty rural college town, and then grad school in Manhattan. Up until then I had always been very uncomfortable when visiting big cities, and I went to NYC somewhat begrudgingly in order to work with a specific professor. But my prior conception of big city life, based only on being a tourist, had been extremely misleading. I always felt anxious and uncomfortable as a tourist in cities, but actually living in NYC, I could settle in and get to know the neighborhoods I frequented at a more intimate level. I've since learned to appreciate other cities much more as a tourist, but there's really nothing like living there to get comfortable in a city. Since leaving NYC, I very much want to get back to dense urban living as soon as possible.
I would honestly go so far as to suggest basically all people should live in a big city for a couple years at some point in their life. There's a set of trade-offs from suburban/rural living, and I think status quo bias makes those trade-offs seem much worse when low-density living is all one has ever known. Private space is more scarce and therefore more expensive, so the same amount of money will get you a small apartment instead of a house with a yard... but in exchange you get much better public space. You don't get to drive and park your car wherever you want for free, but you can walk for basically any regular errands and have transit to reach destinations further away. You might need to feel slightly more cautious about watching your personal belongings in public, but you get to be in a vibrant, communal space where you feel connected to other people. I frankly think suburban living is associated with the atomization, loneliness, social anxiety, and general fear of other people that is becoming all too common in this country. I had to experience city living for myself in order to discover I'm actually just much happier when I spend time in a walkable city, in close contact with a lot of other people.
All the walking is great for overall health and happiness, compared to clown-car life. Also, financially speaking, being able to go fully car-free goes a long way towards compensating for higher cost of living in other categories. Frankly, MMM was a contributing factor to me considering the benefits to car-free urban life. And I think in this community, his emphasis on minimizing driving is one of the most oft-ignored tenet, because people rightfully say, "it's not safe/practical to walk/bike where I live." Well then, move somewhere it's safe and practical.
I would add that you don't have to live in a big city to get this. I'm currently hanging out in Edinburgh, UK in a neighborhood where almost nobody owns a car or drives. But it isn't a "big city," it only has ~500k residents. To bring this back on topic I would imagine that San Francisco, where I have visited in the past but not nearly as much, is similar (only ~875k residents).
And you can go much smaller and have that! My small (and frigid! LOL) has all that vibrant urban space if you like that kind of thing, but you can also drive almost anywhere in 10 or 15 minutes and the neighbors aren't right on top of you. Today alone I rode my bike to the grocery store and walked to the library, and I *still* have half an acre and some chickens. ;-)
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Twice in my life I’ve lived in very rural areas, and then moved to an urban location. Both times the move was a huge QOL upgrade for us, even as our lodging expenses more than doubled.
We still love some aspects of rural living, which probably explains why we are now living in a very small town about 20 minutes from a medium city and 5 minutes from the nearest dairy farm. Unique spot where we get some of everything (including HCOL).
We've both done the big city thing. Maybe we've lived in the wrong cities or the wrong neighborhoods. Clearly more money helps and we were certainly poor when we gave the big city lifestyle our test drives. Neither of us felt it was the right place. Too crowded. Too loud. Too many people. We have a strong attachment to the natural world. We like the seasons, the animals, waterways, the trees, the plants and the dirt. We had deer in our front yard again this morning much to our dog's chagrin. Sounds of donkey's and cattle in the distance. All the bird sounds. The family of foxes that live in our woods.
I think we have an aversion to American car-centric cities and "stroads". NYC would be a very different place without all the cars and trucks. They should close every third street and make it bike and pedestrian only. More streetcars. More like a Dutch city.
We are really pleased where we live. Smallish prospering town in the south. We have a comfortable house on a large patch of ground. We have great jobs. There is a university here and a strong sense of community. Choose your friends wisely and there is an all inclusive sense of community here, that's who we spend time with. We aren't churchy folks. Around here much of the church crowd is invested in red state politics and never very LGBTQ+ friendly so we've left them behind. Some are downright ugly about it but we rarely witness this first hand.
However, as we are semi-introverts this is fine b/c all we need are a dozen friends that we see occasionally. Our social activities deliver plenty of people time for us. Anymore and we want to go home and recharge. Family, pets, hobbies, etc.
And that's just it - no matter where we lived or what the prevailing politics are or where on the "culture wars" spectrum a place might be - we'd probably have a dozen or so friends and try to live a similar lifestyle as we do now. A comfortable home in a safe place is very important to us. A ten minute country commute gets us to work or plenty of shopping or entertainment options. An hour or so gets us to the big cities for famous name entertainment, restaurants and shopping. Online shopping takes care of what we can't find or don't want to search for locally.
We both like parts of the PNW but our lifestyle wouldn't be nearly as comfortable if our income was similar. We've never visited the NE any further north than NYC but it looks/sounds good on "This Old House" anyhow. ;)
We enjoyed visiting Wisconsin and I really enjoyed a week I spent in Madison. I took my bike and rode everywhere after work. I think winter would not be fun however. Hawaii has always looked nice on TV but I think the COL would be challenging. Never Florida (did that), never Texas (did that too). The other southern states would require a local university nearby b/c it helps shapes the local flavor. There are many places in Europe that has appeal. I enjoyed living in Italy for example. Norway/Sweden/Finland/Netherlands/Germany/parts of the UK look appealing. Again having money helps.
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I noticed I slept much better after moving from an isolated farm house to an apartment complex. I just feel safer with people around I guess.
I'm just the opposite. Fewer people the better. ;)
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While I miss walkability of urban areas and there is a tangible reduced risks of driving, I have found the spirit of the people of northern New England to be much more mustachian and frugal than the people I knew when I lived in cities. We all haul our trash/recycling to the transfer station Saturday mornings, solve a lot of issues during town meeting, heat with wood from our land, potluck parties are the norm, etc. my kids go back and see their friends in the more urban place we used to live and it’s all about consumption with those kids. I am glad we got away from it, even though we have to drive a bit more.
But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
1st paragraph: same.
2nd paragraph: red state so different. The gov't meetings here are accessible though. Some of the politicians says typical red state things but support moderate policies.
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We did this Where-To-Live exercise a few years back (my thread is somewhere here on the forum).
We grew up in the upper midwest -- Wisconsin/Iowa -- and lived there a long time as adults. We were just done with the winters and the high taxes. So we came up with our "must-haves" for our new location: 1. Milder climate; 2. Lower taxes and COL; 3. More nature/trail access; 4. Blue or purple state. With help from the forum input we identified a handful of great places that ticked all our boxes and we visited them. The winner was Asheville, NC. We moved here and it has not disappointed; we love it. The weather is excellent 10 to 11 months out of the year. Real estate prices have skyrocketed since we bought, however, so it's a lot less affordable than it was five years ago.
Nice! Asheville was certainly a place we considered when planning our move, but it's just too hot for us from June - September. Otherwise, it would've ticked a lot of boxes.
Yeah, weather is definitely relative. For us the summers are cooler and less humid than where we were living in the upper midwest.
We like Asheville and have visited several times. Each visit gets better b/c we know our way around better.
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I noticed I slept much better after moving from an isolated farm house to an apartment complex. I just feel safer with people around I guess.
I'm just the opposite. Fewer people the better. ;)
Absolutely.
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From the time I've spent in big cities, I've concluded that I'm going to be interested in doing the same things whether I live in Manhattan or San Francisco or in the suburbs or in a rural area - go for walks, read, do projects, cook, spend time with family and friends. I'm not interested in most events (and there are plenty of those wherever you go, in my experience) so there's no advantage to urban life for me. It's just more inconvenient to get around.
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We live in Bend, OR and absolutely love it. Of course we bought a house way back when it was only kind of pricey (after housing crashed super hard here during the great recession) and our house has been paid off for a couple of years. If we wanted to move here today, we likely could afford to, but the cost of housing would give us tremendous pause. We love it here so much though. Weather, outdoors, walkable, bikeable, family friendly, good schools, mountains, rivers, lakes, etc, etc, etc.
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I would like to live close to Redwood National Park and all the state redwood parks around it. I've taken vacations there a couple of times and loved the cool weather and old growth forests. I currently live in a suburb near Cleveland and we have a nice county wide park system called the Metroparks. The adjacent counties have similar park systems. They have picnic pavilions and baseball diamonds, but also have some mostly undisturbed forests with extensive trails. I try to visit a park weekly.
Ohio forests are a let down after visiting a redwood forest. We have nice forests if you know where to look, but they're not nice in absolute terms. They're just nice for Ohio. It would be nice live some place where the nearby parks have old growth redwood forests.
Practically, I don't know if I could afford to live in California. The cost of living is still higher than the midwest. I don't want to contribute to overburdening utilities and water supplies that are already struggling to keep up with demand. I'm also not sure if I want to deal with the threat of wildfires either. California would be my destination if money were no object and I could afford to abandon it at the drop of a hat.
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
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This is interesting for me because my wife and I are basically wondering this exact question.
I have been remote now for several years and see myself staying remote. And all the constraints drawing us to our current house have changed.
It's hard though because what we want is a largerish acreage (5+ acres) but also not too far in the middle of nowhere. And in the upper midwest, if you don't want crazy winters like northern MN/WI get, that's reasonably expensive.
But... the concrete mania of bigger cities, even for us in a suburb, feels almost oppressive to me. Being out in nature more is so much more peaceful.
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
I have a friend who moved from NE to Wilmington, and I've been down to visit a couple of times. It's a great small waterfront town with good restaurants and could be very walkable if you lived near the historic neighborhoods downtown. It's way too hot/humid for me in the summers, but otherwise I like it. Needs more bike trails though.
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We live in Bend, OR and absolutely love it. Of course we bought a house way back when it was only kind of pricey (after housing crashed super hard here during the great recession) and our house has been paid off for a couple of years. If we wanted to move here today, we likely could afford to, but the cost of housing would give us tremendous pause. We love it here so much though. Weather, outdoors, walkable, bikeable, family friendly, good schools, mountains, rivers, lakes, etc, etc, etc.
Bend was #2 on our list. Visited and loved the town. Definitely more of a "tourist town" feel than Bellingham, for better or worse. The weather wouldn't have been as good for our family's particular needs, though, and the isolation was another con. Though I don't want to live in a large city anymore, sometimes it's handy to have one (or two) just a short drive away, especially if you've got family living there.
I'm sure I would've been perfectly happy to live in Bend, but it wouldn't have worked as well for the rest of my family.
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
Hmm, I have lived in or have family from Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, so more north (another country even) than the areas you are talking about. Areas of Scottish/Irish/French settlement. All have very long settlement histories, and small towns tend to be hard to assimilate into. I suspect it may be more of a case of "everyone else has been here for many generations, half the streets are named after us, 15 years is nothing".
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
Friend left Wilmington at least partially b/c of fire ants and hurricanes. I find that a local university helps the local culture. Larger group of educated folks to develop a friendship circle from. Dilutes any bad influences who are not receptive to newcomers and new ideas.
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
Friend left Wilmington at least partially b/c of fire ants and hurricanes. I find that a local university helps the local culture. Larger group of educated folks to develop a friendship circle from. Dilutes any bad influences who are not receptive to newcomers and new ideas.
Back in the day, I was a finalist for a tenure-track position at UNCW. It was the hurricanes that made me decide the location probably wouldn't be a good fit. And that was back in the late nineties. These days, no way in hell would I choose to live in a place where hurricanes occurred semi-regularly.
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
Friend left Wilmington at least partially b/c of fire ants and hurricanes. I find that a local university helps the local culture. Larger group of educated folks to develop a friendship circle from. Dilutes any bad influences who are not receptive to newcomers and new ideas.
Ha! Clearly, fire ants and hurricanes don't deter me! (They probably should, but I love the coast and saltwater kayaking too much to live very far inland.)
I feel like the college town atmosphere would be a big help help. I currently have a digital subscription to their local newspaper and while the area as a whole still appears a bit more conservative/segregated than I'd prefer, it doesn't seem too bad. I have a friend who recently moved there, so we're looking forward to seeing how her experience goes over the next few years!
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
It's several years old now but I strongly recommend the book American Nations by Colin Woodward - https://colinwoodard.com/books/american-nations/.
Here's a good summary that includes a county-level map - https://www.businessinsider.com/the-11-nations-of-the-united-states-2015-7
It's all about how the early settlement patterns dating back to the 1600 and 1700s produced multiple different nations within the US. It's not just the north/south divide, it's the difference between New England, the Deep South, Appalachia, the Far West, etc. The deep south was founded by wealthy English slave owners from Barbados and other islands in the Caribbean when they ran out of room. They brought a very different culture than just a few hundred miles northwest in Appalachia where it was mostly founded by Scots Irish immigrants from the borderlands of the English empire. Both groups make up what is traditionally considered the South, but the culture in South Carolina is going to be very different than eastern Tennesse even though they may be fairly close geographically.
I've spent most of my life in the Far West and that's definitely where I feel most comfortable. Anything east of the Mississippi seems very unappealing - both from a cultural perspective and a climate perspective (screw humidity).
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
It's several years old now but I strongly recommend the book American Nations by Colin Woodward - https://colinwoodard.com/books/american-nations/.
Here's a good summary that includes a county-level map - https://www.businessinsider.com/the-11-nations-of-the-united-states-2015-7
It's all about how the early settlement patterns dating back to the 1600 and 1700s produced multiple different nations within the US. It's not just the north/south divide, it's the difference between New England, the Deep South, Appalachia, the Far West, etc. The deep south was founded by wealthy English slave owners from Barbados and other islands in the Caribbean when they ran out of room. They brought a very different culture than just a few hundred miles northwest in Appalachia where it was mostly founded by Scots Irish immigrants from the borderlands of the English empire. Both groups make up what is traditionally considered the South, but the culture in South Carolina is going to be very different than eastern Tennesse even though they may be fairly close geographically.
I've spent most of my life in the Far West and that's definitely where I feel most comfortable. Anything east of the Mississippi seems very unappealing - both from a cultural perspective and a climate perspective (screw humidity).
Thanks for the recommendation... I just added that book to my library holds list!! I'm currently in part of the Spanish Caribbean, and my small-town NC experiences were in Greater Appalachia. Looking forward to some helpful insights in the book, hopefully.
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I would like to live close to Redwood National Park and all the state redwood parks around it. I've taken vacations there a couple of times and loved the cool weather and old growth forests. I currently live in a suburb near Cleveland and we have a nice county wide park system called the Metroparks. The adjacent counties have similar park systems. They have picnic pavilions and baseball diamonds, but also have some mostly undisturbed forests with extensive trails. I try to visit a park weekly.
Ohio forests are a let down after visiting a redwood forest. We have nice forests if you know where to look, but they're not nice in absolute terms. They're just nice for Ohio. It would be nice live some place where the nearby parks have old growth redwood forests.
Practically, I don't know if I could afford to live in California. The cost of living is still higher than the midwest. I don't want to contribute to overburdening utilities and water supplies that are already struggling to keep up with demand. I'm also not sure if I want to deal with the threat of wildfires either. California would be my destination if money were no object and I could afford to abandon it at the drop of a hat.
@mies - You may want to checkout Brookings, Oregon or thereabouts. We’re in Oregon (not Brookings) but what you described may make Brookings appealing to you. VERY close to the redwood forests and yet not as expensive as California. FWIW, I, too, absolutely adore the redwood forests and would live among them if I could.
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I would like to live close to Redwood National Park and all the state redwood parks around it. I've taken vacations there a couple of times and loved the cool weather and old growth forests. I currently live in a suburb near Cleveland and we have a nice county wide park system called the Metroparks. The adjacent counties have similar park systems. They have picnic pavilions and baseball diamonds, but also have some mostly undisturbed forests with extensive trails. I try to visit a park weekly.
Ohio forests are a let down after visiting a redwood forest. We have nice forests if you know where to look, but they're not nice in absolute terms. They're just nice for Ohio. It would be nice live some place where the nearby parks have old growth redwood forests.
Practically, I don't know if I could afford to live in California. The cost of living is still higher than the midwest. I don't want to contribute to overburdening utilities and water supplies that are already struggling to keep up with demand. I'm also not sure if I want to deal with the threat of wildfires either. California would be my destination if money were no object and I could afford to abandon it at the drop of a hat.
@mies - You may want to checkout Brookings, Oregon or thereabouts. We’re in Oregon (not Brookings) but what you described may make Brookings appealing to you. VERY close to the redwood forests and yet not as expensive as California. FWIW, I, too, absolutely adore the redwood forests and would live among them if I could.
That's true. I saw a little bit of Brookings going to the trail head for the Redwood Nature Trail in Siskiyou National Forest. It's my understanding that this trail has the farthest north naturally occurring redwoods.
Brookings looks like it might be a little light on amenities. I've been spoiled by where I live now. I complain about Cleveland in my post for being boring, but it's convenient for everyday living. I'm close to just about any grocery or big box store you can name, a decent airport, and there are no issues with getting health care. I read a post on Reddit about living in Crescent City and one of the residents complained about how limited their access was to healthcare providers. Brookings looks like it might be the same or worse.
Oregon is on my list of places to visit. I think one of the national forests there has the tallest Douglas fir, so I definitely want to see that. Maybe I'll change my mind about California after I get a chance to visit Oregon.
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I would like to live close to Redwood National Park and all the state redwood parks around it. I've taken vacations there a couple of times and loved the cool weather and old growth forests. I currently live in a suburb near Cleveland and we have a nice county wide park system called the Metroparks. The adjacent counties have similar park systems. They have picnic pavilions and baseball diamonds, but also have some mostly undisturbed forests with extensive trails. I try to visit a park weekly.
Ohio forests are a let down after visiting a redwood forest. We have nice forests if you know where to look, but they're not nice in absolute terms. They're just nice for Ohio. It would be nice live some place where the nearby parks have old growth redwood forests.
Practically, I don't know if I could afford to live in California. The cost of living is still higher than the midwest. I don't want to contribute to overburdening utilities and water supplies that are already struggling to keep up with demand. I'm also not sure if I want to deal with the threat of wildfires either. California would be my destination if money were no object and I could afford to abandon it at the drop of a hat.
@mies - You may want to checkout Brookings, Oregon or thereabouts. We’re in Oregon (not Brookings) but what you described may make Brookings appealing to you. VERY close to the redwood forests and yet not as expensive as California. FWIW, I, too, absolutely adore the redwood forests and would live among them if I could.
That's true. I saw a little bit of Brookings going to the trail head for the Redwood Nature Trail in Siskiyou National Forest. It's my understanding that this trail has the farthest north naturally occurring redwoods.
Brookings looks like it might be a little light on amenities. I've been spoiled by where I live now. I complain about Cleveland in my post for being boring, but it's convenient for everyday living. I'm close to just about any grocery or big box store you can name, a decent airport, and there are no issues with getting health care. I read a post on Reddit about living in Crescent City and one of the residents complained about how limited their access was to healthcare providers. Brookings looks like it might be the same or worse.
Oregon is on my list of places to visit. I think one of the national forests there has the tallest Douglas fir, so I definitely want to see that. Maybe I'll change my mind about California after I get a chance to visit Oregon.
@mies, I’m sending you a PM.
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I've been watching CityNerd on Youtube. He's got an incredibly monotone voice and dry presentation but he's interesting. It's mostly about transit but the newest one was about crime in the bigger cities and how it affects the price of housing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4jG1i7jHSM
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I would like to live close to Redwood National Park and all the state redwood parks around it. I've taken vacations there a couple of times and loved the cool weather and old growth forests. I currently live in a suburb near Cleveland and we have a nice county wide park system called the Metroparks. The adjacent counties have similar park systems. They have picnic pavilions and baseball diamonds, but also have some mostly undisturbed forests with extensive trails. I try to visit a park weekly.
Ohio forests are a let down after visiting a redwood forest. We have nice forests if you know where to look, but they're not nice in absolute terms. They're just nice for Ohio. It would be nice live some place where the nearby parks have old growth redwood forests.
Practically, I don't know if I could afford to live in California. The cost of living is still higher than the midwest. I don't want to contribute to overburdening utilities and water supplies that are already struggling to keep up with demand. I'm also not sure if I want to deal with the threat of wildfires either. California would be my destination if money were no object and I could afford to abandon it at the drop of a hat.
@mies - You may want to checkout Brookings, Oregon or thereabouts. We’re in Oregon (not Brookings) but what you described may make Brookings appealing to you. VERY close to the redwood forests and yet not as expensive as California. FWIW, I, too, absolutely adore the redwood forests and would live among them if I could.
mmm.... Chetco brewery! A very good reason to live there.
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I would like to live close to Redwood National Park and all the state redwood parks around it. I've taken vacations there a couple of times and loved the cool weather and old growth forests. I currently live in a suburb near Cleveland and we have a nice county wide park system called the Metroparks. The adjacent counties have similar park systems. They have picnic pavilions and baseball diamonds, but also have some mostly undisturbed forests with extensive trails. I try to visit a park weekly.
Ohio forests are a let down after visiting a redwood forest. We have nice forests if you know where to look, but they're not nice in absolute terms. They're just nice for Ohio. It would be nice live some place where the nearby parks have old growth redwood forests.
Practically, I don't know if I could afford to live in California. The cost of living is still higher than the midwest. I don't want to contribute to overburdening utilities and water supplies that are already struggling to keep up with demand. I'm also not sure if I want to deal with the threat of wildfires either. California would be my destination if money were no object and I could afford to abandon it at the drop of a hat.
@mies - You may want to checkout Brookings, Oregon or thereabouts. We’re in Oregon (not Brookings) but what you described may make Brookings appealing to you. VERY close to the redwood forests and yet not as expensive as California. FWIW, I, too, absolutely adore the redwood forests and would live among them if I could.
That's true. I saw a little bit of Brookings going to the trail head for the Redwood Nature Trail in Siskiyou National Forest. It's my understanding that this trail has the farthest north naturally occurring redwoods.
Brookings looks like it might be a little light on amenities. I've been spoiled by where I live now. I complain about Cleveland in my post for being boring, but it's convenient for everyday living. I'm close to just about any grocery or big box store you can name, a decent airport, and there are no issues with getting health care. I read a post on Reddit about living in Crescent City and one of the residents complained about how limited their access was to healthcare providers. Brookings looks like it might be the same or worse.
Oregon is on my list of places to visit. I think one of the national forests there has the tallest Douglas fir, so I definitely want to see that. Maybe I'll change my mind about California after I get a chance to visit Oregon.
Lack of health care facilities is a real problem on the OR coast and coast range (I'm on the north end of the coast range). Brookings is known to have some of the best weather on the coast, but definitely light on ameneties.
I grew up in one rain forest (Olympic peninsula) and now live in another (OR coast).
I'd probably choose Maui as my preference if the list wasn't limited to US choices only ;-)
Or maybe Pt Roberts, WA: water on three sides and the border with Canada on the fourth.
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I would like to live close to Redwood National Park and all the state redwood parks around it. I've taken vacations there a couple of times and loved the cool weather and old growth forests. I currently live in a suburb near Cleveland and we have a nice county wide park system called the Metroparks. The adjacent counties have similar park systems. They have picnic pavilions and baseball diamonds, but also have some mostly undisturbed forests with extensive trails. I try to visit a park weekly.
Ohio forests are a let down after visiting a redwood forest. We have nice forests if you know where to look, but they're not nice in absolute terms. They're just nice for Ohio. It would be nice live some place where the nearby parks have old growth redwood forests.
Practically, I don't know if I could afford to live in California. The cost of living is still higher than the midwest. I don't want to contribute to overburdening utilities and water supplies that are already struggling to keep up with demand. I'm also not sure if I want to deal with the threat of wildfires either. California would be my destination if money were no object and I could afford to abandon it at the drop of a hat.
@mies - You may want to checkout Brookings, Oregon or thereabouts. We’re in Oregon (not Brookings) but what you described may make Brookings appealing to you. VERY close to the redwood forests and yet not as expensive as California. FWIW, I, too, absolutely adore the redwood forests and would live among them if I could.
That's true. I saw a little bit of Brookings going to the trail head for the Redwood Nature Trail in Siskiyou National Forest. It's my understanding that this trail has the farthest north naturally occurring redwoods.
Brookings looks like it might be a little light on amenities. I've been spoiled by where I live now. I complain about Cleveland in my post for being boring, but it's convenient for everyday living. I'm close to just about any grocery or big box store you can name, a decent airport, and there are no issues with getting health care. I read a post on Reddit about living in Crescent City and one of the residents complained about how limited their access was to healthcare providers. Brookings looks like it might be the same or worse.
Oregon is on my list of places to visit. I think one of the national forests there has the tallest Douglas fir, so I definitely want to see that. Maybe I'll change my mind about California after I get a chance to visit Oregon.
Lack of health care facilities is a real problem on the OR coast and coast range (I'm on the north end of the coast range). Brookings is known to have some of the best weather on the coast, but definitely light on ameneties.
I grew up in one rain forest (Olympic peninsula) and now live in another (OR coast).
I'd probably choose Maui as my preference if the list wasn't limited to US choices only ;-)
Or maybe Pt Roberts, WA: water on three sides and the border with Canada on the fourth.
Nice. I went to Olympic National Park on my honeymoon. That was the first time I saw a genuinely big tree. There were still some pretty big Sitka spruces there.
Thanks for confirming that. I'm not too concerned about healthcare stuff right now, but my wife's family has a history of cancer. If she ever needs to get treatment, we want to make sure we don't have to drive 3 hours to see a doctor.
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I grew up in one rain forest (Olympic peninsula) and now live in another (OR coast).
I'd probably choose Maui as my preference if the list wasn't limited to US choices only ;-)
Maui is US. Just not continental US. Hawai'i is a state.
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I grew up in one rain forest (Olympic peninsula) and now live in another (OR coast).
I'd probably choose Maui as my preference if the list wasn't limited to US choices only ;-)
Maui is US. Just not continental US. Hawai'i is a state.
Why did it take a Canadian to point that out?
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I grew up in one rain forest (Olympic peninsula) and now live in another (OR coast).
I'd probably choose Maui as my preference if the list wasn't limited to US choices only ;-)
Maui is US. Just not continental US. Hawai'i is a state.
Why did it take a Canadian to point that out?
Giggle. ;-)
Basically if I were going to live in the US, cost not an issue, resident status not an issue, it would most likely be Hawai'i. Although I laughed inside the last time I was there (2002), when a resident told me "we are not like the rest of the US". Having just spent 7 weeks in New Zealand and Australia, I very politely did not say "Yes you are". They are unlike the rest of the US in that they have the Union Jack quartered on their state flag. Don't see that elsewhere in the US. ;-)
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I grew up in one rain forest (Olympic peninsula) and now live in another (OR coast).
I'd probably choose Maui as my preference if the list wasn't limited to US choices only ;-)
Maui is US. Just not continental US. Hawai'i is a state.
Why did it take a Canadian to point that out?
Giggle. ;-)
Basically if I were going to live in the US, cost not an issue, resident status not an issue, it would most likely be Hawai'i. Although I laughed inside the last time I was there (2002), when a resident told me "we are not like the rest of the US". Having just spent 7 weeks in New Zealand and Australia, I very politely did not say "Yes you are". They are unlike the rest of the US in that they have the Union Jack quartered on their state flag. Don't see that elsewhere in the US. ;-)
I have enjoyed visiting Hawai’i the three times I was there. But weirdly, I could never live there, because I started to feel oddly claustrophobic. There is something disconcerting about driving around a small island and realizing the only way to get off of it is by boat or plane.
I never would have guessed I’d have that reaction. But no thank you.
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I grew up in one rain forest (Olympic peninsula) and now live in another (OR coast).
I'd probably choose Maui as my preference if the list wasn't limited to US choices only ;-)
Maui is US. Just not continental US. Hawai'i is a state.
Why did it take a Canadian to point that out?
Giggle. ;-)
Basically if I were going to live in the US, cost not an issue, resident status not an issue, it would most likely be Hawai'i. Although I laughed inside the last time I was there (2002), when a resident told me "we are not like the rest of the US". Having just spent 7 weeks in New Zealand and Australia, I very politely did not say "Yes you are". They are unlike the rest of the US in that they have the Union Jack quartered on their state flag. Don't see that elsewhere in the US. ;-)
I have enjoyed visiting Hawai’i the three times I was there. But weirdly, I could never live there, because I started to feel oddly claustrophobic. There is something disconcerting about driving around a small island and realizing the only way to get off of it is by boat or plane.
I never would have guessed I’d have that reaction. But no thank you.
I lived in Hawai’i, and I felt that same odd claustrophobic feeling as well. It’ a wonderful place with amazing people and a rich culture, but ultimately I found it the most difficult place to live because I felt like a complete outsider (yup, a “haole”). It’s a Polynesian island culture 5,000 miles and six time zones from my family.
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I grew up in one rain forest (Olympic peninsula) and now live in another (OR coast).
I'd probably choose Maui as my preference if the list wasn't limited to US choices only ;-)
Maui is US. Just not continental US. Hawai'i is a state.
Why did it take a Canadian to point that out?
Giggle. ;-)
Basically if I were going to live in the US, cost not an issue, resident status not an issue, it would most likely be Hawai'i. Although I laughed inside the last time I was there (2002), when a resident told me "we are not like the rest of the US". Having just spent 7 weeks in New Zealand and Australia, I very politely did not say "Yes you are". They are unlike the rest of the US in that they have the Union Jack quartered on their state flag. Don't see that elsewhere in the US. ;-)
I have enjoyed visiting Hawai’i the three times I was there. But weirdly, I could never live there, because I started to feel oddly claustrophobic. There is something disconcerting about driving around a small island and realizing the only way to get off of it is by boat or plane.
I never would have guessed I’d have that reaction. But no thank you.
I grew up on the Island of Montreal. I contemplated moving to Vancouver Island. I would love to move to New Zealand.
I guess I am good with islands. ;-)
My biggest issue might be the lack of seasons.
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I grew up in one rain forest (Olympic peninsula) and now live in another (OR coast).
I'd probably choose Maui as my preference if the list wasn't limited to US choices only ;-)
Maui is US. Just not continental US. Hawai'i is a state.
That was said with mock solidarity with the Hawaiian people, many of whom believe that Hawaii was stolen by the US from the Hawaiian people. I happen to agree with them,fwiw.
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
I agree with the small town NC assessment, I was miserable in Wilson. I made it 14 months before I moved back to Raleigh and just commuted 45 miles each way.
I dated a girl in college from Wilmington, so we went there a lot (free place at the beach basically!). I don’t think I’d want to live there. It’s a super car-dependent city, and not all that easy to get around on a bicycle. Lots of big roads with a lot of traffic and it a lot of small ones. That was 10 years ago, maybe it’s better now.
I loved Raleigh though. I live in Asheville right now and I’d move back to Raleigh if I could find a decent job there. It’s such a “medium” city, which sounds backhanded, but it’s really the best thing about it. It’s small enough that it feels like there’s a sense of community, but it’s big enough to have the conveniences of a larger place. It also doesn’t take 3 hours to get from one side to the other.
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I grew up in one rain forest (Olympic peninsula) and now live in another (OR coast).
I'd probably choose Maui as my preference if the list wasn't limited to US choices only ;-)
Maui is US. Just not continental US. Hawai'i is a state.
That was said with mock solidarity with the Hawaiian people, many of whom believe that Hawaii was stolen by the US from the Hawaiian people. I happen to agree with them,fwiw.
Aah, that makes sense. just didn't come through the first time.
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
I agree with the small town NC assessment, I was miserable in Wilson. I made it 14 months before I moved back to Raleigh and just commuted 45 miles each way.
I dated a girl in college from Wilmington, so we went there a lot (free place at the beach basically!). I don’t think I’d want to live there. It’s a super car-dependent city, and not all that easy to get around on a bicycle. Lots of big roads with a lot of traffic and it a lot of small ones. That was 10 years ago, maybe it’s better now.
I loved Raleigh though. I live in Asheville right now and I’d move back to Raleigh if I could find a decent job there. It’s such a “medium” city, which sounds backhanded, but it’s really the best thing about it. It’s small enough that it feels like there’s a sense of community, but it’s big enough to have the conveniences of a larger place. It also doesn’t take 3 hours to get from one side to the other.
Raleigh is definitely appealing, but my in-laws are in North Myrtle Beach. I feel pretty sure that my husband would want us to visit at least once a month, and the 3-hr drive from Raleigh to NMB would get old pretty quickly. Ultimately, I think it will come down to where we are on the path to FIRE when we move. I can't really see us moving to Raleigh unless my husband was still working and we needed the work opportunities. (I'm a freelance writer, so my work isn't at all location-dependent.)
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I have enjoyed visiting Hawai’i the three times I was there. But weirdly, I could never live there, because I started to feel oddly claustrophobic. There is something disconcerting about driving around a small island and realizing the only way to get off of it is by boat or plane.
I never would have guessed I’d have that reaction. But no thank you.
A free red Ferrari helps I hear...
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I lived in Hawai’i, and I felt that same odd claustrophobic feeling as well. It’ a wonderful place with amazing people and a rich culture, but ultimately I found it the most difficult place to live because I felt like a complete outsider (yup, a “haole”). It’s a Polynesian island culture 5,000 miles and six time zones from my family.
The main reason why Hawaii is not on my dream list is because of this. We vacationed on Molokai many years ago and it was beautiful and wonderful, but there were signs on many properties saying something like "Hawaii for Hawaiians" - I don't remember the exact slogan, but the sentiment was basically "there are too many haole buying up our land and making it too expensive for us and displacing our culture." I felt bad enough in our vacation rental; I'd feel terrible living among people who didn't want me there. Of course maybe it's different on the larger islands. The other reasons are the huge distance to the mainland and, of course, the high cost.
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I lived in Hawai’i, and I felt that same odd claustrophobic feeling as well. It’ a wonderful place with amazing people and a rich culture, but ultimately I found it the most difficult place to live because I felt like a complete outsider (yup, a “haole”). It’s a Polynesian island culture 5,000 miles and six time zones from my family.
The main reason why Hawaii is not on my dream list is because of this. We vacationed on Molokai many years ago and it was beautiful and wonderful, but there were signs on many properties saying something like "Hawaii for Hawaiians" - I don't remember the exact slogan, but the sentiment was basically "there are too many haole buying up our land and making it too expensive for us and displacing our culture." I felt bad enough in our vacation rental; I'd feel terrible living among people who didn't want me there. Of course maybe it's different on the larger islands. The other reasons are the huge distance to the mainland and, of course, the high cost.
Although I've never heard of actual signs in yards, the same complaints from Oregonians, Idahoans and Wyomingans(? is that right?) as well as I think many Washingtonians, Coloradans and Utahns (but for some reason not Nevadans or Arizonans, in my hearing anyway) about Californians moving there is just one other reason that would give me pause about moving to those states that would otherwise be contenders. I hate to be just another unwelcome Californian trying to find a place with sometimes-similar weather but lower COL. (as distinct from HI's high COL but better weather than most of those places.) Californians are hated pretty much everywhere, so I'm happy to let the folks that really want/need to leave brave the disapproval and sometimes worse that they'll face as former residents of the source of all evil on this planet.
But it can get kind of on the reductio ad absurdum track in that people in certain places in CA get exasperated with people from urban/dense areas like SF/LA (not as often San Diego!) moving to their areas of the state and even within cities you can get annyance about people from X neighborhood moving into Y neighborhoods. From where I live right now, I'm not sure there's anywhere I'm "allowed" to move that the people there wouldn't roll their eyes and say I'm what's wrong with the world these days.
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I'd find it hard to leave AK permanently. I could really see having a small second home someplace warm and dry like the desert south west for 3-5 months a year. I live in NM long enough to give it first look, but that would mostly be for friends. Southern CO is also nice. I think the most likely answer will be traveling Oct - Jan and living in AK the rest of the year once DW stops working.
I don't think it would be a great fit for you Villanelle because of the cold and mosquito sensitivity.
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I lived in Hawai’i, and I felt that same odd claustrophobic feeling as well. It’ a wonderful place with amazing people and a rich culture, but ultimately I found it the most difficult place to live because I felt like a complete outsider (yup, a “haole”). It’s a Polynesian island culture 5,000 miles and six time zones from my family.
The main reason why Hawaii is not on my dream list is because of this. We vacationed on Molokai many years ago and it was beautiful and wonderful, but there were signs on many properties saying something like "Hawaii for Hawaiians" - I don't remember the exact slogan, but the sentiment was basically "there are too many haole buying up our land and making it too expensive for us and displacing our culture." I felt bad enough in our vacation rental; I'd feel terrible living among people who didn't want me there. Of course maybe it's different on the larger islands. The other reasons are the huge distance to the mainland and, of course, the high cost.
According to Wikipedia, Hawaii is predominantly Asian - with Filipino and Japanese being two of the largest groups, not Polynesian.
2010 2020
White 24.7% 22.9%
Asian 38.6% 37.2%
Hawaiian/
Pacific Islander 10.0% 10.8%
Black 1.6% 1.6%
Native Amer 0.3% 0.3%
Other race 1.2% 1.8%
My understanding of 'haole' is that it's usually used against white people. This makes me wonder if the "Hawaii for Hawaiians" bit is purely an anti-white thing, or if it mostly targets the Asian ethnic group that's actually pushing out native Hawaiians.
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Although I've never heard of actual signs in yards, the same complaints from Oregonians, Idahoans and Wyomingans(? is that right?) as well as I think many Washingtonians, Coloradans and Utahns (but for some reason not Nevadans or Arizonans, in my hearing anyway) about Californians moving there is just one other reason that would give me pause about moving to those states that would otherwise be contenders. I hate to be just another unwelcome Californian trying to find a place with sometimes-similar weather but lower COL. (as distinct from HI's high COL but better weather than most of those places.) Californians are hated pretty much everywhere, so I'm happy to let the folks that really want/need to leave brave the disapproval and sometimes worse that they'll face as former residents of the source of all evil on this planet.
But it can get kind of on the reductio ad absurdum track in that people in certain places in CA get exasperated with people from urban/dense areas like SF/LA (not as often San Diego!) moving to their areas of the state and even within cities you can get annyance about people from X neighborhood moving into Y neighborhoods. From where I live right now, I'm not sure there's anywhere I'm "allowed" to move that the people there wouldn't roll their eyes and say I'm what's wrong with the world these days.
I think that's a bit different because the ones in Hawaii who are complaining are descendants of the native population before the state was colonized. "We don't like you Californians" is different because it's not as if current residents of Oregon have any more claim to the land than any other American who might like to live there. Native Hawaiians have a credible argument that they do.
Now, of course all Native Americans could make a similar complaint all over the continental United States. The difference is that almost everywhere you go in the continental US, with some exceptions, one doesn't feel that resentment as strongly as in Hawaii (well, as strongly as I did on that specific trip to Molokai). I'm 100% aware that the reason for this is generally that the native population has been wiped out and is simply not there to object. That doesn't make me feel good, either, but one has to live somewhere, and at least the dead don't put up yard signs telling me they don't want me around.
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I lived in Hawai’i, and I felt that same odd claustrophobic feeling as well. It’ a wonderful place with amazing people and a rich culture, but ultimately I found it the most difficult place to live because I felt like a complete outsider (yup, a “haole”). It’s a Polynesian island culture 5,000 miles and six time zones from my family.
The main reason why Hawaii is not on my dream list is because of this. We vacationed on Molokai many years ago and it was beautiful and wonderful, but there were signs on many properties saying something like "Hawaii for Hawaiians" - I don't remember the exact slogan, but the sentiment was basically "there are too many haole buying up our land and making it too expensive for us and displacing our culture." I felt bad enough in our vacation rental; I'd feel terrible living among people who didn't want me there. Of course maybe it's different on the larger islands. The other reasons are the huge distance to the mainland and, of course, the high cost.
Although I've never heard of actual signs in yards, the same complaints from Oregonians, Idahoans and Wyomingans(? is that right?) as well as I think many Washingtonians, Coloradans and Utahns (but for some reason not Nevadans or Arizonans, in my hearing anyway) about Californians moving there is just one other reason that would give me pause about moving to those states that would otherwise be contenders. I hate to be just another unwelcome Californian trying to find a place with sometimes-similar weather but lower COL. (as distinct from HI's high COL but better weather than most of those places.) Californians are hated pretty much everywhere, so I'm happy to let the folks that really want/need to leave brave the disapproval and sometimes worse that they'll face as former residents of the source of all evil on this planet.
But it can get kind of on the reductio ad absurdum track in that people in certain places in CA get exasperated with people from urban/dense areas like SF/LA (not as often San Diego!) moving to their areas of the state and even within cities you can get annyance about people from X neighborhood moving into Y neighborhoods. From where I live right now, I'm not sure there's anywhere I'm "allowed" to move that the people there wouldn't roll their eyes and say I'm what's wrong with the world these days.
While there's some wariness here in CO of Californians who come in and make easy all-cash offers on homes from the proceeds of their CA home equity, most people on the whole are pretty welcoming. Now Texans moving here is another story.... ;)
When I lived in CA I knew a number of people who moved to various states, and my understanding is that the iciness Washingtonians have towards Californians is a real thing. Although this was years ago so maybe it's changed and someone from Washington can correct me.
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Although I've never heard of actual signs in yards, the same complaints from Oregonians, Idahoans and Wyomingans(? is that right?) as well as I think many Washingtonians, Coloradans and Utahns (but for some reason not Nevadans or Arizonans, in my hearing anyway) about Californians moving there is just one other reason that would give me pause about moving to those states that would otherwise be contenders. I hate to be just another unwelcome Californian trying to find a place with sometimes-similar weather but lower COL. (as distinct from HI's high COL but better weather than most of those places.) Californians are hated pretty much everywhere, so I'm happy to let the folks that really want/need to leave brave the disapproval and sometimes worse that they'll face as former residents of the source of all evil on this planet.
But it can get kind of on the reductio ad absurdum track in that people in certain places in CA get exasperated with people from urban/dense areas like SF/LA (not as often San Diego!) moving to their areas of the state and even within cities you can get annyance about people from X neighborhood moving into Y neighborhoods. From where I live right now, I'm not sure there's anywhere I'm "allowed" to move that the people there wouldn't roll their eyes and say I'm what's wrong with the world these days.
I think that's a bit different because the ones in Hawaii who are complaining are descendants of the native population before the state was colonized. "We don't like you Californians" is different because it's not as if current residents of Oregon have any more claim to the land than any other American who might like to live there. Native Hawaiians have a credible argument that they do.
Now, of course all Native Americans could make a similar complaint all over the continental United States. The difference is that almost everywhere you go in the continental US, with some exceptions, one doesn't feel that resentment as strongly as in Hawaii (well, as strongly as I did on that specific trip to Molokai). I'm 100% aware that the reason for this is generally that the native population has been wiped out and is simply not there to object. That doesn't make me feel good, either, but one has to live somewhere, and at least the dead don't put up yard signs telling me they don't want me around.
I have a fair amount of friends who have moved to Hawaii (almost exclusively Maui) and their take tends to be that new arrivals who are respectful of Hawaiians and Hawaii are treated fairly well, for the most part. It seems to be those who take on the same schtick that gives American travelers a stereotypical bad reputation when traveling abroad that get most of the pushback. If you stroll in like you own the place and like they are doing it wrong but you know better and will help them fix it, you will not be well-received. If you re humble and respectful, my friends report that you will be welcomed, though not always immediately included.
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When I lived in CA I knew a number of people who moved to various states, and my understanding is that the iciness Washingtonians have towards Californians is a real thing. Although this was years ago so maybe it's changed and someone from Washington can correct me.
I moved from CA to WA last year, and though what you state is the reputation, we've experienced basically nothing but kind welcomes. Online (e.g. reddit), the comments can get nasty when people suggest moving to our city, but I think it's an overly vocal minority that is bitter about rental/house price increases and looking for a scapegoat...but typically is only that vocal when they can remain nameless and faceless.
Now, I agree that CA transplants are contributing to the housing crisis in the area, but are by no means the biggest factor.
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Of course it's easier to "hide" the fact your from SoCal as long as you ditch the lime green lycra spandex, 5 inch heels, and big blonde hair :-).
And for the love of god, it's "101", not "the 101". Dead giveaway right there no matter how you disguise yourself.
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Of course it's easier to "hide" the fact your from SoCal as long as you ditch the lime green lycra spandex, 5 inch heels, and big blonde hair :-).
And for the love of god, it's "101", not "the 101". Dead giveaway right there no matter how you disguise yourself.
Geez, I'm up here in NorCal for over a decade now calling everything the 80, the 580, the 680, etc. Cannot stop! Luckily conversations where I reference highway numbers seem to only happen with my husband, so I haven't been excommunicated yet.
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Of course it's easier to "hide" the fact your from SoCal as long as you ditch the lime green lycra spandex, 5 inch heels, and big blonde hair :-).
And for the love of god, it's "101", not "the 101". Dead giveaway right there no matter how you disguise yourself.
LOL True Story!
I have a friend who moved to AK from CA and keeps trying to name highways by their number... For Pete's sake there are only like 11 in the state, you drive "the Parks" to Fairbanks not "the 3". It really is a dead giveaway.
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I visited Grand Junction, CO about 20 years ago. It seemed like a cool place then. Thinking back it probably checks a lot of my boxes. Not a big town but not too small. Good cycling, gridded street for bike commuting. Great weather. It has a small college and a hospital and an airport. Looking on Zillow it seems a bit pricey for housing but not outrageous. Anyone have any more recent info on the town vibe?
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I would lose my bloody mind if I lived in generally the same size/kind of place my entire life.
This is absolutely something I struggle with. I love where I live, and it was a long road to get here. I want to stay here long term, but then I have this fear I won't like staying.
All of these dream places mentioned are great - but also they might be great for a specific time in your life, and not others. For example, I loved San Diego as a 20-30 yr old who grew up in the midwest. But thinking about what a life with a spouse and a kid would be like, the struggles, it was a quick nope. A guy I work with came from there and hated his small condo with his two kids, because that's realistically what one can afford. My spouse and I high tailed it out of there to be able to buy a home. No regrets. Turned down an amazing job in the process, too.
Another great example was my recent ~70s single lady living next door to us. This is a 'very progressive' county in the west. She sold her home this year and moved to, of all places, The Villages in Florida. She was not conservative, quite the opposite. However, The Villages is a community with a ton of people, and surprisingly they do have enough liberal voters that there is at least a group of them that meet up. She spent 3 weeks there and was sold. Two years of COVID, feeling isolated every day, drove her to a place with community, even with it being a very "red" area. I'm curious how she will fare long term. I do think it was a little rash decision, but I do hope it works out. Plus, she dumped her house at the right time. The buyer paid in all cash from upstate NY, without seeing it. We still have not seen our new neighbor, yet, but that's quite common in this city. We miss this neighbor a lot.
I guess my theme is tied a lot to the themes the author of the book "die with zero" has, which is plan for doing the activities you want during the times of the life you want to. I generally buy that philosophy, to a point. I would probably extend it to 'where to live" because where I live might be highly dependent on when in my life I could live there. I probably wouldn't want to live anywhere else at the moment. But in 10 yrs, with my kid older, I may think otherwise.
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I visited Grand Junction, CO about 20 years ago. It seemed like a cool place then. Thinking back it probably checks a lot of my boxes. Not a big town but not too small. Good cycling, gridded street for bike commuting. Great weather. It has a small college and a hospital and an airport. Looking on Zillow it seems a bit pricey for housing but not outrageous. Anyone have any more recent info on the town vibe?
One of my coworkers moved there in 2019 (from PA), and loves it. Not too much snow in winter, but still close enough for day trips to the ski area.
Housing prices have gone way up since he purchased.
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I would lose my bloody mind if I lived in generally the same size/kind of place my entire life.
This is absolutely something I struggle with. I love where I live, and it was a long road to get here. I want to stay here long term, but then I have this fear I won't like staying.
All of these dream places mentioned are great - but also they might be great for a specific time in your life, and not others. For example, I loved San Diego as a 20-30 yr old who grew up in the midwest. But thinking about what a life with a spouse and a kid would be like, the struggles, it was a quick nope. A guy I work with came from there and hated his small condo with his two kids, because that's realistically what one can afford. My spouse and I high tailed it out of there to be able to buy a home. No regrets. Turned down an amazing job in the process, too.
Another great example was my recent ~70s single lady living next door to us. This is a 'very progressive' county in the west. She sold her home this year and moved to, of all places, The Villages in Florida. She was not conservative, quite the opposite. However, The Villages is a community with a ton of people, and surprisingly they do have enough liberal voters that there is at least a group of them that meet up. She spent 3 weeks there and was sold. Two years of COVID, feeling isolated every day, drove her to a place with community, even with it being a very "red" area. I'm curious how she will fare long term. I do think it was a little rash decision, but I do hope it works out. Plus, she dumped her house at the right time. The buyer paid in all cash from upstate NY, without seeing it. We still have not seen our new neighbor, yet, but that's quite common in this city. We miss this neighbor a lot.
I guess my theme is tied a lot to the themes the author of the book "die with zero" has, which is plan for doing the activities you want during the times of the life you want to. I generally buy that philosophy, to a point. I would probably extend it to 'where to live" because where I live might be highly dependent on when in my life I could live there. I probably wouldn't want to live anywhere else at the moment. But in 10 yrs, with my kid older, I may think otherwise.
You can't control how your life will change, only how you adjust and adapt to it.
The concept of a dream home, dream location, dream job, of dream anything should be predicted on the concept that that is the ideal option for you unless and until factors change to make another option superior.
I'm currently in one of my homes. It's a home I'm unlikely to ever sell, even if I never live here again. As long as key infrastructure realities exist, this specific home will always meet my core needs, and would be virtually impossible to replace at the same value (for complicated, market specific reasons).
So I will likely never sell it because it's sale price will very unlikely ever exceed its utility to me as a place that I can always come back to, especially if I become more disabled.
If things change, so will my plans. If this specific property skyrockets in value well beyond the pace of the local market, then I'll sell it. That's unlikely. I got such a good deal on it because it's a property with factors that have historically made it lag behind the market, and I took on that risk because I planned to keep it forever.
I made the best plan according to the information about market factors I had at the time and my projections of what my future needs could be. If those factors change or my needs change, then so will the plan.
Plans are not actually about the future, they are metrics by which we make decisions in the present. A plan may have exactly zero bearing on what actually happens.
Plans are guidelines for the present, not predictors of the future.
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I visited Grand Junction, CO about 20 years ago. It seemed like a cool place then. Thinking back it probably checks a lot of my boxes. Not a big town but not too small. Good cycling, gridded street for bike commuting. Great weather. It has a small college and a hospital and an airport. Looking on Zillow it seems a bit pricey for housing but not outrageous. Anyone have any more recent info on the town vibe?
One of my coworkers moved there in 2019 (from PA), and loves it. Not too much snow in winter, but still close enough for day trips to the ski area.
Housing prices have gone way up since he purchased.
its a neat town, i have been there a few times, there is a great national park (Colorado National Monument) just south of town that is bikable from GJ, very hot and dry in the summer.
quite conservative part of the state if that floats or sinks your boat
you have palisade peaches and wineries to the east
now that i look at it, its a pretty cool location, 2.5 hours to Aspen or Vail and 2 hours to Moab, 2.5 hours to Telluride, 2 hours to dinosaur national monument
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When I lived in CA I knew a number of people who moved to various states, and my understanding is that the iciness Washingtonians have towards Californians is a real thing. Although this was years ago so maybe it's changed and someone from Washington can correct me.
I moved from CA to WA last year, and though what you state is the reputation, we've experienced basically nothing but kind welcomes. Online (e.g. reddit), the comments can get nasty when people suggest moving to our city, but I think it's an overly vocal minority that is bitter about rental/house price increases and looking for a scapegoat...but typically is only that vocal when they can remain nameless and faceless.
Now, I agree that CA transplants are contributing to the housing crisis in the area, but are by no means the biggest factor.
The anti-Californian sentiment was actually worse in the early nineties, as Microsoft and others brought the first wave of well paid software people to the area. A comedic example from Almost Live (a local sketch comedy show that would air before SNL back in the day) back in 1990: https://youtu.be/79SF7UoO1pI (https://youtu.be/79SF7UoO1pI).
Today's tech worker influx is even worse than the 1990s in terms of numbers and their impact on the housing market but it seems less identified with Californians in particular. These days it's more of a general "f*ck Amazon" attitude from non-tech people who can no longer afford to rent, let alone buy, in this city.
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San Diego is quickly becoming “Silicon beach”.
Apple alone just announced they expect to have 5000 SD employees by 2026. All of the major tech companies are here; biotech is strong and salaries are exploding. I wonder what this will do to already low supply / high demand housing prices.
Median home is now $987,225 (small 1000sqft 1960 ranch).
newer/larger in a OK area is $1.4M-$1.8M.
newer/larger is a prime area is $2.4M-$3.5M.
racho sante fe “estate living” is $4.8M-$15M
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^ Holy shit that is expensive.
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I still think SoCal is THE retirement spot. Better than all of rest by far! :-)
Incredible (mild) weather
Prime Sun for Solar (fixing utility costs)
Miles and miles of coast/beach - free entertainment
Prop 13 (fixes RE taxes in retirement)
Close to international border (services & goods arbitrage)
Higher (CA) income - makes everything except housing effectively more affordable
<5 hour drive and you can see basically anything.
Higher cost than most other places - ability to leave and cash out equity for paid off home.
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I've seen real estate prices moderate here in the Bay Area a bit in the last month or two, presumably because of interest rate hikes. But I'm not quite sure how that is similarly causing rent prices to moderate as well. I've seen many rentals be reduced by $200 per month lately and just got notice that a house we had looked at got reduced from $3800 to $3230 per month - a huge reduction! But, it's certainly not reflective of any significant increase in housing stock, so I'm not sure why.
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Rents are really going up here and I think it's because potential home buyers (and those like me who have already sold) aren't looking to buy now so increase rental demand.
From some articles I read, I think a larger proportion of rentals in the last 5-10 years have been bought up by companies who use fairly sophisticated algorithms to set the rent as high as local incomes will allow. In the past I think a lot of the rental market prices, at least for individual houses or small buildings, was just set by whatever the landlord felt was good to cover expenses, or whatever it was when they got the property, etc. As the years went by, it was probably lower than they could have asked. In at least some cases, in fact, individual companies set up to invest in this try to get a large proportion of the houses in an area to have a greater role in setting the "local rental rates".
That trend is one reason we are looking to buy where we move post FIRE (which is now under 6 months away), once we check the area out. We want more control over our housing expenses than renting gives us. Particularly because I'm seeing a trend that places that are ranking high on desirability to retire seem to be having significant housing booms, if housing prices are going to go up faster than inflation, which is already high, better to be an owner than a renter. I think that is a combination of more people than usual retiring, and a significant number of people who will only take work-from-home jobs now so they can live in the same nice locations retirees want to live.
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As of right now i live on the coast in florida in a bayfront home. It has its perks. Constant threat of storms makes it less than ideal. Ive considered moving to Appalachia (East tennesee, North Georgia, north carolina) area. Ive spent alot of time there and find it is a good fit
Definitely a red state. I prefer areas with fewer hostile people that lack common sense and decency.
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Ive considered moving to Appalachia (East tennesee, North Georgia, north carolina) area. Ive spent alot of time there and find it is a good fit
Definitely a red state. I prefer areas with fewer hostile people that lack common sense and decency.
Yes, moving from Florida, another red state full of people that lack common sense and decency would be a great move for you!
Sent from my SM-A205U using Tapatalk
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Ive considered moving to Appalachia (East tennesee, North Georgia, north carolina) area. Ive spent alot of time there and find it is a good fit
Definitely a red state. I prefer areas with fewer hostile people that lack common sense and decency.
Yes, moving from Florida, another red state full of people that lack common sense and decency would be a great move for you!
Sent from my SM-A205U using Tapatalk
In my experience, lack of common sense and decency tends to be politically agnostic. There are more than enough idiots to go around to cover the needs of the left and the right. :P
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Ive considered moving to Appalachia (East tennesee, North Georgia, north carolina) area. Ive spent alot of time there and find it is a good fit
Definitely a red state. I prefer areas with fewer hostile people that lack common sense and decency.
Yes, moving from Florida, another red state full of people that lack common sense and decency would be a great move for you!
Sent from my SM-A205U using Tapatalk
In my experience, lack of common sense and decency tends to be politically agnostic. There are more than enough idiots to go around to cover the needs of the left and the right. :P
Truth
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As of right now i live on the coast in florida in a bayfront home. It has its perks. Constant threat of storms makes it less than ideal. Ive considered moving to Appalachia (East tennesee, North Georgia, north carolina) area. Ive spent alot of time there and find it is a good fit
Definitely a red state. I prefer areas with fewer hostile people that lack common sense and decency.
Such a troll-type statement. Your grandmother would be appalled. Since she isn't here (that we know of) and I am probably old enough to be your grandmother, I will point out to you that if you approach people with hostility you will get hostility in return. If you are friendly and a decent person you will generally get that back as well.
And of course GuitarStv is also correct: In my experience, lack of common sense and decency tends to be politically agnostic. There are more than enough idiots to go around to cover the needs of the left and the right. :P
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I guess for now it's where I am- Philly area, south Jersey (Gloucester county). I can get into center city in 15-20 minutes. I can get to PHL airport in 20.
It's affordable for a big city though I guess that's changing. I switched careers a few years ago and it is way less competitive for it here than in other cities out west, so I'm doing (for me) quite well.
It's really diverse here, this is important to me. Politically and culturally.
We have a very affordable house ($1k/mo including taxes) with a decent lawn and nice detached garage/covered patio that's paid off in the next year- live in one of a few little blue collar towns that's stayed under the radar for whatever reason. My husband said the taxes have been unchanged for years- they are lower than surrounding areas. I heard it's something to do with some industrial areas on the edge of town. Also (duh) no city tax here. I can walk 3 blocks to a pond stocked with trout with a decent running track around it and a tiny stream/woods that we see tons of turtles and occasionally turkeys and herons hanging out. We are in the same town as a good sized creek and can kayak either locally or all the way into the Delaware river. Weather is good, we can grow anything we want (I love gardening).
Fairmount park is one of the best parks/trail systems within a big city boundaries. Nice for foraging this time of year.
We can get to the Pine Barrens for chill hiking or kayaking (my husband's preferred outdoor activity) in ~45 minutes. Can get to the beach in a bit over an hour (if no traffic)
Great food of every thinkable style cuisine somewhere in the city or just outside (ok, MAYBE the Persian food is a little sparse, but there's at least one place and it's great). Good breweries/cideries/distilleries too (tho we've also homebrewed, have access to great/affordable supplies for this). The CSA I get produce/other local goods from is pretty cheap and great quality.
Most important thing for me is the diversity of music. Because Philly's been relatively cheap, a lot more risks can be taken here creatively compared to other cities. Great scenes in all the arts- theatre, dance, visual, music. In the last year my music career came back out of nowhere, I could afford my whole COL on it at this point. And I'm not playing soul sucking stuff- it's generally been a combo of a "Balkan, jazz, punk, and cheesesteak-inspired" band, a silly polka band, and a swing/jump blues band (with the odd free jazz, classical, Brazillian, salsa, or reggae gig thrown in). I seriously can't think of anywhere else one could do this especially at my level of playing/relative lack of networking skills.
My husband and I would eventually like to travel in the camper around the US and Canada and travel abroad but it's just really hard to think of another place whether here or outside the US with a similar music scene that would feel fulfilling. I tried checking out a few other cities in my late 20s-30s as well as a couple years abroad and it never worked out. I imagine we'll home base here until music isn't a thing I do anymore, and travel when needed. If I need a deep nature fix, I go on a thru hike.
If I give up on music as an income source then we may consider a move out West or to New England. But we aren't sure, and the reasons are basically being more in nature. It's hard to find a weather sweet spot though, and my husband and I have slightly different preferences. The mid-Atlantic is a good compromise. OR, we just keep moving to weather we like in the trailer. Another thought is my brother/his wife's whole family are in Pueblo CO and while prices have gone way up it's still relatively speaking affordable compared to other areas in CO, weather is not super extreme, plus we'd know people. My sister and mom are also considering that area one day, so we will see.
For old age, having a house not far from great medical care is a no-brainer. I'm in healthcare for the day job and have contacts both in Penn and Jefferson systems so feel good about options here. And again, close to an airport if stuff is unaffordable in the US.
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DW and I have lived in LA for the past 6.5 years, and we can't take much more... But it's much less about "being here" and much more about being so far away from all our family and friends in the MDW and east coast-ish areas (where we're from). Awesome weather, so many great outdoor activities and opportunities, sure. But 95% of our favorite people live 2000+ miles away. We've found that people matter more than place for us; the pandemic really helped clarify that. We're headed back home (and I don't use that word lightly) to the Chicago area within the next 6-18 months.
Oh, Chicago, where (IMHO) the weather is great for 4 months of the year (roughly mid-April to mid-June and Sept-Oct) and more or less shitty the remaining 8 months... but yeah, there's no substitute for being close to people you love... You just have to move the love indoors, I guess.
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I've seen real estate prices moderate here in the Bay Area a bit in the last month or two, presumably because of interest rate hikes. But I'm not quite sure how that is similarly causing rent prices to moderate as well. I've seen many rentals be reduced by $200 per month lately and just got notice that a house we had looked at got reduced from $3800 to $3230 per month - a huge reduction! But, it's certainly not reflective of any significant increase in housing stock, so I'm not sure why.
Rents are really going up here and I think it's because potential home buyers (and those like me who have already sold) aren't looking to buy now so increase rental demand.
I've seen this with my San Diego rental. Tried and failed to sell it this summer. We were just a couple months too late, I think. But when we put it back on the rental market, rents were up significantly.
No one wanted to buy it (for what we wanted to sell it for), but renting it was easy and lucrative.
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
Friend left Wilmington at least partially b/c of fire ants and hurricanes. I find that a local university helps the local culture. Larger group of educated folks to develop a friendship circle from. Dilutes any bad influences who are not receptive to newcomers and new ideas.
Ha! Clearly, fire ants and hurricanes don't deter me! (They probably should, but I love the coast and saltwater kayaking too much to live very far inland.)
I feel like the college town atmosphere would be a big help help. I currently have a digital subscription to their local newspaper and while the area as a whole still appears a bit more conservative/segregated than I'd prefer, it doesn't seem too bad. I have a friend who recently moved there, so we're looking forward to seeing how her experience goes over the next few years!
Just wanted to come back and say that, after going through Hurricane Ian, hurricanes definitely deter me. Maybe it's just PTSD and I'll eventually change my mind, but Wilmington is off the list for now.
I guess that leaves us primarily considering the Raleigh/Durham area... unless anyone has recommendations for other great non-coastal locations in the Southeastern US (for proximity to family).
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
Friend left Wilmington at least partially b/c of fire ants and hurricanes. I find that a local university helps the local culture. Larger group of educated folks to develop a friendship circle from. Dilutes any bad influences who are not receptive to newcomers and new ideas.
Ha! Clearly, fire ants and hurricanes don't deter me! (They probably should, but I love the coast and saltwater kayaking too much to live very far inland.)
I feel like the college town atmosphere would be a big help help. I currently have a digital subscription to their local newspaper and while the area as a whole still appears a bit more conservative/segregated than I'd prefer, it doesn't seem too bad. I have a friend who recently moved there, so we're looking forward to seeing how her experience goes over the next few years!
Just wanted to come back and say that, after going through Hurricane Ian, hurricanes definitely deter me. Maybe it's just PTSD and I'll eventually change my mind, but Wilmington is off the list for now.
I guess that leaves us primarily considering the Raleigh/Durham area... unless anyone has recommendations for other great non-coastal locations in the Southeastern US (for proximity to family).
If I were starting all over, looking for a place to live in the southeast, my top three areas would be Greenville, SC; Asheville, NC; and Chattanooga, TN, in that order. YMMV, depending on exactly what you want. For us that's Nature, small-to-medium sized city, and not too "red," or at least a diversity of political viewpoints. Not sure how close any of those would be to your family though.
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But this type of rural living seems to be very much based around the New England town setup. Our town is 1000 people but we have our own select board, town meeting, elementary schools, etc. neighbors need to cooperate to make it all work. Our form of government was very similar to Small Towns in England. I and I am not sure you would get the same vibe in more rural counties in other parts of the country that were founded by more tribal and skeptical Scotts. Also our town was 70% Biden in 2020
This is an interesting assessment. I lived in two small towns in North Carolina, and really disliked both towns both due to dramatic fear of "the other"... racism, xenophobia, skepticism of people who moved there from other locations (I heard a lot of "you ain't from around here," despite 15 years in that approximate area), hostility towards education and the educated, etc. I think I could enjoy a small town in theory, but NC small towns definitely were NOT the right small towns for me!
I haven't spent any considerable time in New England, but the small towns up there definitely sound infinitely more civilized, friendly, and appealing. Unfortunately, I grew up in Florida and have low tolerance for prolonged, dark winters and extreme cold. I've never consider English vs. Scottish influences and how they relate to North vs. South issues, but that's an interesting idea!
We'd love to move from our current town in Florida (it's very... umm... "aggressive," for lack of a better word, and has a reputation in our area for being pretty trashy/rednecky), but we're struggling to decide where to go. Our family is all in FL, NC, and SC and my husband is a big family guy, so he doesn't want to go any further north than NC. Leading contenders right now are Raleigh/Durham or Wilmington, but I have some reservations.
Friend left Wilmington at least partially b/c of fire ants and hurricanes. I find that a local university helps the local culture. Larger group of educated folks to develop a friendship circle from. Dilutes any bad influences who are not receptive to newcomers and new ideas.
Ha! Clearly, fire ants and hurricanes don't deter me! (They probably should, but I love the coast and saltwater kayaking too much to live very far inland.)
I feel like the college town atmosphere would be a big help help. I currently have a digital subscription to their local newspaper and while the area as a whole still appears a bit more conservative/segregated than I'd prefer, it doesn't seem too bad. I have a friend who recently moved there, so we're looking forward to seeing how her experience goes over the next few years!
Just wanted to come back and say that, after going through Hurricane Ian, hurricanes definitely deter me. Maybe it's just PTSD and I'll eventually change my mind, but Wilmington is off the list for now.
I guess that leaves us primarily considering the Raleigh/Durham area... unless anyone has recommendations for other great non-coastal locations in the Southeastern US (for proximity to family).
If I were starting all over, looking for a place to live in the southeast, my top three areas would be Greenville, SC; Asheville, NC; and Chattanooga, TN, in that order. YMMV, depending on exactly what you want. For us that's Nature, small-to-medium sized city, and not too "red," or at least a diversity of political viewpoints. Not sure how close any of those would be to your family though.
My criteria are actually quite similar to yours, though I could go a bit larger on city size if needed. We used to live in Hickory, NC and there were aspects of it that we really loved (primarily size, nature, and great older/walkable neighborhood near downtown), although it was a bit too red for us.
I've never really considered Greenville (or anywhere in SC) but I'll look into it!! Asheville is awesome but likely cost-prohibitive and Chattanooga is probably too far from family (in FL and coastal SC).
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I pretty much can live wherever I want, and I chose SW Florida. Plenty of the things I enjoy doing I can do down here year round. I’ve been through a few hurricanes, Irma and Ian, but we just leave. We don’t know exactly where they are going to hit, but you get plenty of notice a storm is coming. We just take a trip, we went to Gatlingburg during Irma, Mobile Alabama for Ian.
We live on the water, and I was expecting my boat to be gone and substantial damage to the house. But the boat was not damaged and we have insurance to take care of the house, minus a hefty deductible.
Airports are nearby so we still visit friends and family fairly regularly, and we find we have lots of visitors in the winter months.
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I pretty much can live wherever I want, and I chose SW Florida. Plenty of the things I enjoy doing I can do down here year round. I’ve been through a few hurricanes, Irma and Ian, but we just leave. We don’t know exactly where they are going to hit, but you get plenty of notice a storm is coming. We just take a trip, we went to Gatlingburg during Irma, Mobile Alabama for Ian.
We live on the water, and I was expecting my boat to be gone and substantial damage to the house. But the boat was not damaged and we have insurance to take care of the house, minus a hefty deductible.
I think this explains some of why SW Florida works so well for retirees. I would have much preferred to evacuate, but my husband had to work until late Tuesday afternoon and it seemed far to late to hit the road then. (Also in SW Florida and got to meet the eye of Ian, though we're inland enough to be evacuation zone C. And yes, insurance will cover the damages, but the 8 days without power and 2+ weeks without internet and the ability for me to work were a big headache, not to mention the missed school for our daughter and the headaches getting on waiting lists for repairs.)
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As of right now i live on the coast in florida in a bayfront home. It has its perks. Constant threat of storms makes it less than ideal. Ive considered moving to Appalachia (East tennesee, North Georgia, north carolina) area. Ive spent alot of time there and find it is a good fit
Definitely a red state. I prefer areas with fewer hostile people that lack common sense and decency.
North Georgia is an awesome area. I lived there for a bit and it was just about perfect. Dahlonega to Suches to Blue Ridge. Loved it. Of course, I was a couple decades younger at the time. Those mountain runs might be rougher now.
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I would love to live somewhere that stayed around 40-70 degrees year round, especially with sand beaches nearby. Brookings, OR or the Northern Cal Coast would probably be wonderful, although hubby's medical disability pension, my [eventual] pension, and our 401Ks would be taxed if we retired there (I'm still working). I guess we will run the numbers and see how it looks closer to retirement.
We already live in a great area in the Puget Sound area, although our micro climate brings in a lot more snow than surrounding areas in the winter and 80-90 degree temperatures for weeks in the summers. These things can wreak havoc on my health, although La Niña has been making our weather more extreme than normal in the past couple of years. It seems like we would be trading snow and potentially weeks of snowy freezing temperatures for cutting cold marine winds in the winter. I'm hoping to visit the coast more in the winter to see if this works with my health issues or not.
I would love other suggestions if anyone has any, beach or no beach. :)
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Our family explored this question about about 4-5 years ago. We landed in Boise and absolutely love it, fits us perfectly.
I was already retired and we had a pretty good sense that our kids had no future in Santa Cruz due to late-stage NIMBYism. We could literally move anywhere, which is super freeing but also overwhelming. We started with what we valued, but also listed what we didn't really care about. That last part was important for us as it opened up a lot of potential locations . (We're not ocean/beach people, nor do we care about having perfectly comfortable weather. Weirdly, I actually enjoy hot summers and cold winters, the extremes are what make the seasons interesting.) So I created a spreadsheet and started researching -- a lot. Tons of online information to digest for each potential location. We then narrowed things down to the West and Intermountain West regions, and then further narrowed it down to a handful of cities within these regions.
Having researched as much as possible online, we then spent two summers doing road trips to scout candidate cities. This wasn't all business, as we also spent a lot of time sight seeing and visiting National Parks. These are some of my favorite memories with kids when they were younger.
Why Boise? While not perfect, it checked our most important boxes. The North End (where we live) is a beautiful leafy historic district that's very walkable and bikeable. Most of my trips to the grocery store are via bike. We often walk to Hyde Park, a historic retail district, for dinner or desert or coffee or whatever. It's very safe and clean, with lots of kids playing independently (we value our kids having a sense of independence). Our kids walk themselves to/from school, usually meeting up we friends along the way... no drop-off/pickup shenanigans for the win! There's a strong sense of community and civic pride, with lots of block parties and other community oriented events and beautiful clean parks. Boise is a distinct and relatively compact city (by US standards) so almost no one commutes, which means parents are home for their kids and people are generally less stressed and less pressed for time. This means kids are mostly well adjusted and it's easy to get to know neighbors because people are usually around and have time to chat. Our kids often walk to the park or a friends house on their own, and their friends frequently stop by to play. People overall are very nice ("Boise Nice" as they say) and it's perfectly normal to strike up a conversation with strangers walking past our house while we're on the front porch. It's normal to see bikes and other items left unlocked in front yards.
Other things that were important to us: Boise is a medium sized city, big enough to have a good foodie scene and other urban amenities. Yet it is close to huge amounts of public lands and some of the wildest areas of the lower 48. In less than an hour I can be in some truly wild areas. We are ~15 minutes from the airport with reasonable connections to cities with family. BSU and U of I both have campuses here, which means our kids will have the option to save a ton of money by living at home while attending college. The city is adjacent to ~200 miles of hiking/biking trails, and there are paved paths along the Boise River Greenbelt. At certain times of the year I can fly fish, mountain bike, hike, and ski all in the same day within a 15 mile radius. I can bike to the river in town for decent fishing, or I can drive 90 minutes to world class fly fishing on any number of rivers and streams.
We were somewhat concerned about the schools in deep red Idaho, but to our pleasant surprise, our schools are fantastic and their teachers are the best they've ever had. The schools are well funded with recently updated facilities and fully funded arts programs. Music is just part of the standard curriculum (not an extra that requires fundraising, which was the case for our schools in California). And the class sizes are small, with ~20 students (our kids are in 4th and 6th grade), which means the teachers have a lot of time to teach 1:1 with students and circle back to fill in gaps. The school provided free after school tutoring for kids that fell behind during the pandemic years. All around, we have been blow away by the quality of our schools and our kids are thriving whereas they were struggling in a number of areas before we moved.
Now, I can already hear someone quipping that I'm going to ruin Boise by attracting more people. I'm not concerned. People are what make cities great, from businesses to teachers and doctors and everything in between. If smart Mustachians decide to move here and bring their creativity and their energy it will only make the city better. I don't even care if you're Red or Blue as long as you're not a dogmatic ideologue.
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Our family explored this question about about 4-5 years ago. We landed in Boise and absolutely love it, fits us perfectly.
I was already retired and we had a pretty good sense that our kids had no future in Santa Cruz due to late-stage NIMBYism. We could literally move anywhere, which is super freeing but also overwhelming. We started with what we valued, but also listed what we didn't really care about. That last part was important for us as it opened up a lot of potential locations . (We're not ocean/beach people, nor do we care about having perfectly comfortable weather. Weirdly, I actually enjoy hot summers and cold winters, the extremes are what make the seasons interesting.) So I created a spreadsheet and started researching -- a lot. Tons of online information to digest for each potential location. We then narrowed things down to the West and Intermountain West regions, and then further narrowed it down to a handful of cities within these regions.
Having researched as much as possible online, we then spent two summers doing road trips to scout candidate cities. This wasn't all business, as we also spent a lot of time sight seeing and visiting National Parks. These are some of my favorite memories with kids when they were younger.
Why Boise? While not perfect, it checked our most important boxes. The North End (where we live) is a beautiful leafy historic district that's very walkable and bikeable. Most of my trips to the grocery store are via bike. We often walk to Hyde Park, a historic retail district, for dinner or desert or coffee or whatever. It's very safe and clean, with lots of kids playing independently (we value our kids having a sense of independence). Our kids walk themselves to/from school, usually meeting up we friends along the way... no drop-off/pickup shenanigans for the win! There's a strong sense of community and civic pride, with lots of block parties and other community oriented events and beautiful clean parks. Boise is a distinct and relatively compact city (by US standards) so almost no one commutes, which means parents are home for their kids and people are generally less stressed and less pressed for time. This means kids are mostly well adjusted and it's easy to get to know neighbors because people are usually around and have time to chat. Our kids often walk to the park or a friends house on their own, and their friends frequently stop by to play. People overall are very nice ("Boise Nice" as they say) and it's perfectly normal to strike up a conversation with strangers walking past our house while we're on the front porch. It's normal to see bikes and other items left unlocked in front yards.
Other things that were important to us: Boise is a medium sized city, big enough to have a good foodie scene and other urban amenities. Yet it is close to huge amounts of public lands and some of the wildest areas of the lower 48. In less than an hour I can be in some truly wild areas. We are ~15 minutes from the airport with reasonable connections to cities with family. BSU and U of I both have campuses here, which means our kids will have the option to save a ton of money by living at home while attending college. The city is adjacent to ~200 miles of hiking/biking trails, and there are paved paths along the Boise River Greenbelt. At certain times of the year I can fly fish, mountain bike, hike, and ski all in the same day within a 15 mile radius. I can bike to the river in town for decent fishing, or I can drive 90 minutes to world class fly fishing on any number of rivers and streams.
We were somewhat concerned about the schools in deep red Idaho, but to our pleasant surprise, our schools are fantastic and their teachers are the best they've ever had. The schools are well funded with recently updated facilities and fully funded arts programs. Music is just part of the standard curriculum (not an extra that requires fundraising, which was the case for our schools in California). And the class sizes are small, with ~20 students (our kids are in 4th and 6th grade), which means the teachers have a lot of time to teach 1:1 with students and circle back to fill in gaps. The school provided free after school tutoring for kids that fell behind during the pandemic years. All around, we have been blow away by the quality of our schools and our kids are thriving whereas they were struggling in a number of areas before we moved.
Now, I can already hear someone quipping that I'm going to ruin Boise by attracting more people. I'm not concerned. People are what make cities great, from businesses to teachers and doctors and everything in between. If smart Mustachians decide to move here and bring their creativity and their energy it will only make the city better. I don't even care if you're Red or Blue as long as you're not a dogmatic ideologue.
You're right at the end there. You make Boise very attractive. I personally love varied seasons, and the small but walkable city with people as you described and nearby green areas sounds amazing!
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There is no perfect location the US. You need to figure out what appeals to YOU regarding climate, politics, culture, cost, family proximity, and all the rest. Every single region/state/city/town has significant compromises.
An increasingly common retirement mistake is to imagine that you need to relocate somewhere better once you stop working. People who stay put tend to have happier and more "successful" retirements because they are well-established. In the best cases, this involves moving to a place and people you already know well, like your home town, your college town or the place you have been spending the last 20 summers. Throwing a dart at the map and moving long distance often ends in tears because 1) the grass is not greener, 2) you lose all your friends and family and 3) it's hard to start over with friends in retirement. You will be moving into a community where everyone has known each other since, like, grade school and they wonder why someone is showing up post-retirement. It sounds ridiculous to announce "We retired on the other side of the country and thought we would like to live here." At a minimum, if you are seriously interested in relocating to a new place, spend 6-12 months there visiting or renting before making a final decision.
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An increasingly common retirement mistake is to imagine that you need to relocate somewhere better once you stop working. People who stay put tend to have happier and more "successful" retirements because they are well-established. In the best cases, this involves moving to a place and people you already know well, like your home town, your college town or the place you have been spending the last 20 summers. Throwing a dart at the map and moving long distance often ends in tears because 1) the grass is not greener, 2) you lose all your friends and family and 3) it's hard to start over with friends in retirement. You will be moving into a community where everyone has known each other since, like, grade school and they wonder why someone is showing up post-retirement. It sounds ridiculous to announce "We retired on the other side of the country and thought we would like to live here." At a minimum, if you are seriously interested in relocating to a new place, spend 6-12 months there visiting or renting before making a final decision.
Not my experience at all (moved to Wilmington-NC on retirement). I've been to meetup groups with 20-30 people and maybe two are from here, with almost everyone having been here less than a year. I have more friends now than I did when I was working (unless you count work friends), and the sunshine and air quality are much better for my health. I was already half day drive from family, so being a little further doesn't make much difference. Most people here are very friendly and welcoming. I'm having an easier time making friends in retirement because I actually have time to hang out with people and do things.
I think the "everyone knowing each other since grade school " is only true for very small towns. I lived in a couple of those during childhood and they weren't very welcoming, so I've never had a "hometown " per se.
Downside here is they are still very backward when it comes to transportation and development (they still have parking minimums, ffs) so traffic is awful and housing is getting really expensive. I'm glad I rented first so I can be sure to buy in a walkable neighborhood, as some are completely car dependent. There are some pretty nasty political elements here too but they aren't the majority.
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There is no perfect location the US. You need to figure out what appeals to YOU regarding climate, politics, culture, cost, family proximity, and all the rest. Every single region/state/city/town has significant compromises.
An increasingly common retirement mistake is to imagine that you need to relocate somewhere better once you stop working. People who stay put tend to have happier and more "successful" retirements because they are well-established. In the best cases, this involves moving to a place and people you already know well, like your home town, your college town or the place you have been spending the last 20 summers. Throwing a dart at the map and moving long distance often ends in tears because 1) the grass is not greener, 2) you lose all your friends and family and 3) it's hard to start over with friends in retirement. You will be moving into a community where everyone has known each other since, like, grade school and they wonder why someone is showing up post-retirement. It sounds ridiculous to announce "We retired on the other side of the country and thought we would like to live here." At a minimum, if you are seriously interested in relocating to a new place, spend 6-12 months there visiting or renting before making a final decision.
I strongly agree with the first and last statements, but not the middle.
For me, the reason to try a place out is the logistics. Every area has a personality made up of the day to day function and routines. How is the traffic? What are the people.like at the grocery stores? Is garbage managed well? How are the neighbourhoods structured? Is there tourism? How does that impact the way the local businesses run?
For example, I love living right downtown in cities, but I didn't love living in Montreal because the way it's arranged, it has districts of all the same stuff that go on and on before you get to a district with other stuff. And with horrible transit, you can get kind of trapped in your own little district where it's nothing but vintage shops and Portuguese BBQ chicken restaurants. I like cities for variety, and after living in 3 locations in Montreal, I got sick of the *lack* of variety in each.
But making friends? That's a learnable skill set. I've helped a lot of middle age people learn how to make friends. Making them is easy, the challenge can be finding a community filled with the kind of people you *want* to integrate with.
I just bought a house in a rural, insular region that's known to be fairly hostile to outsiders, but I also knew it was a population I *wanted* to be able to integrate with. It was definitely tricky, but still very doable. We integrated so well and ended up living it so much that we've decided to relocate there instead of just simmering there.
Ironically, we had assumed we would never live there because on paper it's a horrible place to fully live. The weather is terrifying, the services limited, the healthcare abysmal, the groceries obscenely expensive and shitty quality, and the main industry is summer tourism for 4-5 months per year and most of the town shuts down the rest of the time.
It just sounds like a shit place to live. And yet, after spending some time there, we're probably going to fully relocate there, largely because we integrated so fully into the amazing community.
I don't at all disagree with you that most people do struggle with the social aspect of relocating later in life. I haven't seen stats on it, but considering how much people complain about trying to make friends as adults, it wouldn't surprise me.
However, I think it's more accurate to say that people need to assess their social adaptability and friend-making skills before considering a major relocation. They may need to invest in cultivating those skills before abandoning their existing social network.
If someone has those skills, then it's not a problem. The reason DH and I want to relocate to our remote rural house is specifically because we prefer the social network and supports there.
For us the priority was to find the right kind of community to integrate into so that we would have a higher quality social network. Our motivation to leave this city, which is on-paper an absolutely perfect location for us, but we totally burnt out on being around so many unhappy, unhealthy people.
So yes, I think sampling is very important, because it's hard to know what living in a place will actually be like just based on stats and facts. But leaving an extant social system isn't necessarily a bad thing, and building a new one isn't necessarily a daunting challenge.
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An increasingly common retirement mistake is to imagine that you need to relocate somewhere better once you stop working. People who stay put tend to have happier and more "successful" retirements because they are well-established. In the best cases, this involves moving to a place and people you already know well, like your home town, your college town or the place you have been spending the last 20 summers. Throwing a dart at the map and moving long distance often ends in tears because 1) the grass is not greener, 2) you lose all your friends and family and 3) it's hard to start over with friends in retirement. You will be moving into a community where everyone has known each other since, like, grade school and they wonder why someone is showing up post-retirement. It sounds ridiculous to announce "We retired on the other side of the country and thought we would like to live here." At a minimum, if you are seriously interested in relocating to a new place, spend 6-12 months there visiting or renting before making a final decision.
Not my experience at all (moved to Wilmington-NC on retirement). I've been to meetup groups with 20-30 people and maybe two are from here, with almost everyone having been here less than a year. I have more friends now than I did when I was working (unless you count work friends), and the sunshine and air quality are much better for my health. I was already half day drive from family, so being a little further doesn't make much difference. Most people here are very friendly and welcoming. I'm having an easier time making friends in retirement because I actually have time to hang out with people and do things.
I think the "everyone knowing each other since grade school " is only true for very small towns. I lived in a couple of those during childhood and they weren't very welcoming, so I've never had a "hometown " per se.
Downside here is they are still very backward when it comes to transportation and development (they still have parking minimums, ffs) so traffic is awful and housing is getting really expensive. I'm glad I rented first so I can be sure to buy in a walkable neighborhood, as some are completely car dependent. There are some pretty nasty political elements here too but they aren't the majority.
It can also be a plus. If a social system in a community is super robust and you can integrate into it, it's a built-in support network.
It took me a few months to identify our potential "best friends," and forging that bond involved two crippled women on crutches who know nothing about wood working building a dining room table. But once that friendship was solid, they gave us access to the entire community network.
Breaking into those communities can be a bit like picking a lock, it's finicky, but it can absolutely be done*.
*This assumes you aren't a visible minority belonging to a group that the local community is hostile towards. That's a whole other cluster fuck.
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You're right at the end there. You make Boise very attractive. I personally love varied seasons, and the small but walkable city with people as you described and nearby green areas sounds amazing!
Come check it out for yourself. The Boise Airport (BOI) is great, efficient and easy to navigate. An Uber from BOI to downtown is ~10 minutes and runs around $10. Downtown is very walkable with lots of great restaurants, breweries, and shops. Be sure to visit Jack's Urban Meeting Place (JUMP), a really neat non-profit community center with a free 6-story slide (open most Saturdays) and other free activities. The Capitol is also worth exploring. If in season, the Capitol City Public Market on Saturdays is well worth a visit. Walk the Feak Alley Gallery. If you have kids Zoo Boise and the Discovery Center of Idaho are great.
The best way to explore the city is by bike. Bike through the North End to Hyde Park and grab a bite to eat or coffee. Then continue on to Camel's Back Park and hike up the hill to get a bird's eye view of the city and hike the Hull's Gulch trails behind the park. Bike west through the North End to Esther Simplot Park and watch the river surfers and kayakers at the Whitewater Park. Head across the river on the pedestrian bridge and check out the shops/wineries/breweries/coffee shops along the Garden City side of the Greenbelt. Head south on the Greenbelt and explore Kathryn Albertson Park and Ann Morrison Park. Cross the river north on the pedestrian bridge and work your way back to the downtown area with a stop at Payette Brewing if that's your kinda thing.
ETA: Here's a map of the hiking and mountain biking trails (https://www.ridgetorivers.org/trails/interactive-map/), and a bike map for the city (https://achdidaho.org/Documents/PlansPrograms/BikeMap.pdf).
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3) it's hard to start over with friends in retirement. You will be moving into a community where everyone has known each other since, like, grade school and they wonder why someone is showing up post-retirement.
This has not been our experience. After living in our new city for ~2.5 years we now have more great friends that we can shake a stick at. And this was during the pandemic! New dear friends with kids the same age as ours recently moved next door, which has been super fun. I suppose it helps that we moved to a proper city with an influx of people as opposed to a small town or rural area. It also helps that we're part of a great church filled with genuine loving people. I was diagnosed with cancer over the summer and spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital and we had a ton of people bringing us meals, doing yard work and grocery shopping, and watching the kids as I underwent various medial procedures. We still maintain many friendships in our old city, so moving has greatly increase the size of our community.
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
Each community has their internal frameworks.
Where I currently live churches are not a great access point. Religion is more of a marginalised thing here, so they're more like special interest groups that have bake a lot of bake sales. But in other communities church is a backbone social construct.
In my new rural community church is a mediocre access point, but hiking, fishing and music are seams of the social fabric. In the small town I grew up in, art *is* the local version of religion.
Where we currently are, back in the city, running clubs are a good stand in for church, and often congregate on Sundays, go figure.
Each community has its own social framework, the structure upon which the relationships interact, and understanding that foundational framework is very helpful for integrating into it.
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3) it's hard to start over with friends in retirement. You will be moving into a community where everyone has known each other since, like, grade school and they wonder why someone is showing up post-retirement.
This has not been our experience. After living in our new city for ~2.5 years we now have more great friends that we can shake a stick at. And this was during the pandemic! New dear friends with kids the same age as ours recently moved next door, which has been super fun. I suppose it helps that we moved to a proper city with an influx of people as opposed to a small town or rural area. It also helps that we're part of a great church filled with genuine loving people. I was diagnosed with cancer over the summer and spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital and we had a ton of people bringing us meals, doing yard work and grocery shopping, and watching the kids as I underwent various medial procedures. We still maintain many friendships in our old city, so moving has greatly increase the size of our community.
@GilesMM the portion of your post that @FINate quoted above could not be further from the truth in terms of what we have experienced with the place we moved to in prep for our retirement. What we have found is that really desirable places attract lots of people from other places, so there are tons of people who are looking to develop new social networks for themselves. While smaller than Boise, the place we chose is also very walkable and people are super-friendly and easy to make friends with. My $.02 and experience.
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3) it's hard to start over with friends in retirement. You will be moving into a community where everyone has known each other since, like, grade school and they wonder why someone is showing up post-retirement.
This has not been our experience. After living in our new city for ~2.5 years we now have more great friends that we can shake a stick at. And this was during the pandemic! New dear friends with kids the same age as ours recently moved next door, which has been super fun. I suppose it helps that we moved to a proper city with an influx of people as opposed to a small town or rural area. It also helps that we're part of a great church filled with genuine loving people. I was diagnosed with cancer over the summer and spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital and we had a ton of people bringing us meals, doing yard work and grocery shopping, and watching the kids as I underwent various medial procedures. We still maintain many friendships in our old city, so moving has greatly increase the size of our community.
@GilesMM the portion of your post that @FINate quoted above could not be further from the truth in terms of what we have experienced with the place we moved to in prep for our retirement. What we have found is that really desirable places attract lots of people from other places, so there are tons of people who are looking to develop new social networks for themselves. While smaller than Boise, the place we chose is also very walkable and people are super-friendly and easy to make friends with. My $.02 and experience.
Yeah, anywhere that's popular with retirees is going to have a built-in population of like-minded folks looking for a new community.
Where people will run into more challenges are the areas that no one wants to move to.
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I'm going to go with hawaii - some remote private spot with my own tropical fruit forest and lovely calm gilligans island type lagoon from mid january to mid october, and then new england or midwest spot for 6 weeks of fall, 6 weeks of snow for the holidays, and back to beach about Jan 15....
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There is no perfect location the US. You need to figure out what appeals to YOU regarding climate, politics, culture, cost, family proximity, and all the rest. Every single region/state/city/town has significant compromises.
An increasingly common retirement mistake is to imagine that you need to relocate somewhere better once you stop working. People who stay put tend to have happier and more "successful" retirements because they are well-established. In the best cases, this involves moving to a place and people you already know well, like your home town, your college town or the place you have been spending the last 20 summers. Throwing a dart at the map and moving long distance often ends in tears because 1) the grass is not greener, 2) you lose all your friends and family and 3) it's hard to start over with friends in retirement. You will be moving into a community where everyone has known each other since, like, grade school and they wonder why someone is showing up post-retirement. It sounds ridiculous to announce "We retired on the other side of the country and thought we would like to live here." At a minimum, if you are seriously interested in relocating to a new place, spend 6-12 months there visiting or renting before making a final decision.
I think this is an example of how sometimes people have great insights to their own life, but forget that so many people's lived are vastly different from their own.
We don't live near family. At the moment, we don't live near any close, or even medium-close friends. Sure, we could stay here when my spouse retires, but we wouldn't be staying near any of the things you mention. In fact, being near friends and family is a major motivator for moving in retirement. We also didn't choose to be in this place, so it's not like we came here because it attracted us in some significant way. (Why did we move here, you ask? If I had to nutshell it, that would be "because my spouse got orders and that was that".) Our reasons may be slightly different than others, but many people move to a place for a great job but never like that place. Or the friends and family that made the area once attractive have moved on or died. Or maybe the person has just evolved and what once was a good fit isn't.
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I recently joined a women's charitable organization that has chapters all over the country. I am not a social person, and am a pretty sever introvert, with social anxiety. But I pushed myself to do this, in part because we will most likely be moving, again, in a few years. And even if we don't move, as I mentioned I don't have any friends here anymore. This organization will be a pathway, not unlike a church community, for me to meet people when I move. Maybe they won't be best friends, but it will be human interaction, and a way to make connections.
If someone likes where they live, then yes, there is little reason to relocate. But if they don't particularly like where they live or aren't near friends and family, then of course it makes sense to give strong consideration to moving.
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There is no perfect location the US. You need to figure out what appeals to YOU regarding climate, politics, culture, cost, family proximity, and all the rest. Every single region/state/city/town has significant compromises.
An increasingly common retirement mistake is to imagine that you need to relocate somewhere better once you stop working. People who stay put tend to have happier and more "successful" retirements because they are well-established. In the best cases, this involves moving to a place and people you already know well, like your home town, your college town or the place you have been spending the last 20 summers. Throwing a dart at the map and moving long distance often ends in tears because 1) the grass is not greener, 2) you lose all your friends and family and 3) it's hard to start over with friends in retirement. You will be moving into a community where everyone has known each other since, like, grade school and they wonder why someone is showing up post-retirement. It sounds ridiculous to announce "We retired on the other side of the country and thought we would like to live here." At a minimum, if you are seriously interested in relocating to a new place, spend 6-12 months there visiting or renting before making a final decision.
I think this is an example of how sometimes people have great insights to their own life, but forget that so many people's lived are vastly different from their own.
We don't live near family. At the moment, we don't live near any close, or even medium-close friends. Sure, we could stay here when my spouse retires, but we wouldn't be staying near any of the things you mention. In fact, being near friends and family is a major motivator for moving in retirement. We also didn't choose to be in this place, so it's not like we came here because it attracted us in some significant way. (Why did we move here, you ask? If I had to nutshell it, that would be "because my spouse got orders and that was that".) Our reasons may be slightly different than others, but many people move to a place for a great job but never like that place. Or the friends and family that made the area once attractive have moved on or died. Or maybe the person has just evolved and what once was a good fit isn't.
~~~
I recently joined a women's charitable organization that has chapters all over the country. I am not a social person, and am a pretty sever introvert, with social anxiety. But I pushed myself to do this, in part because we will most likely be moving, again, in a few years. And even if we don't move, as I mentioned I don't have any friends here anymore. This organization will be a pathway, not unlike a church community, for me to meet people when I move. Maybe they won't be best friends, but it will be human interaction, and a way to make connections.
If someone likes where they live, then yes, there is little reason to relocate. But if they don't particularly like where they live or aren't near friends and family, then of course it makes sense to give strong consideration to moving.
This sums up our situation as well. We've actively disliked most things about where we live for the past 20 years. We have one couple who are friends locally, but they are retired and having health issues so not able to go out and do things. Husband actively doesn't want to be near family, and my family are all at least 1,000 miles away. We've lived here b/c of work and work only.
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You're right at the end there. You make Boise very attractive. I personally love varied seasons, and the small but walkable city with people as you described and nearby green areas sounds amazing!
Come check it out for yourself. The Boise Airport (BOI) is great, efficient and easy to navigate. An Uber from BOI to downtown is ~10 minutes and runs around $10. Downtown is very walkable with lots of great restaurants, breweries, and shops. Be sure to visit Jack's Urban Meeting Place (JUMP), a really neat non-profit community center with a free 6-story slide (open most Saturdays) and other free activities. The Capitol is also worth exploring. If in season, the Capitol City Public Market on Saturdays is well worth a visit. Walk the Feak Alley Gallery. If you have kids Zoo Boise and the Discovery Center of Idaho are great.
The best way to explore the city is by bike. Bike through the North End to Hyde Park and grab a bite to eat or coffee. Then continue on to Camel's Back Park and hike up the hill to get a bird's eye view of the city and hike the Hull's Gulch trails behind the park. Bike west through the North End to Esther Simplot Park and watch the river surfers and kayakers at the Whitewater Park. Head across the river on the pedestrian bridge and check out the shops/wineries/breweries/coffee shops along the Garden City side of the Greenbelt. Head south on the Greenbelt and explore Kathryn Albertson Park and Ann Morrison Park. Cross the river north on the pedestrian bridge and work your way back to the downtown area with a stop at Payette Brewing if that's your kinda thing.
ETA: Here's a map of the hiking and mountain biking trails (https://www.ridgetorivers.org/trails/interactive-map/), and a bike map for the city (https://achdidaho.org/Documents/PlansPrograms/BikeMap.pdf).
Thanks for the information and links! I really need to check it out. That many trails like that coupled with a cool city seem awesome. Bikeability is a cherry on top.
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I've never really considered Greenville (or anywhere in SC) but I'll look into it!! Asheville is awesome but likely cost-prohibitive and Chattanooga is probably too far from family (in FL and coastal SC).
Check your drive times on Google Maps. You might be pleasantly surprised. If we were moving, I'd be inclined to spend a weekend in Athens, GA.
We aren't moving, we're close enough to family but not too close. ;) DW and I had a car conversation about what neighborhoods we would live in if we had to move to be closer to family (several southeast cities). Neither one of us could make it work as nicely as our current situation. Assumptions - similar income, similar budget. Small town life is for us. Mostly it is about traffic and long commutes. No thanks!
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
I agree! Considered the same thing for similar reasons. I (we) get enough socializing via work and a few community groups we are involved with that I (we) are grateful when we get home and are able to "switch off".
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
The Unitarians are gonna love you!
(I was raised UU but got all religious and am now a liberal Episcopalian.)
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I've seen real estate prices moderate here in the Bay Area a bit in the last month or two, presumably because of interest rate hikes. But I'm not quite sure how that is similarly causing rent prices to moderate as well. I've seen many rentals be reduced by $200 per month lately and just got notice that a house we had looked at got reduced from $3800 to $3230 per month - a huge reduction! But, it's certainly not reflective of any significant increase in housing stock, so I'm not sure why.
Rents are really going up here and I think it's because potential home buyers (and those like me who have already sold) aren't looking to buy now so increase rental demand.
Apparently the top 10 landlords + 20,000 smaller landlords have been colluding/price fixing via RealPage, Inc. since 2016.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/realpage-major-landlords-face-antitrust-lawsuit-over-rent-spike
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I've seen real estate prices moderate here in the Bay Area a bit in the last month or two, presumably because of interest rate hikes. But I'm not quite sure how that is similarly causing rent prices to moderate as well. I've seen many rentals be reduced by $200 per month lately and just got notice that a house we had looked at got reduced from $3800 to $3230 per month - a huge reduction! But, it's certainly not reflective of any significant increase in housing stock, so I'm not sure why.
Rents are really going up here and I think it's because potential home buyers (and those like me who have already sold) aren't looking to buy now so increase rental demand.
Apparently the top 10 landlords + 20,000 smaller landlords have been colluding/price fixing via RealPage, Inc. since 2016.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/realpage-major-landlords-face-antitrust-lawsuit-over-rent-spike
When I was a commercial real estate appraiser, I had to determine market rent for apartment complexes. Those properties that used this daily pricing software were always a hassle to deal with because if there was only a single 3-bedroom apartment left in the complex it would raise the rent from say $1,200 a month to $1,400 per month. I would always have to ask the leasing agents what the normal rent was they would charge for that type of apartment.
Hotels and airlines have been using similar pricing models for years. No one has accused the hotel industry of collusion when there's a spike in demand because of a large event and every hotel doubles their prices. Try getting a room at a Motel 6 in a booming oil town and it might be $250 a night.
It all comes back to supply and demand. You can operate an apartment complex at 94% occupancy with higher rents and potentially make more money than operating at 98% occupancy with slightly lower rents. But if every other complex in the area is also at 98% then tenants aren't going to have much negotiating power.
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Hotels and airlines have been using similar pricing models for years. No one has accused the hotel industry of collusion when there's a spike in demand because of a large event and every hotel doubles their prices. Try getting a room at a Motel 6 in a booming oil town and it might be $250 a night.
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I don't think the lawsuit is so much about dynamic pricing as it is a third party software product which allows competitors to see each others prices real time and adjust their own. The software certainly seems to "share insider information" since we all know how hard it can be to find a reliable dataset of comparable rents when pricing units for lease.
"Collusion in Antitrust Law:
Horizontal collusion exists where competitors at the same market level agree to fix or control the prices they will charge for their respective goods or services. For instance, two parties may collude by limiting or restricting supply, sharing insider information, or dividing the market."
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
I agree! Considered the same thing for similar reasons. I (we) get enough socializing via work and a few community groups we are involved with that I (we) are grateful when we get home and are able to "switch off".
I'm another one here who has had similar thoughts, especially when I was in small town Eastern NC. Church is how everyone knew everyone, and I was invited numerous times to the local First Baptist church, but religion is just not for me.
Weird thought though...I've always kept work friends at a distance because of my job role--I'm a high level individual contributor, so basically everyone at work is my "customer". I never drink more than one beer in front of work colleagues, I never give a strong opinion on anything not work related, avoid politics and religion conversation topics, etc, even outside of the office. My wife grew up in a heavily religious environment in a small town in the deep south, and the relationship that her and her family have with people from church seems very similar to the relationship I have with work people. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but its completely unfulfilling to only have people like that in your life.
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
The Unitarians are gonna love you!
(I was raised UU but got all religious and am now a liberal Episcopalian.)
Is there another type? My mom is a reformed Episcopalian (aka atheist) but she started going to our small Episcopalian church again (where she used to be the organist) for the community aspect, although she claims she is still an atheist I can imagine all the christians nodding along "the Lord works in mysterious ways".
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
The Unitarians are gonna love you!
(I was raised UU but got all religious and am now a liberal Episcopalian.)
Is there another type? My mom is a reformed Episcopalian (aka atheist) but she started going to our small Episcopalian church again (where she used to be the organist) for the community aspect, although she claims she is still an atheist I can imagine all the christians nodding along "the Lord works in mysterious ways".
The hardline ones seem to get most of the press, but Christian churches vary quite a bit. There was a controversy a few years back at the United Church of Canada when it turned out that one of their ministers was an atheist, but the congregation liked her so much that she ended up keeping her job.
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
The Unitarians are gonna love you!
(I was raised UU but got all religious and am now a liberal Episcopalian.)
Is there another type? My mom is a reformed Episcopalian (aka atheist) but she started going to our small Episcopalian church again (where she used to be the organist) for the community aspect, although she claims she is still an atheist I can imagine all the christians nodding along "the Lord works in mysterious ways".
The hardline ones seem to get most of the press, but Christian churches vary quite a bit. There was a controversy a few years back at the United Church of Canada when it turned out that one of their ministers was an atheist, but the congregation liked her so much that she ended up keeping her job.
Yeah, United Church of Canada is about as liberal as a Christian church can get. A lot of their churches are affirming congregations, which is polar opposite to the values of many socially conservative churches.
I'm about to head out for a meeting with United Church minister whose church has rainbow steps.
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Hotels and airlines have been using similar pricing models for years. No one has accused the hotel industry of collusion when there's a spike in demand because of a large event and every hotel doubles their prices. Try getting a room at a Motel 6 in a booming oil town and it might be $250 a night.
...
I don't think the lawsuit is so much about dynamic pricing as it is a third party software product which allows competitors to see each others prices real time and adjust their own. The software certainly seems to "share insider information" since we all know how hard it can be to find a reliable dataset of comparable rents when pricing units for lease.
"Collusion in Antitrust Law:
Horizontal collusion exists where competitors at the same market level agree to fix or control the prices they will charge for their respective goods or services. For instance, two parties may collude by limiting or restricting supply, sharing insider information, or dividing the market."
As a single property owner, one of the first things I do is go to zillow and see what similar properties are asking. Am I colluding? I think the "agree to fix" from your definition is key. I don't reach out to the neighbors and say, 'Hey, it was charge $300 more a month, and we *all* charge $300 more, then everyone will have to pay it." Or "Let's each wait to list ours until the previous one is rented, so demand stays high."
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
The Unitarians are gonna love you!
(I was raised UU but got all religious and am now a liberal Episcopalian.)
Is there another type? My mom is a reformed Episcopalian (aka atheist) but she started going to our small Episcopalian church again (where she used to be the organist) for the community aspect, although she claims she is still an atheist I can imagine all the christians nodding along "the Lord works in mysterious ways".
The hardline ones seem to get most of the press, but Christian churches vary quite a bit. There was a controversy a few years back at the United Church of Canada when it turned out that one of their ministers was an atheist, but the congregation liked her so much that she ended up keeping her job.
Yeah, United Church of Canada is about as liberal as a Christian church can get. A lot of their churches are affirming congregations, which is polar opposite to the values of many socially conservative churches.
I'm about to head out for a meeting with United Church minister whose church has rainbow steps.
The United Church of Christ (UCC) is the U.S. parallel to the United Church of Canada. We're in a UCC church and I LOVE the denomination as a whole.
Also, I'll add that most nondenominational churches are MORE conservative/fundamentalist than many denominational churches. I'm not sure why that's the case, but the pastors of nondenominational megachurches tend to have some of the most exclusionary beliefs.
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
The Unitarians are gonna love you!
(I was raised UU but got all religious and am now a liberal Episcopalian.)
Is there another type? My mom is a reformed Episcopalian (aka atheist) but she started going to our small Episcopalian church again (where she used to be the organist) for the community aspect, although she claims she is still an atheist I can imagine all the christians nodding along "the Lord works in mysterious ways".
I grew up Anglican and it was pretty liberal even then. I think it is harder to be dogmatic when your brand was founded because a king wanted a divorce that the pope would not grant. ;-)
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The United Church of Christ (UCC) is the U.S. parallel to the United Church of Canada. We're in a UCC church and I LOVE the denomination as a whole.
Also, I'll add that most nondenominational churches are MORE conservative/fundamentalist than many denominational churches. I'm not sure why that's the case, but the pastors of nondenominational megachurches tend to have some of the most exclusionary beliefs.
I didn't know that. We don't have non denominational mega churches in our region, or any mega churches that I know of, so I'm just not familiar with them.
As for my lunch with the mid 50s, white, cis, straight male minister, we spent the majority of the conversation discussing contemporary feminist philosophy and his process of making the language in hymns and songs more inclusive.
Most of his congregation are seniors, with a large proportion being over the age of 90, and yet because they went through the process of becoming an affirming ministry, they're all very committed and very active in their affirming mission, and their stance that that's what being a good Christian means.
Cool church, but still would be useless for me making social connections unless I wanted more friends over 75.
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The United Church of Christ (UCC) is the U.S. parallel to the United Church of Canada. We're in a UCC church and I LOVE the denomination as a whole.
Also, I'll add that most nondenominational churches are MORE conservative/fundamentalist than many denominational churches. I'm not sure why that's the case, but the pastors of nondenominational megachurches tend to have some of the most exclusionary beliefs.
I didn't know that. We don't have non denominational mega churches in our region, or any mega churches that I know of, so I'm just not familiar with them.
As for my lunch with the mid 50s, white, cis, straight male minister, we spent the majority of the conversation discussing contemporary feminist philosophy and his process of making the language in hymns and songs more inclusive.
Most of his congregation are seniors, with a large proportion being over the age of 90, and yet because they went through the process of becoming an affirming ministry, they're all very committed and very active in their affirming mission, and their stance that that's what being a good Christian means.
Cool church, but still would be useless for me making social connections unless I wanted more friends over 75.
In much of the U.S., nondemoninational churches (churches that are not affiliated with a denomination like the UCC or another denomination) tend to go by vague inspirational names like Thrive, Elevation, ___ Community Church, etc. They're usually a lot of younger members and tend to have more of a rock concert feel than an actually theologically-grounded community. It's easy to take on fundamentalist/exclusionary beliefs if you don't actually try to study the Bible in its historical/social context.
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If you want to live in a place where homeless drug addicts are passed out on the sidewalk, then by all means move to San Franisco. If you want to live in a place where taxes are low and the government isn't involved much in your life then move to rural Montana, Wyoming, Utah, etc.
I live in a very red city in a very red state. We have plenty of homeless drug addicts passed out on the sidewalk; it's all the local paper can talk about. Constant police harassment and demolishing tent cities does not seem to be an effective solution. I suspect the reason is simple: the wealth concentrated in cities leads to waste, which makes it easier for people with nothing to find food and necessities.
I grew up in a town of 2,000. I suspect the reason there don't seem to be as many homeless drug addicts there is because they live in shacks and RVs in the woods. No zoning and no one moving people out of unsafe housing means they are "housed" even if that means the roof is falling in and they heat with a DIY barrel stove that will eventually burn the house down.
Also, in a small town, they aren't nameless addicts who live under the viaduct. They are "town druggies" who your mom went to high school with.
That's how myittle town is. We have 4 (was only 1 four years ago) known homeless people and people know them by name. Here they can just setup a tent in the woods outside of town and nobody notices, then they pedal into town when the businesses close and get a somewhat still warm meal from the trash.
I'm personally not a fan, I've had trouble with them stealing parts of my bike and also scaring people at my business. But that's a whole nother problem I don't have the means to solve. We had a temporary surge in homeless presence cause one kind hearted business owner was letting them crash at her coffee shop during the day and giving some free product. - that went away when all the customers went away as well....
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Friend left Wilmington at least partially b/c of fire ants and hurricanes. I find that a local university helps the local culture. Larger group of educated folks to develop a friendship circle from. Dilutes any bad influences who are not receptive to newcomers and new ideas.
Ha! Clearly, fire ants and hurricanes don't deter me! (They probably should, but I love the coast and saltwater kayaking too much to live very far inland.)
I feel like the college town atmosphere would be a big help help. I currently have a digital subscription to their local newspaper and while the area as a whole still appears a bit more conservative/segregated than I'd prefer, it doesn't seem too bad. I have a friend who recently moved there, so we're looking forward to seeing how her experience goes over the next few years!
Just wanted to come back and say that, after going through Hurricane Ian, hurricanes definitely deter me. Maybe it's just PTSD and I'll eventually change my mind, but Wilmington is off the list for now.
I guess that leaves us primarily considering the Raleigh/Durham area... unless anyone has recommendations for other great non-coastal locations in the Southeastern US (for proximity to family).
We moved to Wilmington from the Far North last summer. While Wilmington isn't a walking a biking paradise by any means, I was surprised at how much of the Triangle was not conducive to it. Like narrow, windy, rural-feeling roads full of cars inside the beltline 1 mile from NC State. Consider that if it is important to you.
Wilmington proper doesn't feel too conservative (we will see after today's election), but segregated, yes. Finding a neighborhood that had both diversity and quality schools was a challenge. Your mileage may vary in the unincorporated areas and neighboring counties.
I haven't been through a real hurricane (just the remnants of Ian and now Nicole later this week) but that is a consideration. However, Raleigh/Durham (and the whole region) seems to be as likely to get storm flooding as Wilmington. A quick treatment takes care of fire ants.
Our main issue is making it through the hot/humid summers! Morning Glory has a journal about their move to Wilmington if you are interested.
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This is a question I have pondered my whole adult life. When I was in my 20s and early 30s I wanted to move to Portland. I loved the vibe there. Seemed like people were trying to do something different and that appealed to me. Of course, that became a joke to the extent of becoming a successful TV show. In my 40s now and I realize where I am, Columbus, OH, is somewhat ideal. We are a mid size to big city but I can drive to the airport and be through security in 30 minutes total. We have direct flights to nearly every major metro area on the east coast and most of the big cities to the west. I can drive to Chicago, Pittsburgh, DC, Nashville and many other places in 6 hours or less. I have a downtown free standing home, while a bit rough around the edges would be wildly out of my price range in most “bigger” cities. We have more restaurants than I can keep up with. We have plenty of live entertainment with a major university, theaters, music venues, pro sports teams, etc. I think the other Ohio cities (Cincinnati and Cleveland) are roughly the same or maybe slightly better due to more historic importance. The downsides to living here are obvious so I’ll leave them off this post. I’d like to try living in the country some day but if I had to live in another metro area out of Ohio it would probably be Atlanta. I’d prefer the warmer weather and have spent significant time there. I have traveled to all of the top metro areas (been to Seattle, Orlando, Denver, Las Vegas, Fort Worth, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and many other places this year alone) and I don’t see any real added benefit to living in one of them but I am intrigued by the mountain west posts. I have been to Denver 6 or more times, but haven’t explored the rest. I also really like the southwest but it seems that is probably not a great place to head towards now and I don’t love the traffic.
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Friend left Wilmington at least partially b/c of fire ants and hurricanes. I find that a local university helps the local culture. Larger group of educated folks to develop a friendship circle from. Dilutes any bad influences who are not receptive to newcomers and new ideas.
Ha! Clearly, fire ants and hurricanes don't deter me! (They probably should, but I love the coast and saltwater kayaking too much to live very far inland.)
I feel like the college town atmosphere would be a big help help. I currently have a digital subscription to their local newspaper and while the area as a whole still appears a bit more conservative/segregated than I'd prefer, it doesn't seem too bad. I have a friend who recently moved there, so we're looking forward to seeing how her experience goes over the next few years!
Just wanted to come back and say that, after going through Hurricane Ian, hurricanes definitely deter me. Maybe it's just PTSD and I'll eventually change my mind, but Wilmington is off the list for now.
I guess that leaves us primarily considering the Raleigh/Durham area... unless anyone has recommendations for other great non-coastal locations in the Southeastern US (for proximity to family).
We moved to Wilmington from the Far North last summer. While Wilmington isn't a walking a biking paradise by any means, I was surprised at how much of the Triangle was not conducive to it. Like narrow, windy, rural-feeling roads full of cars inside the beltline 1 mile from NC State. Consider that if it is important to you.
Wilmington proper doesn't feel too conservative (we will see after today's election), but segregated, yes. Finding a neighborhood that had both diversity and quality schools was a challenge. Your mileage may vary in the unincorporated areas and neighboring counties.
I haven't been through a real hurricane (just the remnants of Ian and now Nicole later this week) but that is a consideration. However, Raleigh/Durham (and the whole region) seems to be as likely to get storm flooding as Wilmington. A quick treatment takes care of fire ants.
Our main issue is making it through the hot/humid summers! Morning Glory has a journal about their move to Wilmington if you are interested.
Thanks for the journal recommendation! I just spent way too long reading it. Some of the stories about proud boys at school board meetings don't sound that much better than where we currently live. And your comment about schools/neighborhoods is my exact concern... I'd want to live in the older, downtown part of Wilmington, but we have a school-age daughter. I just don't know.
I did have the same concerns about the Triangle & biking. I've spent limited time there, but it seems like just a lot of sprawl to me.
As for hurricanes, I live basically right where Ian made initial landfall. (Roughly 3/4 of the houses in my neighborhood have tarped roofs right now and our roof is being replaced next week.) Now we're under a Tropical Storm Warning today for Nicole, hoping we don't get more water in our home and that the tall debris piles all over town stay put. I really may just be completely done with hurricanes, despite growing up in Florida and always considering them "no big deal."
Recent research has suggested that Greensboro may also be a good contender. I've never been there, but my husband went for a few days once and loved the downtown area. Internet research seems to suggest lots of parks, greenways for biking, etc. Plus it's a lot more progressive than Wilmington. So, we'll see. We can't go anywhere for another year or so.... because we'll need to get all of our post-hurricane home repairs done before selling and my husband doesn't feel comfortable leaving his job until he oversees their massive hurricane repairs. (He's a pastor and both our sanctuary and community center are being completely gutted after roof damage and major water damage. Church services are currently happening in the parking lot, for at least the next few months. It's a lot, and it would be a bad time to leave.) So, we have a little time to sort it out, think through some options, and optimize our finances for a transition.
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Thanks for the journal recommendation! I just spent way too long reading it. Some of the stories about proud boys at school board meetings don't sound that much better than where we currently live. And your comment about schools/neighborhoods is my exact concern... I'd want to live in the older, downtown part of Wilmington, but we have a school-age daughter. I just don't know.
I did have the same concerns about the Triangle & biking. I've spent limited time there, but it seems like just a lot of sprawl to me.
As for hurricanes, I live basically right where Ian made initial landfall. (Roughly 3/4 of the houses in my neighborhood have tarped roofs right now and our roof is being replaced next week.) Now we're under a Tropical Storm Warning today for Nicole, hoping we don't get more water in our home and that the tall debris piles all over town stay put. I really may just be completely done with hurricanes, despite growing up in Florida and always considering them "no big deal."
Recent research has suggested that Greensboro may also be a good contender. I've never been there, but my husband went for a few days once and loved the downtown area. Internet research seems to suggest lots of parks, greenways for biking, etc. Plus it's a lot more progressive than Wilmington. So, we'll see. We can't go anywhere for another year or so.... because we'll need to get all of our post-hurricane home repairs done before selling and my husband doesn't feel comfortable leaving his job until he oversees their massive hurricane repairs. (He's a pastor and both our sanctuary and community center are being completely gutted after roof damage and major water damage. Church services are currently happening in the parking lot, for at least the next few months. It's a lot, and it would be a bad time to leave.) So, we have a little time to sort it out, think through some options, and optimize our finances for a transition.
Well, I feel a little different about Wilmington politics as the county school board narrowly went all Republican last night. We were initially drawn to affordable housing very near my downtown office, but schools and not wanting to be gentrifiers moved us to the center of Wilmington proper. Similarly East Raleigh is the most bikeable/walkable, but I'm working on a project there and the community has massive gentrification fears.
I'm sorry about how Ian impacted you and Nicole doesn't look like fun. I didn't mean to make light of that concern. I hope you make it through this week unscathed.
I've never been to Greensboro.
It sounds like Wilmington is out, but Mr. Green is our Wilmington old-timer with lots of great insights if you search for them or his journal.
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Friend left Wilmington at least partially b/c of fire ants and hurricanes. I find that a local university helps the local culture. Larger group of educated folks to develop a friendship circle from. Dilutes any bad influences who are not receptive to newcomers and new ideas.
Ha! Clearly, fire ants and hurricanes don't deter me! (They probably should, but I love the coast and saltwater kayaking too much to live very far inland.)
I feel like the college town atmosphere would be a big help help. I currently have a digital subscription to their local newspaper and while the area as a whole still appears a bit more conservative/segregated than I'd prefer, it doesn't seem too bad. I have a friend who recently moved there, so we're looking forward to seeing how her experience goes over the next few years!
Just wanted to come back and say that, after going through Hurricane Ian, hurricanes definitely deter me. Maybe it's just PTSD and I'll eventually change my mind, but Wilmington is off the list for now.
I guess that leaves us primarily considering the Raleigh/Durham area... unless anyone has recommendations for other great non-coastal locations in the Southeastern US (for proximity to family).
We moved to Wilmington from the Far North last summer. While Wilmington isn't a walking a biking paradise by any means, I was surprised at how much of the Triangle was not conducive to it. Like narrow, windy, rural-feeling roads full of cars inside the beltline 1 mile from NC State. Consider that if it is important to you.
Wilmington proper doesn't feel too conservative (we will see after today's election), but segregated, yes. Finding a neighborhood that had both diversity and quality schools was a challenge. Your mileage may vary in the unincorporated areas and neighboring counties.
I haven't been through a real hurricane (just the remnants of Ian and now Nicole later this week) but that is a consideration. However, Raleigh/Durham (and the whole region) seems to be as likely to get storm flooding as Wilmington. A quick treatment takes care of fire ants.
Our main issue is making it through the hot/humid summers! Morning Glory has a journal about their move to Wilmington if you are interested.
Thanks for the journal recommendation! I just spent way too long reading it. Some of the stories about proud boys at school board meetings don't sound that much better than where we currently live. And your comment about schools/neighborhoods is my exact concern... I'd want to live in the older, downtown part of Wilmington, but we have a school-age daughter. I just don't know.
I did have the same concerns about the Triangle & biking. I've spent limited time there, but it seems like just a lot of sprawl to me.
As for hurricanes, I live basically right where Ian made initial landfall. (Roughly 3/4 of the houses in my neighborhood have tarped roofs right now and our roof is being replaced next week.) Now we're under a Tropical Storm Warning today for Nicole, hoping we don't get more water in our home and that the tall debris piles all over town stay put. I really may just be completely done with hurricanes, despite growing up in Florida and always considering them "no big deal."
Recent research has suggested that Greensboro may also be a good contender. I've never been there, but my husband went for a few days once and loved the downtown area. Internet research seems to suggest lots of parks, greenways for biking, etc. Plus it's a lot more progressive than Wilmington. So, we'll see. We can't go anywhere for another year or so.... because we'll need to get all of our post-hurricane home repairs done before selling and my husband doesn't feel comfortable leaving his job until he oversees their massive hurricane repairs. (He's a pastor and both our sanctuary and community center are being completely gutted after roof damage and major water damage. Church services are currently happening in the parking lot, for at least the next few months. It's a lot, and it would be a bad time to leave.) So, we have a little time to sort it out, think through some options, and optimize our finances for a transition.
Err, who told you Greensboro was more progressive? Its definitely got more people of color living there, but just because there's more minorities doesn't mean that the politics will be dramatically more liberal. There is also some really really rough places in Greensboro. Definitely visit a few times to get a feel for the place before committing anything. A big plus for Greensboro though is that its CHEAP right now. 1% properties abound and I'm considering investing there. And yes, the surrounding Piedmont region is really pretty.
As for bikability of the Triangle, it really blows everywhere else in the state out of the water. @AnotherEngineer, were you referring to Wade Ave when you talked about the twisty ITB road near NCSU? Yup, its sketchy but Grant Ave and Clark Ave run parallel and are exceptionally bikeable. Glenwood Ave is another ITB road that's sketchy and twisty near NCSU, but there's a greenway that runs parallel also. Its been a while since I've tried riding in Wilmington, but I recall trying to find side streets and they all had abrupt dead ends at waterways or gates. Maybe its improved since I've been there? Its been ~8 years or so since I've visited.
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Friend left Wilmington at least partially b/c of fire ants and hurricanes. I find that a local university helps the local culture. Larger group of educated folks to develop a friendship circle from. Dilutes any bad influences who are not receptive to newcomers and new ideas.
Ha! Clearly, fire ants and hurricanes don't deter me! (They probably should, but I love the coast and saltwater kayaking too much to live very far inland.)
I feel like the college town atmosphere would be a big help help. I currently have a digital subscription to their local newspaper and while the area as a whole still appears a bit more conservative/segregated than I'd prefer, it doesn't seem too bad. I have a friend who recently moved there, so we're looking forward to seeing how her experience goes over the next few years!
Just wanted to come back and say that, after going through Hurricane Ian, hurricanes definitely deter me. Maybe it's just PTSD and I'll eventually change my mind, but Wilmington is off the list for now.
I guess that leaves us primarily considering the Raleigh/Durham area... unless anyone has recommendations for other great non-coastal locations in the Southeastern US (for proximity to family).
We moved to Wilmington from the Far North last summer. While Wilmington isn't a walking a biking paradise by any means, I was surprised at how much of the Triangle was not conducive to it. Like narrow, windy, rural-feeling roads full of cars inside the beltline 1 mile from NC State. Consider that if it is important to you.
Wilmington proper doesn't feel too conservative (we will see after today's election), but segregated, yes. Finding a neighborhood that had both diversity and quality schools was a challenge. Your mileage may vary in the unincorporated areas and neighboring counties.
I haven't been through a real hurricane (just the remnants of Ian and now Nicole later this week) but that is a consideration. However, Raleigh/Durham (and the whole region) seems to be as likely to get storm flooding as Wilmington. A quick treatment takes care of fire ants.
Our main issue is making it through the hot/humid summers! Morning Glory has a journal about their move to Wilmington if you are interested.
Thanks for the journal recommendation! I just spent way too long reading it. Some of the stories about proud boys at school board meetings don't sound that much better than where we currently live. And your comment about schools/neighborhoods is my exact concern... I'd want to live in the older, downtown part of Wilmington, but we have a school-age daughter. I just don't know.
I did have the same concerns about the Triangle & biking. I've spent limited time there, but it seems like just a lot of sprawl to me.
As for hurricanes, I live basically right where Ian made initial landfall. (Roughly 3/4 of the houses in my neighborhood have tarped roofs right now and our roof is being replaced next week.) Now we're under a Tropical Storm Warning today for Nicole, hoping we don't get more water in our home and that the tall debris piles all over town stay put. I really may just be completely done with hurricanes, despite growing up in Florida and always considering them "no big deal."
Recent research has suggested that Greensboro may also be a good contender. I've never been there, but my husband went for a few days once and loved the downtown area. Internet research seems to suggest lots of parks, greenways for biking, etc. Plus it's a lot more progressive than Wilmington. So, we'll see. We can't go anywhere for another year or so.... because we'll need to get all of our post-hurricane home repairs done before selling and my husband doesn't feel comfortable leaving his job until he oversees their massive hurricane repairs. (He's a pastor and both our sanctuary and community center are being completely gutted after roof damage and major water damage. Church services are currently happening in the parking lot, for at least the next few months. It's a lot, and it would be a bad time to leave.) So, we have a little time to sort it out, think through some options, and optimize our finances for a transition.
Err, who told you Greensboro was more progressive? Its definitely got more people of color living there, but just because there's more minorities doesn't mean that the politics will be dramatically more liberal. There is also some really really rough places in Greensboro. Definitely visit a few times to get a feel for the place before committing anything. A big plus for Greensboro though is that its CHEAP right now. 1% properties abound and I'm considering investing there. And yes, the surrounding Piedmont region is really pretty.
As for bikability of the Triangle, it really blows everywhere else in the state out of the water. @AnotherEngineer, were you referring to Wade Ave when you talked about the twisty ITB road near NCSU? Yup, its sketchy but Grant Ave and Clark Ave run parallel and are exceptionally bikeable. Glenwood Ave is another ITB road that's sketchy and twisty near NCSU, but there's a greenway that runs parallel also. Its been a while since I've tried riding in Wilmington, but I recall trying to find side streets and they all had abrupt dead ends at waterways or gates. Maybe its improved since I've been there? Its been ~8 years or so since I've visited.
Elections in Guilford County lean more Democrat-heavy than many other counties in NC. Also, my husband has family in that area who corroborate that there's a significant progressive/outdoorsy community there.
I have, however, wondered how much of their Democratic representation was due to the larger minority population... and likewise for Durham. Our current community is 30% Democrat, but I've yet to meet a white Democrat in these areas so I suspect it's largely the minority population that accounts for that 30%. I guess that really doesn't or shouldn't matter, but it does sort of matter when many communities tend to be segregated and I don't encounter other Democrats in my social circles.
I previously lived in Hickory. I liked a lot of things about it, except the conservative politics.
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As for bikability of the Triangle, it really blows everywhere else in the state out of the water. @AnotherEngineer, were you referring to Wade Ave when you talked about the twisty ITB road near NCSU? Yup, its sketchy but Grant Ave and Clark Ave run parallel and are exceptionally bikeable. Glenwood Ave is another ITB road that's sketchy and twisty near NCSU, but there's a greenway that runs parallel also. Its been a while since I've tried riding in Wilmington, but I recall trying to find side streets and they all had abrupt dead ends at waterways or gates. Maybe its improved since I've been there? Its been ~8 years or so since I've visited.
To clarify, I wasn't trying to be comprehensive of Raleigh biking and biking in NC overall is lacking. I know parts of the Triangle can be great. I should have been more explicit: the neighborhoods we were looking at in Raleigh to move to in 2019 (the most affordable inside the beltline I would be able to bike downtown for work) seemed to either have major barriers to biking or we would be gentrifying. This plus limited affordability is why we chose Wilmington which has limited but reasonable biking and was more affordable.
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From here in Germany, the Netherlands look like a great place to retire. Things seem more progressive over there, more bikeable than Germany and much neater. I meant neat in the way people take care of their houses and gardens streets and walkways are taken care of...
We were on vacation in New England and New York State for 4 weeks this summer and many places were beautiful. However, it was often difficult to find walkways or path for running. I would not want to live in a place where I need to use my car to get somewhere to walk (safely)
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Friend left Wilmington at least partially b/c of fire ants and hurricanes. I find that a local university helps the local culture. Larger group of educated folks to develop a friendship circle from. Dilutes any bad influences who are not receptive to newcomers and new ideas.
Ha! Clearly, fire ants and hurricanes don't deter me! (They probably should, but I love the coast and saltwater kayaking too much to live very far inland.)
I feel like the college town atmosphere would be a big help help. I currently have a digital subscription to their local newspaper and while the area as a whole still appears a bit more conservative/segregated than I'd prefer, it doesn't seem too bad. I have a friend who recently moved there, so we're looking forward to seeing how her experience goes over the next few years!
Just wanted to come back and say that, after going through Hurricane Ian, hurricanes definitely deter me. Maybe it's just PTSD and I'll eventually change my mind, but Wilmington is off the list for now.
I guess that leaves us primarily considering the Raleigh/Durham area... unless anyone has recommendations for other great non-coastal locations in the Southeastern US (for proximity to family).
We moved to Wilmington from the Far North last summer. While Wilmington isn't a walking a biking paradise by any means, I was surprised at how much of the Triangle was not conducive to it. Like narrow, windy, rural-feeling roads full of cars inside the beltline 1 mile from NC State. Consider that if it is important to you.
Wilmington proper doesn't feel too conservative (we will see after today's election), but segregated, yes. Finding a neighborhood that had both diversity and quality schools was a challenge. Your mileage may vary in the unincorporated areas and neighboring counties.
I haven't been through a real hurricane (just the remnants of Ian and now Nicole later this week) but that is a consideration. However, Raleigh/Durham (and the whole region) seems to be as likely to get storm flooding as Wilmington. A quick treatment takes care of fire ants.
Our main issue is making it through the hot/humid summers! Morning Glory has a journal about their move to Wilmington if you are interested.
Thanks for the journal recommendation! I just spent way too long reading it. Some of the stories about proud boys at school board meetings don't sound that much better than where we currently live. And your comment about schools/neighborhoods is my exact concern... I'd want to live in the older, downtown part of Wilmington, but we have a school-age daughter. I just don't know.
I did have the same concerns about the Triangle & biking. I've spent limited time there, but it seems like just a lot of sprawl to me.
As for hurricanes, I live basically right where Ian made initial landfall. (Roughly 3/4 of the houses in my neighborhood have tarped roofs right now and our roof is being replaced next week.) Now we're under a Tropical Storm Warning today for Nicole, hoping we don't get more water in our home and that the tall debris piles all over town stay put. I really may just be completely done with hurricanes, despite growing up in Florida and always considering them "no big deal."
Recent research has suggested that Greensboro may also be a good contender. I've never been there, but my husband went for a few days once and loved the downtown area. Internet research seems to suggest lots of parks, greenways for biking, etc. Plus it's a lot more progressive than Wilmington. So, we'll see. We can't go anywhere for another year or so.... because we'll need to get all of our post-hurricane home repairs done before selling and my husband doesn't feel comfortable leaving his job until he oversees their massive hurricane repairs. (He's a pastor and both our sanctuary and community center are being completely gutted after roof damage and major water damage. Church services are currently happening in the parking lot, for at least the next few months. It's a lot, and it would be a bad time to leave.) So, we have a little time to sort it out, think through some options, and optimize our finances for a transition.
Hi!! I'm typing on a phone right now so will keep it brief but i wanted to add/clarify a couple things. The school districts go by counties here. With my two having special needs the neighborhood/school issue isn't something I have to worry about since they'll be bussed to whichever school has the right program, although i think they should try to make the schools more equal. I did need to choose a community with >100k people to have the right programs, so that rules out a lot of small towns. Also NC has better school funding and ACA plans than most other southern states.
Wilmington has some of the best air quality in the US, if allergies or asthma are a concern for you. Also lots more sunshine than up north if seasonal depression is an issue. The biking is not so good though and there are some parts of town where it's not even safe to walk because of the way the roads are designed. Certainly not a perfect place but moving again would be a crapshoot, with all the variables I have going on.
I've never been to Greensboro. I liked Asheville (too expensive) and also Knoxville TN (was concerned about schools and aca in TN though).
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This is a question I have pondered my whole adult life. When I was in my 20s and early 30s I wanted to move to Portland. I loved the vibe there. Seemed like people were trying to do something different and that appealed to me. Of course, that became a joke to the extent of becoming a successful TV show. In my 40s now and I realize where I am, Columbus, OH, is somewhat ideal. We are a mid size to big city but I can drive to the airport and be through security in 30 minutes total. We have direct flights to nearly every major metro area on the east coast and most of the big cities to the west. I can drive to Chicago, Pittsburgh, DC, Nashville and many other places in 6 hours or less. I have a downtown free standing home, while a bit rough around the edges would be wildly out of my price range in most “bigger” cities. We have more restaurants than I can keep up with. We have plenty of live entertainment with a major university, theaters, music venues, pro sports teams, etc. I think the other Ohio cities (Cincinnati and Cleveland) are roughly the same or maybe slightly better due to more historic importance. The downsides to living here are obvious so I’ll leave them off this post. I’d like to try living in the country some day but if I had to live in another metro area out of Ohio it would probably be Atlanta. I’d prefer the warmer weather and have spent significant time there. I have traveled to all of the top metro areas (been to Seattle, Orlando, Denver, Las Vegas, Fort Worth, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and many other places this year alone) and I don’t see any real added benefit to living in one of them but I am intrigued by the mountain west posts. I have been to Denver 6 or more times, but haven’t explored the rest. I also really like the southwest but it seems that is probably not a great place to head towards now and I don’t love the traffic.
I'm curious about the down side of Columbus.
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
The Unitarians are gonna love you!
(I was raised UU but got all religious and am now a liberal Episcopalian.)
Is there another type? My mom is a reformed Episcopalian (aka atheist) but she started going to our small Episcopalian church again (where she used to be the organist) for the community aspect, although she claims she is still an atheist I can imagine all the christians nodding along "the Lord works in mysterious ways".
Oh, there are some very conservative Episcopal congregations, though many of them have split off and now call themselves "Anglican".
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This is a question I have pondered my whole adult life. When I was in my 20s and early 30s I wanted to move to Portland. I loved the vibe there. Seemed like people were trying to do something different and that appealed to me. Of course, that became a joke to the extent of becoming a successful TV show. In my 40s now and I realize where I am, Columbus, OH, is somewhat ideal. We are a mid size to big city but I can drive to the airport and be through security in 30 minutes total. We have direct flights to nearly every major metro area on the east coast and most of the big cities to the west. I can drive to Chicago, Pittsburgh, DC, Nashville and many other places in 6 hours or less. I have a downtown free standing home, while a bit rough around the edges would be wildly out of my price range in most “bigger” cities. We have more restaurants than I can keep up with. We have plenty of live entertainment with a major university, theaters, music venues, pro sports teams, etc. I think the other Ohio cities (Cincinnati and Cleveland) are roughly the same or maybe slightly better due to more historic importance. The downsides to living here are obvious so I’ll leave them off this post. I’d like to try living in the country some day but if I had to live in another metro area out of Ohio it would probably be Atlanta. I’d prefer the warmer weather and have spent significant time there. I have traveled to all of the top metro areas (been to Seattle, Orlando, Denver, Las Vegas, Fort Worth, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and many other places this year alone) and I don’t see any real added benefit to living in one of them but I am intrigued by the mountain west posts. I have been to Denver 6 or more times, but haven’t explored the rest. I also really like the southwest but it seems that is probably not a great place to head towards now and I don’t love the traffic.
I'm curious about the down side of Columbus.
Well, as someone who recently moved out of Ohio after 26 years there, the weather is awful and the politics are going downhill rapidly.
And there were many upsides to NE Ohio, honestly. Columbus is doing quite well economically, so that's a bonus. I lived in a much smaller place and had a pretty great life there, but my kids weren't going to stay there and I felt like the politics were so divisive, and had changed so much so fast that I just couldn't deal with it.
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
The Unitarians are gonna love you!
(I was raised UU but got all religious and am now a liberal Episcopalian.)
Is there another type? My mom is a reformed Episcopalian (aka atheist) but she started going to our small Episcopalian church again (where she used to be the organist) for the community aspect, although she claims she is still an atheist I can imagine all the christians nodding along "the Lord works in mysterious ways".
Oh, there are some very conservative Episcopal congregations, though many of them have split off and now call themselves "Anglican".
I know this is a side branch, but now I am all confused. Isn't Anglican in Canada what Episcopalian is in the US? Or to rephrase, Anglican is in Canada what Church of England is in England? And Anglican in Canada is usually pretty liberal.
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I do think a church community serves as a lock-pick (as Malcat put it) for a lot of people which confers some real benefits to its members. I've considered trying to join a non-denominational church of some sort purely for the social network, even though husband and I are atheists and generally find religion creepy.
The Unitarians are gonna love you!
(I was raised UU but got all religious and am now a liberal Episcopalian.)
Is there another type? My mom is a reformed Episcopalian (aka atheist) but she started going to our small Episcopalian church again (where she used to be the organist) for the community aspect, although she claims she is still an atheist I can imagine all the christians nodding along "the Lord works in mysterious ways".
Oh, there are some very conservative Episcopal congregations, though many of them have split off and now call themselves "Anglican".
I know this is a side branch, but now I am all confused. Isn't Anglican in Canada what Episcopalian is in the US? Or to rephrase, Anglican is in Canada what Church of England is in England? And Anglican in Canada is usually pretty liberal.
Episcopalians are part of the Anglican Communion, so yes. And also, no.
As churches in the US left the Episcopal church and allied themselves with different bishops (many of whom are African), those churches have called themselves "Anglican". They are not part of the Episcopal church because they have left the Episcopal structure and aren no longer subject to their diocesan bishops. First group left over women priests and a later batch over gays.
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This is a question I have pondered my whole adult life. When I was in my 20s and early 30s I wanted to move to Portland. I loved the vibe there. Seemed like people were trying to do something different and that appealed to me. Of course, that became a joke to the extent of becoming a successful TV show. In my 40s now and I realize where I am, Columbus, OH, is somewhat ideal. We are a mid size to big city but I can drive to the airport and be through security in 30 minutes total. We have direct flights to nearly every major metro area on the east coast and most of the big cities to the west. I can drive to Chicago, Pittsburgh, DC, Nashville and many other places in 6 hours or less. I have a downtown free standing home, while a bit rough around the edges would be wildly out of my price range in most “bigger” cities. We have more restaurants than I can keep up with. We have plenty of live entertainment with a major university, theaters, music venues, pro sports teams, etc. I think the other Ohio cities (Cincinnati and Cleveland) are roughly the same or maybe slightly better due to more historic importance. The downsides to living here are obvious so I’ll leave them off this post. I’d like to try living in the country some day but if I had to live in another metro area out of Ohio it would probably be Atlanta. I’d prefer the warmer weather and have spent significant time there. I have traveled to all of the top metro areas (been to Seattle, Orlando, Denver, Las Vegas, Fort Worth, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and many other places this year alone) and I don’t see any real added benefit to living in one of them but I am intrigued by the mountain west posts. I have been to Denver 6 or more times, but haven’t explored the rest. I also really like the southwest but it seems that is probably not a great place to head towards now and I don’t love the traffic.
I'm curious about the down side of Columbus.
Years ago I attended a 3 day training session and expected to encounter suburban strip malls upon suburban stripmalkls, mucho sprawl. Much to my surprise, the training session was held in the city’s central Victorian Park. I stayed in a inexpensive motel on the edge of German village which is incredibly charming. Just for German Village alone I would give Columbus a high rating!
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As someone born and raised in New England, escaped to SoCal after graduating and has now returned back to New England for a 3 week ‘holiday’ … I’d like to reaffirm that living anywhere other than coastal CA is absolutely insane :)
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As someone born and raised in New England, escaped to SoCal after graduating and has now returned back to New England for a 3 week ‘holiday’ … I’d like to reaffirm that living anywhere other than coastal CA is absolutely insane :)
As someone who was born and raise in CA, I find these types of statements from other Californians off putting. Looking down on an entire region, and everyone that lives there, is in poor taste. Your visit to NE coincided with the worst winter storm in a generation. It would be like someone visiting CA during a bad fire season or during a serious earthquake and concluding that it's insane to live there. Disasters happen everywhere.
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As someone born and raised in New England, escaped to SoCal after graduating and has now returned back to New England for a 3 week ‘holiday’ … I’d like to reaffirm that living anywhere other than coastal CA is absolutely insane :)
As someone who was born and raise in CA, I find these types of statements from other Californians off putting. Looking down on an entire region, and everyone that lives there, is in poor taste. Your visit to NE coincided with the worst winter storm in a generation. It would be like someone visiting CA during a bad fire season or during a serious earthquake and concluding that it's insane to live there. Disasters happen everywhere.
They say they grew up in New England-- I think that gives them the perspective, and the right, to trash on New England if they want to.
Now, I'd take New England over southern California, but to each their own.
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As someone born and raised in New England, escaped to SoCal after graduating and has now returned back to New England for a 3 week ‘holiday’ … I’d like to reaffirm that living anywhere other than coastal CA is absolutely insane :)
As someone who was born and raise in CA, I find these types of statements from other Californians off putting. Looking down on an entire region, and everyone that lives there, is in poor taste. Your visit to NE coincided with the worst winter storm in a generation. It would be like someone visiting CA during a bad fire season or during a serious earthquake and concluding that it's insane to live there. Disasters happen everywhere.
They say they grew up in New England-- I think that gives them the perspective, and the right, to trash on New England if they want to.
Now, I'd take New England over southern California, but to each their own.
Sure, but perspective goes both ways. Growing up in coastal CA I witnessed a *lot* of bashing of other places and my perspective is that it's arrogant. Stating that living anywhere other is insane is myopic. If that's true for them that's fine, but it's not true in general because people value different things.
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And people not from CA love to bash CA. Maybe their words weren't carefully chosen so as to prevent ruffling any feather out there, but it seems to pretty clearly be in jest.
I think that post was a light-hearted jest from someone who actually has the perspective (more than a few weeks during a bad winter) to have an educated opinion.
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Maybe we should just stop bashing places in general :) Including bashing of CA. Where I grew up, some of the worst CA bashing came from fellow Californians. It was common for coastal CA folks to make fun of the Central Valley, calling it "the armpit of CA." Basically, wealthy white people looking down on lower income areas that are predominately Latino.
Every place has trade-offs, but the more I travel the US the more I realize that there are a lot of wonderful places to live, and we're all fortunate to have access to such diversity of geography and culture.
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This comment comes in multiple parts!
1) To my tastes (walkability/urbanism-oriented), SF is the only way to do California. I'm curious to spend more time getting to know LA at some point, but I wouldn't want to live there.
The Northeast has most of the best cities in the US. But yes, the California weather is pretty much unbeatable. Now we just need to wait a while for all the new state housing laws to start to make a difference on the housing shortage, and for CA High Speed Rail to come online.
2) Spending more time in SF, I've found the city is hampered by a really over-zealous dedication to separation of uses. Huge swaths of the city have this monotonous residential-only feel. There are lively commercial corridors surrounded by blocks and blocks of barren, boring residential that are quite uncomfortable to walk at night. Urban streets need activity to be comfortable and inviting, and too much of SF still subscribes to a suburban-style separation of uses.
SF is still among the best walkable/urbanist cities of the US, but the more I read about urban planning the more I see just how much 20th century urban planning went awry, which had outsize negative impacts on the US, Canada, and Australia as they had growing wealth with which to build out these grand delusions of the future and plenty of land to build on. Not to idealize Europe, as they made plenty of the same mistakes at the time, but they had enough surviving older urban fabric to compare to, so they could at least realize and correct their mistakes.
3) NYC is still the best city in the country for car-free living by far, but I think that the "second-bests" are all kind of close enough in quality, and vary in their own unique ways, that there's a lot of choice to be had in that second tier (Boston, SF, DC, Chicago, Portland, Philly, etc.). I especially think I was under-rating Portland, because despite low population density and the overall metro area being quite car-centric, the urban core is really quite fantastic. Portland still does seem like quite an ideal place for Mustachianism—the bang for your buck there is really fantastic in terms of getting a reasonably good climate, outdoor activities, and ped/bike friendliness.
4) I concentrate on cities for my own preferences, but I admit the ultimate Mustachian ideal is probably smaller town living. If I had to live in a smaller town, I'd absolutely focus my search in the Northeast, for older urban fabric and for culture. If outside the Northeast, it'd have to be a college town.
I haven't gotten to spend any time there personally, so I'll admit I'm probably woefully misinformed, but I have a highly romanticized ideal in my head whenever anyone talks about Maine or Vermont. Small towns in New Jersey or Pennsylvania might not be quite as Romantic, but I'd still choose that region over more car-centric towns out here in the west. (Better regional train connectivity is a big plus too.)
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SF is still among the best walkable/urbanist cities of the US, but the more I read about urban planning the more I see just how much 20th century urban planning went awry, which had outsize negative impacts on the US, Canada, and Australia as they had growing wealth with which to build out these grand delusions of the future and plenty of land to build on. Not to idealize Europe, as they made plenty of the same mistakes at the time, but they had enough surviving older urban fabric to compare to, so they could at least realize and correct their mistakes.
I watched an interesting YouTube video about this recently and what it boils down to is American cities (outside NYC and a few others) basically grew once mass transportation was available. European cities almost all grew at a time when everyone had to walk everywhere. So, they were far denser and more walkable because there were no cars, no streetcars, no subways, no buses, etc. In those cases, the center of the city was the most desirable place to live as it was closest to everything. Taking that into account there's simply no way to recreate that urban pattern in a US (or Canadian, or Australian) city which generally developed in an era where it was always cheaper to spread out then build up due to transportation options other than walking.
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SF is still among the best walkable/urbanist cities of the US, but the more I read about urban planning the more I see just how much 20th century urban planning went awry, which had outsize negative impacts on the US, Canada, and Australia as they had growing wealth with which to build out these grand delusions of the future and plenty of land to build on. Not to idealize Europe, as they made plenty of the same mistakes at the time, but they had enough surviving older urban fabric to compare to, so they could at least realize and correct their mistakes.
I watched an interesting YouTube video about this recently and what it boils down to is American cities (outside NYC and a few others) basically grew once mass transportation was available. European cities almost all grew at a time when everyone had to walk everywhere. So, they were far denser and more walkable because there were no cars, no streetcars, no subways, no buses, etc. In those cases, the center of the city was the most desirable place to live as it was closest to everything. Taking that into account there's simply no way to recreate that urban pattern in a US (or Canadian, or Australian) city which generally developed in an era where it was always cheaper to spread out then build up due to transportation options other than walking.
Cars definitely contributed to the change, but I think the causation is probably a little more complicated, and that cars don't inevitably lead to American-style cities. The rise of the car led to a lot of Grand Utopian VisionsTM of how cities could be built differently, which generally led to idealization of highly segregated zoning and plentiful "open space," along with vilification of high population densities. A lot of planners and architects subscribed to these visions, and their ideals began to insidiously be taken for granted in matters of public policy. We could be making policy choices that create much more pleasant and enjoyable urban environments.
I think those ideals listed above can make for decent suburban towns, but they are really problematic in cities. In cities with lots of people (and therefore, lots of strangers) abundance of open space creates parks and plazas that are devoid of witnesses, and therefore dangerous. Strict separation of uses creates residential streets that don't have the buzz of activity of people running errands or sitting out at the cafe, which again, means a lack of witnesses, and therefore danger. And fear of increased population density just leads to this horrific housing shortage we're suffering from, which California foreshadowed, but has now taken the entire country.
This importation of suburban ideals into cities makes unpleasant places. These overly suburban cities are exemplified in the sun belt, but also in the worst victims of rust belt decline (Detroit, Cleveland). The voters in these cities think that accepting urbanism will make traffic worse and let more crime into their neighborhoods though, so they're not going to change their opinions any time soon. So I won't choose to live in any of those places.
However much I dislike suburbia, I would rather live in a nice suburb than live in a place like Orlando or Phoenix, which try to be suburban while having far too many people for it to actually work well. "Too many people" is only a problem in a place that is trying to cling to a small-town/suburban character. For a proper city, it's part of a virtuous cycle of pleasant, safe streets and economic productivity.
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SF is still among the best walkable/urbanist cities of the US, but the more I read about urban planning the more I see just how much 20th century urban planning went awry, which had outsize negative impacts on the US, Canada, and Australia as they had growing wealth with which to build out these grand delusions of the future and plenty of land to build on. Not to idealize Europe, as they made plenty of the same mistakes at the time, but they had enough surviving older urban fabric to compare to, so they could at least realize and correct their mistakes.
I watched an interesting YouTube video about this recently and what it boils down to is American cities (outside NYC and a few others) basically grew once mass transportation was available. European cities almost all grew at a time when everyone had to walk everywhere. So, they were far denser and more walkable because there were no cars, no streetcars, no subways, no buses, etc. In those cases, the center of the city was the most desirable place to live as it was closest to everything. Taking that into account there's simply no way to recreate that urban pattern in a US (or Canadian, or Australian) city which generally developed in an era where it was always cheaper to spread out then build up due to transportation options other than walking.
Yes, if you ignore everything that happened before 1945 you can make that argument. But the USA had the same industrial revolution that Europe did starting in 1870, without cars. Before tearing it up we had the largest electrified streetcar network on the planet (in a little town called Los Angeles). During the WWII war economy the big three actually stopped making cars for four years so that they could contribute directly to the war effort. We helped beat the Nazis and nuked Japan before we ever had a national highway trust fund.
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SF is still among the best walkable/urbanist cities of the US, but the more I read about urban planning the more I see just how much 20th century urban planning went awry, which had outsize negative impacts on the US, Canada, and Australia as they had growing wealth with which to build out these grand delusions of the future and plenty of land to build on. Not to idealize Europe, as they made plenty of the same mistakes at the time, but they had enough surviving older urban fabric to compare to, so they could at least realize and correct their mistakes.
I watched an interesting YouTube video about this recently and what it boils down to is American cities (outside NYC and a few others) basically grew once mass transportation was available. European cities almost all grew at a time when everyone had to walk everywhere. So, they were far denser and more walkable because there were no cars, no streetcars, no subways, no buses, etc. In those cases, the center of the city was the most desirable place to live as it was closest to everything. Taking that into account there's simply no way to recreate that urban pattern in a US (or Canadian, or Australian) city which generally developed in an era where it was always cheaper to spread out then build up due to transportation options other than walking.
Yes, if you ignore everything that happened before 1945 you can make that argument. But the USA had the same industrial revolution that Europe did starting in 1870, without cars. Before tearing it up we had the largest electrified streetcar network on the planet (in a little town called Los Angeles). During the WWII war economy the big three actually stopped making cars for four years so that they could contribute directly to the war effort. We helped beat the Nazis and nuked Japan before we ever had a national highway trust fund.
It also helps to look at the history of cities which are particularly pedestrian friendly now. Copenhagen is one of the most bike friendly large cities, yet it wass as very car centric in the 60s and 70s. Same with Portland Oregon. The idea that “our cities were built for cars [therefore they cannot pivot to prioritize pedestrian transport]” isn’t backed up by any strong correlation between a city’s history. It’s also not very tightly couple to climate or latitude.
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I was thinking recently - we live in a walkable area in the middle of Houston, which is the opposite of pedestrian friendly. Our housing costs are super high relative to the rest of the area due to supply/demand issues (only so much space before things aren’t easily walkable, esp with little kids). I guess then we’d need a bunch of these neighborhoods close together to provide enough housing…which is basically an urban core. The question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
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The question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
I am not an expert on the European housing market but I think that you need to remember that:
1. Rent control does not produce more housing, so it does not solve the problem of having enough walkable neighborhoods. If anything is reduces housing supply.
2. A lot of Europe never stopped building walkable neighborhoods.
3. A lot of European countries have falling populations, housing is cheap in some of these places (but Russia is blowing some of it up right now).
4. Some cities in Europe activly build housing. My favorite example is Vienna (https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html). This is the opposite of rent control. Instead of restricting prices increase supply. I can not stress enough that Vienna (as in the government) is building high density housing that is illegal to build in most of the USA.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
This is true. You also need to remember that homes in Europe are smaller. Much smaller. Unfeasibly smaller according to mainstream North American thought. Flats (apartments) and terraces (row homes/town homes) are very common. Roads are generally smaller and parking places for cars are fewer because cars are smaller and fewer. Small sizes help with both density and price.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
This is true. You also need to remember that homes in Europe are smaller. Much smaller. Unfeasibly smaller according to mainstream North American thought. Flats (apartments) and terraces (row homes/town homes) are very common. Roads are generally smaller and parking places for cars are fewer because cars are smaller and fewer. Small sizes help with both density and price.
How much smaller would you say for flats or terraces? Are we talking about a couple, no kids, generally living in 1000 sf or 700 sf or even less for example?
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
This is true. You also need to remember that homes in Europe are smaller. Much smaller. Unfeasibly smaller according to mainstream North American thought. Flats (apartments) and terraces (row homes/town homes) are very common. Roads are generally smaller and parking places for cars are fewer because cars are smaller and fewer. Small sizes help with both density and price.
How much smaller would you say for flats or terraces? Are we talking about a couple, no kids, generally living in 1000 sf or 700 sf or even less for example?
1,000 square feet (roughly 85 meters) would be a posh apartment in London and most other European cities, especially if it’s just two people. Move away from the cities and homes start getting predictably larger, though your “typical” middle class SFH is unlikely to be anywhere near the 3,000 structure so common in the US.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
This is true. You also need to remember that homes in Europe are smaller. Much smaller. Unfeasibly smaller according to mainstream North American thought. Flats (apartments) and terraces (row homes/town homes) are very common. Roads are generally smaller and parking places for cars are fewer because cars are smaller and fewer. Small sizes help with both density and price.
How much smaller would you say for flats or terraces? Are we talking about a couple, no kids, generally living in 1000 sf or 700 sf or even less for example?
Minimum sizes for new residential accommodation in London:
Studio or one bedroom for a single person 37 square metres, for two people 50 sqm
Two bedroom: 61 (3 beds) or 70 (4 beds) sqm
Three bedroom 74 (4 beds) or 95 (6 beds) sqm
Multiply by 10.76 to get sq feet equivalents.
A young couple with no kids in London would probably be in a one bedroom flat, unless they had additional resources over the norm.
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I was thinking recently - we live in a walkable area in the middle of Houston, which is the opposite of pedestrian friendly. Our housing costs are super high relative to the rest of the area due to supply/demand issues (only so much space before things aren’t easily walkable, esp with little kids). I guess then we’d need a bunch of these neighborhoods close together to provide enough housing…which is basically an urban core. The question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
Your walkable neighborhood is expensive because walkable neighborhoods are scarce. If you build a lot more of them, then they cease to be scarce, and price goes down. The problem isn't that walkable neighborhoods are somehow inherently more expensive, it's that most municipal building and zoning codes make it illegal to build at high densities with residences and businesses in close proximity to one another. Those are the most basic conditions for a neighborhood to be walkable. If you can't build that way, then all the demand chasing walkability has to compete over extremely limited supply, and prices skyrocket.
It would also be good for our overall housing shortage to build more apartments rather than SFHs, because with construction costs so high right now, a new SFH is very expensive to build while contributing little to overall supply. Building a 3-unit or 20-unit building is way cheaper than building 3 or 20 detached homes.
I was with my aunt one time last year and she was complaining that they were building "luxury" high-rises downtown in her city in Florida. But in real estate speak, "luxury" just means "new." Construction costs are high, developers have to recoup their investment. If you say "no luxury housing," then nothing ever gets built, and the prices just get higher and higher. If you keep building year after year, then that expensive new luxury tower won't be luxury anymore in 30 years. But you can't build a brand new 30-year-old tower. But if you say "no luxury towers," then you just stopped a developer from alleviating your supply shortage by 300 units, and the existing housing remains unaffordable.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
Absolutely not in the UK, but the British people I know living in the UK don't typically refer to the UK as part of Europe. BritMonkey has a whole video about UK (and US) housing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxzBcxB7Zc). Note for the BritMonkey video: the UK government used to build a ton of housing and then Margaret Thatcher put an end to it.
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I was with my aunt one time last year and she was complaining that they were building "luxury" high-rises downtown in her city in Florida. But in real estate speak, "luxury" just means "new." Construction costs are high, developers have to recoup their investment. If you say "no luxury housing," then nothing ever gets built, and the prices just get higher and higher. If you keep building year after year, then that expensive new luxury tower won't be luxury anymore in 30 years. But you can't build a brand new 30-year-old tower. But if you say "no luxury towers," then you just stopped a developer from alleviating your supply shortage by 300 units, and the existing housing remains unaffordable.
Exactly this. The California Legislative Analyst's Office (non-partisan, state funded) published a report (https://lao.ca.gov/publications/report/3345) about this several years ago. Housing (the structure itself) depreciates over time as materials age and styles change. This produces a filtering effect, with former "luxury" (i.e. new) housing becoming increasingly affordable as time progresses. Stopping/slowing new development disrupts this pipeline and drives up prices for everyone. This is one of the reasons we threw in the towel and moved out of California: Decades of no-growth policies have produced such an extreme supply/demand imbalance that it will take at least a decade of massive building to catch up, which may or may not happen, but even if it does it will take at least another decade for that new construction to filter down and become affordable. We decided this wasn't a healthy environment to raise kids, and not a good situation for them as they move into adulthood.
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I was with my aunt one time last year and she was complaining that they were building "luxury" high-rises downtown in her city in Florida. But in real estate speak, "luxury" just means "new." Construction costs are high, developers have to recoup their investment. If you say "no luxury housing," then nothing ever gets built, and the prices just get higher and higher. If you keep building year after year, then that expensive new luxury tower won't be luxury anymore in 30 years. But you can't build a brand new 30-year-old tower. But if you say "no luxury towers," then you just stopped a developer from alleviating your supply shortage by 300 units, and the existing housing remains unaffordable.
Exactly this. The California Legislative Analyst's Office (non-partisan, state funded) published a report (https://lao.ca.gov/publications/report/3345) about this several years ago. Housing (the structure itself) depreciates over time as materials age and styles change. This produces a filtering effect, with former "luxury" (i.e. new) housing becoming increasingly affordable as time progresses. Stopping/slowing new development disrupts this pipeline and drives up prices for everyone. This is one of the reasons we threw in the towel and moved out of California: Decades of no-growth policies have produced such an extreme supply/demand imbalance that it will take at least a decade of massive building to catch up, which may or may not happen, but even if it does it will take at least another decade for that new construction to filter down and become affordable. We decided this wasn't a healthy environment to raise kids, and not a good situation for them as they move into adulthood.
Yeah California's a mess. I think because their crisis started earlier than everyone else's, they're seeing the light a little sooner. Even with municipalities still dragging their feet, the state legislature has been passing good policies to accelerate construction. Still, like you said, it'll be at least 10 years before enough of these newly-legalized projects are finished for them to actually start to make a dent in the market.
If I land the right job, SF could be the long-term place for me. I'm young enough I could be around to see those long-term benefits, and since I don't want kids I can stick it out through the intervening struggles. But my current relationship to SF (and California more broadly) is one of exasperation at so much unrealized potential.
This climate should really be accommodating the most walkable, bike-able cities and towns in America. Somehow even in the land of perfect weather, people still demand the perpetual climate-control of their clown cars.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
This is true. You also need to remember that homes in Europe are smaller. Much smaller. Unfeasibly smaller according to mainstream North American thought. Flats (apartments) and terraces (row homes/town homes) are very common. Roads are generally smaller and parking places for cars are fewer because cars are smaller and fewer. Small sizes help with both density and price.
How much smaller would you say for flats or terraces? Are we talking about a couple, no kids, generally living in 1000 sf or 700 sf or even less for example?
Minimum sizes for new residential accommodation in London:
Studio or one bedroom for a single person 37 square metres, for two people 50 sqm
Two bedroom: 61 (3 beds) or 70 (4 beds) sqm
Three bedroom 74 (4 beds) or 95 (6 beds) sqm
Multiply by 10.76 to get sq feet equivalents.
A young couple with no kids in London would probably be in a one bedroom flat, unless they had additional resources over the norm.
I started out, married, in a 775 sf - 72 sqm place, and it didn't feel that small. We could even entertain groups of 8 or more in it.
I'll have to admit that 37 sqm, 400 sf, even for one person sounds really small.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
This is true. You also need to remember that homes in Europe are smaller. Much smaller. Unfeasibly smaller according to mainstream North American thought. Flats (apartments) and terraces (row homes/town homes) are very common. Roads are generally smaller and parking places for cars are fewer because cars are smaller and fewer. Small sizes help with both density and price.
How much smaller would you say for flats or terraces? Are we talking about a couple, no kids, generally living in 1000 sf or 700 sf or even less for example?
Minimum sizes for new residential accommodation in London:
Studio or one bedroom for a single person 37 square metres, for two people 50 sqm
Two bedroom: 61 (3 beds) or 70 (4 beds) sqm
Three bedroom 74 (4 beds) or 95 (6 beds) sqm
Multiply by 10.76 to get sq feet equivalents.
A young couple with no kids in London would probably be in a one bedroom flat, unless they had additional resources over the norm.
I started out, married, in a 775 sf - 72 sqm place, and it didn't feel that small. We could even entertain groups of 8 or more in it.
I'll have to admit that 37 sqm, 400 sf, even for one person sounds really small.
I had about 350sqft my last year of grad school/ first year out. I would host dinner parties and one of the professors with an apartment twice the size would come and say "I wish I had a big enough place to do this." Ummm.....
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A young couple with no kids in London would probably be in a one bedroom flat, unless they had additional resources over the norm.
I stared out married with two kids in a two bedroom 78m2 flat and I never felt that it was too small. But my American wife didn't agree so we moved to the suburbs. Worst decision of my life.*
* - We purchased a house in suburban USA in March 2007.
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This is true. You also need to remember that homes in Europe are smaller. Much smaller. Unfeasibly smaller according to mainstream North American thought. Flats (apartments) and terraces (row homes/town homes) are very common. Roads are generally smaller and parking places for cars are fewer because cars are smaller and fewer. Small sizes help with both density and price.
One thing I can’t unsee is how much complete private redundancy suburbia has. You have a big house and yard, sure. But you end up having to have your own private playground, since the public one is not walkably close due to all the low density houses. Private pools, since we seem to no longer have public ones at all (let alone nearby ones). Private decorative gardens. So on. If infrastructure is too spread out, you have to have your own private copy, leading to bigger houses, leading to things being even more spread out.
Supermarkets are miles away, and massive to navigate, so you need a walk in pantry and multiple fridges and freezers to store the weekly haul in. My local light rail has nothing next to the station, so I can’t just hit up a sane sized grocery store located directly in the station like I could when I spent time in Germany. So while I am hugely privileged to have good light rail access, it mostly sucks as a transportation option for normal life activities like shopping and getting anywhere I want to go.
Cars need roads and parking spaces, causing the beginnings of sprawl. Sprawl leads to sprawl. Once you are in sprawl it feels like the only way to make life better is to get a bigger house and more land. Living in a small house in the suburban desert is hell, far from all the things that make life good, and unable to replicate it for yourself by building a crappy private version for yourself.
America has few “third places”, largely because they work badly in the middle of sprawl (and are usually not legal to build as well).
End rant.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
Absolutely not in the UK, but the British people I know living in the UK don't typically refer to the UK as part of Europe. BritMonkey has a whole video about UK (and US) housing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxzBcxB7Zc). Note for the BritMonkey video: the UK government used to build a ton of housing and then Margaret Thatcher put an end to it.
I don't suppose that they do in everyday speech, most people don't think about it, but the UK is in Europe, always has been. I consider myself to be European. Of course, if you supported brexit you're likely to not consider yourself European,but somewhat less than half the population voted for Brexit and even less support it now.
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Burlingame, CA
San Bruno, CA (near 280 freeway)
Millbrae, CA
South San Francisco, CA (near 280 freeway, because low lying areas could flood)
Daly City, CA (94015 zip code)
from my SM-G781U
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
Absolutely not in the UK, but the British people I know living in the UK don't typically refer to the UK as part of Europe. BritMonkey has a whole video about UK (and US) housing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxzBcxB7Zc). Note for the BritMonkey video: the UK government used to build a ton of housing and then Margaret Thatcher put an end to it.
I don't suppose that they do in everyday speech, most people don't think about it, but the UK is in Europe, always has been. I consider myself to be European. Of course, if you supported brexit you're likely to not consider yourself European,but somewhat less than half the population voted for Brexit and even less support it now.
Could the UK ever rejoin the EU?
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
Absolutely not in the UK, but the British people I know living in the UK don't typically refer to the UK as part of Europe. BritMonkey has a whole video about UK (and US) housing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxzBcxB7Zc). Note for the BritMonkey video: the UK government used to build a ton of housing and then Margaret Thatcher put an end to it.
I don't suppose that they do in everyday speech, most people don't think about it, but the UK is in Europe, always has been. I consider myself to be European. Of course, if you supported brexit you're likely to not consider yourself European,but somewhat less than half the population voted for Brexit and even less support it now.
Could the UK ever rejoin the EU?
Maybe? I think there is a reasonable chance after the next general election (which will be within the next two years) that there will start to be a renegotiation of the exit deal to help ease some of the barriers to trade that Boris Johnson's Brexit put in place- it just makes too much economic and social sense to do this, whatever the politics of it all. I think that will gradually get to a point of free trade/free movement of people over a number of years, probably through the accretion of various ad hoc deals being put togther over the years where the advantage to both sides is obvious. Whether that ever gets to the point where full membership makes sense is difficult to say given the current political stupidities. But in a couple of decades the Brexit voters will be mostly dead and gone so who knows?
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Could the UK ever rejoin the EU?
Maybe? I think there is a reasonable chance after the next general election (which will be within the next two years) that there will start to be a renegotiation of the exit deal to help ease some of the barriers to trade that Boris Johnson's Brexit put in place- it just makes too much economic and social sense to do this, whatever the politics of it all. I think that will gradually get to a point of free trade/free movement of people over a number of years, probably through the accretion of various ad hoc deals being put togther over the years where the advantage to both sides is obvious. Whether that ever gets to the point where full membership makes sense is difficult to say given the current political stupidities. But in a couple of decades the Brexit voters will be mostly dead and gone so who knows?
Based off of current statements by the Labour and Conservative parties I think that it is very unlikely that the UK rejoins the EU. What might be more palatable is to rejoin the EEA (The Guardian: There is a way to limit Brexit damage – rejoin the single market (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/02/there-is-a-way-to-limit-brexit-damage-rejoin-the-single-market)).
I don't know, I'm a member of the SNP that wants to take Scotland and put it back into the EU.
I think that EEA membership might be a happy middle ground.
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I can't see it either. The politicians in the main parties are scared to death of the Faragist nutcases and won't even talk about Brexit; it's as if it never happened. Starmer, who was a remainer, is insisting that Brexit is done and he won't revisit it if he gets into power.
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Not to mention the EU would have to agree to take the UK back and forgive and forget the colossal waste of time and machinations the Brexiteers made them go through while maligning them every chance they got. Or does it seem like they'd be eager to have the UK back?
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Not to mention the EU would have to agree to take the UK back and forgive and forget the colossal waste of time and machinations the Brexiteers made them go through while maligning them every chance they got. Or does it seem like they'd be eager to have the UK back?
Yeah, I can't imagine that the EU would take the UK back at this point.
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Not to mention the EU would have to agree to take the UK back and forgive and forget the colossal waste of time and machinations the Brexiteers made them go through while maligning them every chance they got. Or does it seem like they'd be eager to have the UK back?
Yeah, I can't imagine that the EU would take the UK back at this point.
Also, even if they did agree to take them back they might not let them come back with the GBP and instead might insist that they adopt the Euro which is probably a non-starter from the UK side.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
This is true. You also need to remember that homes in Europe are smaller. Much smaller. Unfeasibly smaller according to mainstream North American thought. Flats (apartments) and terraces (row homes/town homes) are very common. Roads are generally smaller and parking places for cars are fewer because cars are smaller and fewer. Small sizes help with both density and price.
How much smaller would you say for flats or terraces? Are we talking about a couple, no kids, generally living in 1000 sf or 700 sf or even less for example?
Minimum sizes for new residential accommodation in London:
Studio or one bedroom for a single person 37 square metres, for two people 50 sqm
Two bedroom: 61 (3 beds) or 70 (4 beds) sqm
Three bedroom 74 (4 beds) or 95 (6 beds) sqm
Multiply by 10.76 to get sq feet equivalents.
A young couple with no kids in London would probably be in a one bedroom flat, unless they had additional resources over the norm.
I started out, married, in a 775 sf - 72 sqm place, and it didn't feel that small. We could even entertain groups of 8 or more in it.
I'll have to admit that 37 sqm, 400 sf, even for one person sounds really small.
Interesting discussion.
I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
This is true. You also need to remember that homes in Europe are smaller. Much smaller. Unfeasibly smaller according to mainstream North American thought. Flats (apartments) and terraces (row homes/town homes) are very common. Roads are generally smaller and parking places for cars are fewer because cars are smaller and fewer. Small sizes help with both density and price.
How much smaller would you say for flats or terraces? Are we talking about a couple, no kids, generally living in 1000 sf or 700 sf or even less for example?
Minimum sizes for new residential accommodation in London:
Studio or one bedroom for a single person 37 square metres, for two people 50 sqm
Two bedroom: 61 (3 beds) or 70 (4 beds) sqm
Three bedroom 74 (4 beds) or 95 (6 beds) sqm
Multiply by 10.76 to get sq feet equivalents.
A young couple with no kids in London would probably be in a one bedroom flat, unless they had additional resources over the norm.
I started out, married, in a 775 sf - 72 sqm place, and it didn't feel that small. We could even entertain groups of 8 or more in it.
I'll have to admit that 37 sqm, 400 sf, even for one person sounds really small.
Interesting discussion.
I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
Noise does not have to be a problem if apartments are properly built.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
This is true. You also need to remember that homes in Europe are smaller. Much smaller. Unfeasibly smaller according to mainstream North American thought. Flats (apartments) and terraces (row homes/town homes) are very common. Roads are generally smaller and parking places for cars are fewer because cars are smaller and fewer. Small sizes help with both density and price.
How much smaller would you say for flats or terraces? Are we talking about a couple, no kids, generally living in 1000 sf or 700 sf or even less for example?
Minimum sizes for new residential accommodation in London:
Studio or one bedroom for a single person 37 square metres, for two people 50 sqm
Two bedroom: 61 (3 beds) or 70 (4 beds) sqm
Three bedroom 74 (4 beds) or 95 (6 beds) sqm
Multiply by 10.76 to get sq feet equivalents.
A young couple with no kids in London would probably be in a one bedroom flat, unless they had additional resources over the norm.
I started out, married, in a 775 sf - 72 sqm place, and it didn't feel that small. We could even entertain groups of 8 or more in it.
I'll have to admit that 37 sqm, 400 sf, even for one person sounds really small.
Interesting discussion.
I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
Noise does not have to be a problem if apartments are properly built.
I believe you, but every apartment I’ve ever lived in has been constructed as cheaply as possible and I might as well have been sleeping in the same room as everyone in the building. Which is how I’d imagine they’d have to be constructed if they were to provide a clear financial incentive to allow for widespread adoption in the US.
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he question is: how are housing prices kept reasonable in these scenarios? It seems Europe has managed to do it; do most countries have strict rent controls to keep prices in check?
They aren't, especially in the UK. I think that you'll find that prices near the cantres of desirable cities are high. Most people don't live in the centre, they live in the suburbs, just like the US, although the suburbs are not generally as spread out.
This is true. You also need to remember that homes in Europe are smaller. Much smaller. Unfeasibly smaller according to mainstream North American thought. Flats (apartments) and terraces (row homes/town homes) are very common. Roads are generally smaller and parking places for cars are fewer because cars are smaller and fewer. Small sizes help with both density and price.
How much smaller would you say for flats or terraces? Are we talking about a couple, no kids, generally living in 1000 sf or 700 sf or even less for example?
Minimum sizes for new residential accommodation in London:
Studio or one bedroom for a single person 37 square metres, for two people 50 sqm
Two bedroom: 61 (3 beds) or 70 (4 beds) sqm
Three bedroom 74 (4 beds) or 95 (6 beds) sqm
Multiply by 10.76 to get sq feet equivalents.
A young couple with no kids in London would probably be in a one bedroom flat, unless they had additional resources over the norm.
I started out, married, in a 775 sf - 72 sqm place, and it didn't feel that small. We could even entertain groups of 8 or more in it.
I'll have to admit that 37 sqm, 400 sf, even for one person sounds really small.
Interesting discussion.
I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
Noise does not have to be a problem if apartments are properly built.
Nope.
I live in a decently built standalone house in the suburbs with an OK sized yard. Noise is occasionally a problem for me. Don't get me wrong, the average person is reasonable about stuff . . . but an asshole can easily and cheaply get a sufficiently loud sound system to defeat any reasonable soundproofing construction. Since there are a certain percentage of assholes out there it's really just a matter of luck/time.
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I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
But it isn't either-or. You can conceivably have a six story apartment building, some row houses (aka terraced houses), and single family detached houses on the same block. I mean, if there weren't laws against it.
EDITed to add: I've lived in a couple row houses. No complaints, would happily do it again.
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The neighbors in my last detached house had a habit of having outdoor domestic arguments in the middle of the night: one partner locked the other out, they were yelling at each other in the side yard between our houses, etc. Would have been no more annoying if we shared a wall instead of having an 8' air gap between our houses.
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I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
But it isn't either-or. You can conceivably have a six story apartment building, some row houses (aka terraced houses), and single family detached houses on the same block. I mean, if there weren't laws against it.
EDITed to add: I've lived in a couple row houses. No complaints, would happily do it again.
Right, but wouldn’t people just choose the SFH option and make that the more profitable product for builders to produce? I think that’s the case in the US right now—people that can afford to buy a house want a SFH, so that’s what they buy and therefore, that’s what builders build. End result:sprawl.
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The neighbors in my last detached house had a habit of having outdoor domestic arguments in the middle of the night: one partner locked the other out, they were yelling at each other in the side yard between our houses, etc. Would have been no more annoying if we shared a wall instead of having an 8' air gap between our houses.
I feel this. I think living in a single family house in the suburbs is all of the worst parts of living in an apartment and living in a rural area with none of the benefits of either. You have just enough property to be an expensive pain in the ass to maintain and still no genuine privacy or control of your surroundings.
My neighbors are generally quiet, but a lot of the people around me insist on having exterior lights on all night. If you don't have curtains in a room, there are always random beams of light coming though the edges of the window blinds. I don't understand why people do this. Do they leave their faucets running all the time just in case they need to wash their hands? Do they leave their cars running all the time just in case they need to drive somewhere? Why would you do this with lights on the outside of your property? Is anyone expecting visitors at 2am? Even if a thief is trying to break in to your house in the dark, is anyone actually going to be awake to see the break in occur? It's just a massive amount of energy wasted for the benefit of nobody.
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I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
But it isn't either-or. You can conceivably have a six story apartment building, some row houses (aka terraced houses), and single family detached houses on the same block. I mean, if there weren't laws against it.
EDITed to add: I've lived in a couple row houses. No complaints, would happily do it again.
Right, but wouldn’t people just choose the SFH option and make that the more profitable product for builders to produce? I think that’s the case in the US right now—people that can afford to buy a house want a SFH, so that’s what they buy and therefore, that’s what builders build. End result:sprawl.
Price and location are part of preference. All things being equal, people might generally prefer to have a detached house, but all things can not be equal. Construction costs of a duplex are not 2x the costs for a SFH, and so on. A developer will happily build a fourplex and sell 4 condo units that are each cheaper than an SFH, but cumulatively more profitable, if the zoning code allows them to. The problem is zoning, not preferences.
Or to be more precise, zoning obscures market preference. For more of the people who want to live in desirable locations to be able to actually live there, we would need higher-density zoning in those places. Wealthy people can afford to own single family homes in ultra-desirable locations because the value of the land is depressed by the zoning. If the zoning permitted a more profitable development, the land value would skyrocket, and suddenly building a single family home there would be revealed to be utterly absurd.
Strict zoning also causes rising rents and displacement, because of the only projects developers are allowed to pursue are 1-to-1 replacements of little old cheap SFHs with big new expensive SFHs, then the person who can afford the fancy new house replaces whoever could afford the old place and there’s nowhere for them to go. If more cities could gradually densify over time, the increase in housing units ends the game of musical chairs—we could build enough for everybody, but we’ve created this housing crisis for ourselves through our absurdly restrictive zoning codes.
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I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
Simply changing zoning to add high density apartments to an existing single family house neighborhood can be a disaster. I witnessed this years ago in SoCal. I lived near an older neighborhood of mostly small bungalows. Somehow, a developer was able to buy one of the properties and scrape off the existing home and replace it with a two story six unit apartment building. This added parking and noise issues to the neighborhood. The properties on either side of the new apartments could not be sold to anyone except an developer who would put in more crappy apartment buildings. So, in a short period of time, they saw a huge increase in density but not improvement in infrastructure or public transportation. Within a few short years they had an instant slum. The older residents felt sucker punched as they felt the city changed the rules in the middle of the game. I'm not saying it can't be done better, just saying it can be very very bad.
But it isn't either-or. You can conceivably have a six story apartment building, some row houses (aka terraced houses), and single family detached houses on the same block. I mean, if there weren't laws against it.
EDITed to add: I've lived in a couple row houses. No complaints, would happily do it again.
Right, but wouldn’t people just choose the SFH option and make that the more profitable product for builders to produce? I think that’s the case in the US right now—people that can afford to buy a house want a SFH, so that’s what they buy and therefore, that’s what builders build. End result:sprawl.
Price and location are part of preference. All things being equal, people might generally prefer to have a detached house, but all things can not be equal. Construction costs of a duplex are not 2x the costs for a SFH, and so on. A developer will happily build a fourplex and sell 4 condo units that are each cheaper than an SFH, but cumulatively more profitable, if the zoning code allows them to. The problem is zoning, not preferences.
Or to be more precise, zoning obscures market preference. For more of the people who want to live in desirable locations to be able to actually live there, we would need higher-density zoning in those places. Wealthy people can afford to own single family homes in ultra-desirable locations because the value of the land is depressed by the zoning. If the zoning permitted a more profitable development, the land value would skyrocket, and suddenly building a single family home there would be revealed to be utterly absurd.
Strict zoning also causes rising rents and displacement, because of the only projects developers are allowed to pursue are 1-to-1 replacements of little old cheap SFHs with big new expensive SFHs, then the person who can afford the fancy new house replaces whoever could afford the old place and there’s nowhere for them to go. If more cities could gradually densify over time, the increase in housing units ends the game of musical chairs—we could build enough for everybody, but we’ve created this housing crisis for ourselves through our absurdly restrictive zoning codes.
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I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
But it isn't either-or. You can conceivably have a six story apartment building, some row houses (aka terraced houses), and single family detached houses on the same block. I mean, if there weren't laws against it.
EDITed to add: I've lived in a couple row houses. No complaints, would happily do it again.
Right, but wouldn’t people just choose the SFH option and make that the more profitable product for builders to produce? I think that’s the case in the US right now—people that can afford to buy a house want a SFH, so that’s what they buy and therefore, that’s what builders build. End result:sprawl.
But it's not, since 75% of land is zoned as SFH only! it's illegal to build anything else. People never have to option to choose something else, so we don't' actually know.
https://www.planetizen.com/definition/single-family-zoning
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In the latest edition of: "I went to a city I've heard is good and it was good," Washington, DC is a pretty kickass city and I would gladly live there. Good mixture of uses and walkability, the Metro system works great, it would be easy and enjoyable to live car-free there. Good train access up the Northeast corridor. I'm into the demographic tilt towards a bunch of highly educated public policy wonks, though the inability to escape political talk might grate after a time. Biggest urbanism complaints are just that they need to continue densifying (like every US city...) and that many streets were way too wide.
In my rather time-limited exploration, neighborhood highlights were Georgetown, Adams Morgan, and Q St west of Dupont Circle. I'll have to check out Columbia Heights and Capitol Hill next time I visit.
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In the latest edition of: "I went to a city I've heard is good and it was good," Washington, DC is a pretty kickass city and I would gladly live there. Good mixture of uses and walkability, the Metro system works great, it would be easy and enjoyable to live car-free there. Good train access up the Northeast corridor. I'm into the demographic tilt towards a bunch of highly educated public policy wonks, though the inability to escape political talk might grate after a time. Biggest urbanism complaints are just that they need to continue densifying (like every US city...) and that many streets were way too wide.
In my rather time-limited exploration, neighborhood highlights were Georgetown, Adams Morgan, and Q St west of Dupont Circle. I'll have to check out Columbia Heights and Capitol Hill next time I visit.
I live nearby, and agree DC is a nice city. At not just the mall and museums! (but the free museums are great with kids). Areas like Logan and Dupont circle, and around the zoo are also nice! Metro is descent, amazing by US standards. Close access to international airports, coast/beaches, the bay(!), mountains. Philadelphia, NYC few hours away. If you have $900,000+ you can get a nice charming little house in a walkable area.. lol
Every time I think about moving it's missing several of the amenities around this area (which of course cause a lot of people to want to live here..)
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In the latest edition of: "I went to a city I've heard is good and it was good," Washington, DC is a pretty kickass city and I would gladly live there. Good mixture of uses and walkability, the Metro system works great, it would be easy and enjoyable to live car-free there. Good train access up the Northeast corridor. I'm into the demographic tilt towards a bunch of highly educated public policy wonks, though the inability to escape political talk might grate after a time. Biggest urbanism complaints are just that they need to continue densifying (like every US city...) and that many streets were way too wide.
In my rather time-limited exploration, neighborhood highlights were Georgetown, Adams Morgan, and Q St west of Dupont Circle. I'll have to check out Columbia Heights and Capitol Hill next time I visit.
I live nearby, and agree DC is a nice city. At not just the mall and museums! (but the free museums are great with kids). Areas like Logan and Dupont circle, and around the zoo are also nice! Metro is descent, amazing by US standards. Close access to international airports, coast/beaches, the bay(!), mountains. Philadelphia, NYC few hours away. If you have $900,000+ you can get a nice charming little house in a walkable area.. lol
Every time I think about moving it's missing several of the amenities around this area (which of course cause a lot of people to want to live here..)
Re: housing costs, it just came up in a video that I was watching (https://youtu.be/OkEWifQ_mgE) that the cost difference between renting in LCOL vs HCOL cities is consistently smaller than the cost difference for buying. The renter life is also validated in "The Simple Path to Wealth" which I just finally got around to reading. Seems like a lot of the hysteria over it being impossible to live in HCOL cities is exacerbated by the obsession with home ownership.
Last minute addition to the thought, looks like my beloved nerdy Urbanist Youtubers coordinated topics (https://youtu.be/OkEWifQ_mgE) this week.
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The renter life is also validated in "The Simple Path to Wealth" which I just finally got around to reading. Seems like a lot of the hysteria over it being impossible to live in HCOL cities is exacerbated by the obsession with home ownership.
I like that book. I also strongly recommend his new book: How I Lost Money in Real Estate Before It Was Fashionable
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In the latest edition of: "I went to a city I've heard is good and it was good," Washington, DC is a pretty kickass city and I would gladly live there. Good mixture of uses and walkability, the Metro system works great, it would be easy and enjoyable to live car-free there. Good train access up the Northeast corridor. I'm into the demographic tilt towards a bunch of highly educated public policy wonks, though the inability to escape political talk might grate after a time. Biggest urbanism complaints are just that they need to continue densifying (like every US city...) and that many streets were way too wide.
In my rather time-limited exploration, neighborhood highlights were Georgetown, Adams Morgan, and Q St west of Dupont Circle. I'll have to check out Columbia Heights and Capitol Hill next time I visit.
I live nearby, and agree DC is a nice city. At not just the mall and museums! (but the free museums are great with kids). Areas like Logan and Dupont circle, and around the zoo are also nice! Metro is descent, amazing by US standards. Close access to international airports, coast/beaches, the bay(!), mountains. Philadelphia, NYC few hours away. If you have $900,000+ you can get a nice charming little house in a walkable area.. lol
Every time I think about moving it's missing several of the amenities around this area (which of course cause a lot of people to want to live here..)
I don't think $900k buys you a house in DC unless you are miles from a metro station and/or well out of the heart of DC.
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In the latest edition of: "I went to a city I've heard is good and it was good," Washington, DC is a pretty kickass city and I would gladly live there. Good mixture of uses and walkability, the Metro system works great, it would be easy and enjoyable to live car-free there. Good train access up the Northeast corridor. I'm into the demographic tilt towards a bunch of highly educated public policy wonks, though the inability to escape political talk might grate after a time. Biggest urbanism complaints are just that they need to continue densifying (like every US city...) and that many streets were way too wide.
In my rather time-limited exploration, neighborhood highlights were Georgetown, Adams Morgan, and Q St west of Dupont Circle. I'll have to check out Columbia Heights and Capitol Hill next time I visit.
I live nearby, and agree DC is a nice city. At not just the mall and museums! (but the free museums are great with kids). Areas like Logan and Dupont circle, and around the zoo are also nice! Metro is descent, amazing by US standards. Close access to international airports, coast/beaches, the bay(!), mountains. Philadelphia, NYC few hours away. If you have $900,000+ you can get a nice charming little house in a walkable area.. lol
Every time I think about moving it's missing several of the amenities around this area (which of course cause a lot of people to want to live here..)
I don't think $900k buys you a house in DC unless you are miles from a metro station and/or well out of the heart of DC.
A cursory glance at Zillow filtered for houses or townhomes from $800k-900k reveals a multitude of options in the northern and eastern parts of the city, including several which are extremely close to Metro stops and seem at a glance to be nicely fixed up. Yeah, we get it, expensive cities are expensive. We don't need to constantly hyperbolize the issue.
If you open your search up to condos, there are multitudes of spacious and modern options much closer to the center of the city and/or at lower price points.
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got 250m laying around: World's Highest Apartment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLxi1kzpkQY&ab_channel=ArchitecturalDigest
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I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
But it isn't either-or. You can conceivably have a six story apartment building, some row houses (aka terraced houses), and single family detached houses on the same block. I mean, if there weren't laws against it.
EDITed to add: I've lived in a couple row houses. No complaints, would happily do it again.
Right, but wouldn’t people just choose the SFH option and make that the more profitable product for builders to produce? I think that’s the case in the US right now—people that can afford to buy a house want a SFH, so that’s what they buy and therefore, that’s what builders build. End result:sprawl.
But it's not, since 75% of land is zoned as SFH only! it's illegal to build anything else. People never have to option to choose something else, so we don't' actually know.
https://www.planetizen.com/definition/single-family-zoning
True. It would be interesting to bust up the zoning a bit and see what happens. I've heard that Houston has no zoning at all, has that made for more walkability than other big Texas cities? I've never been there.
One issue we have in the Greater Asheville Area is that the county government is very anti-infrastructure of any kind (they've got a "if you don't build it they won't come" philosophy) so bike lanes, sidewalks, non-dead end roads and turn lanes are not something they do here. The result is that any time there is an apartment complex built, there is a big bump in traffic because nobody has thought to try to make it easier for the 300 new people who now live there to get where they need to go. This pattern has been repeated over and over again in the last 10 years so the area south of Asheville is a nightmare to get around and now everyone protests when new apartments are going to be built.
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I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
But it isn't either-or. You can conceivably have a six story apartment building, some row houses (aka terraced houses), and single family detached houses on the same block. I mean, if there weren't laws against it.
EDITed to add: I've lived in a couple row houses. No complaints, would happily do it again.
Right, but wouldn’t people just choose the SFH option and make that the more profitable product for builders to produce? I think that’s the case in the US right now—people that can afford to buy a house want a SFH, so that’s what they buy and therefore, that’s what builders build. End result:sprawl.
But it's not, since 75% of land is zoned as SFH only! it's illegal to build anything else. People never have to option to choose something else, so we don't' actually know.
https://www.planetizen.com/definition/single-family-zoning
True. It would be interesting to bust up the zoning a bit and see what happens. I've heard that Houston has no zoning at all, has that made for more walkability than other big Texas cities? I've never been there.
One issue we have in the Greater Asheville Area is that the county government is very anti-infrastructure of any kind (they've got a "if you don't build it they won't come" philosophy) so bike lanes, sidewalks, non-dead end roads and turn lanes are not something they do here. The result is that any time there is an apartment complex built, there is a big bump in traffic because nobody has thought to try to make it easier for the 300 new people who now live there to get where they need to go. This pattern has been repeated over and over again in the last 10 years so the area south of Asheville is a nightmare to get around and now everyone protests when new apartments are going to be built.
It's a feedback loop: communities create zoning laws to prioritize SFH (and to keep out undesirables, whether that's explicit or not), builders focus on SFH, consumers come to view SFH as a mark of achievement, then those homeowners push for more SFH zoning to protect the value of their most valuable holding.
Thankfully there's a lot of real-world examples to show it doesn't have to be this way. Other developed countries (and even some municipalities) have focused on mixed-use neighborhoods, smaller minimum dwelling sizes and a greater policy emphasis on attached dwellings. Lo and behold, in those places the desire to own a SFH is not nearly as strong, and a large chunk of the community prefers the benefits from this type of zoning (e.g. walkability, larger shared green spaces, reduced ownership costs)
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I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
But it isn't either-or. You can conceivably have a six story apartment building, some row houses (aka terraced houses), and single family detached houses on the same block. I mean, if there weren't laws against it.
EDITed to add: I've lived in a couple row houses. No complaints, would happily do it again.
Right, but wouldn’t people just choose the SFH option and make that the more profitable product for builders to produce? I think that’s the case in the US right now—people that can afford to buy a house want a SFH, so that’s what they buy and therefore, that’s what builders build. End result:sprawl.
But it's not, since 75% of land is zoned as SFH only! it's illegal to build anything else. People never have to option to choose something else, so we don't' actually know.
https://www.planetizen.com/definition/single-family-zoning
True. It would be interesting to bust up the zoning a bit and see what happens. I've heard that Houston has no zoning at all, has that made for more walkability than other big Texas cities? I've never been there.
One issue we have in the Greater Asheville Area is that the county government is very anti-infrastructure of any kind (they've got a "if you don't build it they won't come" philosophy) so bike lanes, sidewalks, non-dead end roads and turn lanes are not something they do here. The result is that any time there is an apartment complex built, there is a big bump in traffic because nobody has thought to try to make it easier for the 300 new people who now live there to get where they need to go. This pattern has been repeated over and over again in the last 10 years so the area south of Asheville is a nightmare to get around and now everyone protests when new apartments are going to be built.
It's a feedback loop: communities create zoning laws to prioritize SFH (and to keep out undesirables, whether that's explicit or not), builders focus on SFH, consumers come to view SFH as a mark of achievement, then those homeowners push for more SFH zoning to protect the value of their most valuable holding.
I think it's also an issue of more money = more power. Either through exclusionary zoning as you say. But even when there is a free for all (i.e. houston). Developers will cater to the top to make as much as possible; the cheapest to build, most expensive houses as dense as possible. So we get smashed together huge mcmansions in the middle of nowhere with no infrastructure other than a wide, curved road with no sidewalk.
No, where there is no zoning they won't build dense, affordable homes (and less affordable ones) close to public transit, walkable streets and mixed with commercial. That requires planning, coordination of architectural, urban design, public infrastructure etc, and is not the most profitable. Even uncle bob's builders can slap together a Mcmansion from a pre-set plan in the middle of a former corn field and connect it to a road and utilities. It might not even fall down before the warranty expires. To get a mix of homes for a range of budgets require government to force the developers to consider others than just the most well-off.
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I tend to agree that density is the only real solution to the housing issues in the US, but man, now that we’ve got kids it would be rough moving into an apartment again. Our neighbors would fucking HATE us, kids are loud. And if one of my neighbors woke up my kid in the middle of the night after I spent the hour+ that it takes to get them down, I’d probably be ready to murder them too.
Apartment living would have to be DRAMATICALLY cheaper for me to give up my detached house.
But it isn't either-or. You can conceivably have a six story apartment building, some row houses (aka terraced houses), and single family detached houses on the same block. I mean, if there weren't laws against it.
EDITed to add: I've lived in a couple row houses. No complaints, would happily do it again.
Right, but wouldn’t people just choose the SFH option and make that the more profitable product for builders to produce? I think that’s the case in the US right now—people that can afford to buy a house want a SFH, so that’s what they buy and therefore, that’s what builders build. End result:sprawl.
But it's not, since 75% of land is zoned as SFH only! it's illegal to build anything else. People never have to option to choose something else, so we don't' actually know.
https://www.planetizen.com/definition/single-family-zoning
True. It would be interesting to bust up the zoning a bit and see what happens. I've heard that Houston has no zoning at all, has that made for more walkability than other big Texas cities? I've never been there.
One issue we have in the Greater Asheville Area is that the county government is very anti-infrastructure of any kind (they've got a "if you don't build it they won't come" philosophy) so bike lanes, sidewalks, non-dead end roads and turn lanes are not something they do here. The result is that any time there is an apartment complex built, there is a big bump in traffic because nobody has thought to try to make it easier for the 300 new people who now live there to get where they need to go. This pattern has been repeated over and over again in the last 10 years so the area south of Asheville is a nightmare to get around and now everyone protests when new apartments are going to be built.
I think the Houston issue is more complicated than just the lack of zoning. They do have other building codes that still contribute to sprawl, and a lot of walkability has to do with the streets as much as the buildings. Most of Houston's streets are too wide and have high speed limits, and many lack sidewalks. There are still random dead-ends and cul de sacs that don't have a through path for pedestrians. Along with a "car is king" culture, it can feel very alienating and dangerous to walk there. Then when you finally reach a destination, you likely have to cross a large parking lot.
That said, there are significant benefits to the lack of zoning. The city of Houston has only a marginally lower population density than the city of Dallas, but that obfuscates the fact that Houston has a far larger land area. I expect if you measured out a central portion of Houston of the same area as Dallas, the population density would be much higher. This abundance of housing, allowed by the lack of zoning, is a big part of what makes Houston housing relatively affordable compared to other Metro Areas of comparable economic productivity.
There are some walkable pockets of Houston, they're just hard to find amidst all the sprawl. The lack of zoning is crucial in allowing them to even exist. I don't know Houston well enough to cite specific neighborhoods, but I have a lot of friends who went to college in Houston and many of them are eager to jump to Houston's defense when people make fun of the car-centric sprawl.
That said, you have to zoom way in to see Houston's redeeming qualities. Even if Houston became the most enlightened urbanist city government on the planet tomorrow, the abundance of massive freeways split the city into disconnected fragments, and TxDOT isn't going to be open to any freeway removals any time soon. Culturally it may be more liberal than the rural parts of the state, but there are still tons of culture warriors who will cling to their lifted pickup trucks and free parking to their dying days. The population density isn't really there to support high quality transit. They've got a lot of problems that aren't fixed just by the lack of zoning.
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As to that second part: transportation and housing need to be tackled together in policy-making. Dense housing demands more space-efficient forms of transportation. If walkability is a priority, nothing should be up-zoned to just plain "high density residential." Mixed use is king—give the new residents their grocery store, their neighborhood bar/cafe/restaurant, their laundromat or dry cleaner right there on the ground floor! Ideally, sprawling cities should coordinate upzoning with transit expansion, and a reduction or removal of minimum parking requirements on the development. The reduction of space used for parking can allow for more residences, which can then be profitable at lower rents. Mixture of uses enables walkability, and then transit can be thought of as a "pedestrian range extender," and since the neighborhood itself is walkable, it's a useful destination for other people arriving by transit.
So many American cities have this model where transit stops in the city are functional, walkable places, and then that train gets out towards the edge of the city or crosses city limits into a suburb and instead the stop is just surrounded by parking lots. Those stops surrounded by parking lots might be useful to a handful of commuters, but that is a complete waste of the enormous infrastructure investment that went into putting a train there. For transit to be a useful two-way benefit to the city and to the commuters, the area around the train stop needs to be a place that people actually want to visit!
The housing shortage demands higher density construction with access to good city jobs. Higher density housing construction creates greater need for transportation. Trains and buses move more people in less space than private cars. The logic is really not hard, and yet action is just not being taken in way too many places.
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So many American cities have this model where transit stops in the city are functional, walkable places, and then that train gets out towards the edge of the city or crosses city limits into a suburb and instead the stop is just surrounded by parking lots. Those stops surrounded by parking lots might be useful to a handful of commuters, but that is a complete waste of the enormous infrastructure investment that went into putting a train there. For transit to be a useful two-way benefit to the city and to the commuters, the area around the train stop needs to be a place that people actually want to visit!
That's a good point. Instead of trying (and usually failing) to spend billions to extend transit to new suburb communities, perhaps it would be better to just rezone the areas around exiting "commuter stops", i.e. parking lots as you say, to mixed use? I'm sure they're doing/done that somewhere? I know around here we have vast oceans of parking lots that are used 9-5, five says a week, but otherwise sit empty and wasted
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I think it's also an issue of more money = more power. Either through exclusionary zoning as you say. But even when there is a free for all (i.e. houston). Developers will cater to the top to make as much as possible; the cheapest to build, most expensive houses as dense as possible. So we get smashed together huge mcmansions in the middle of nowhere with no infrastructure other than a wide, curved road with no sidewalk.
Developers will try to maximize profits, yes. Sometimes "catering to the top" is the way to do this, sometimes it isn't. Studio apartments would never be built if developers always catered to the top, and yet they do get built. Density is how middle-class people outbid rich people for residential land.
No, where there is no zoning they won't build dense, affordable homes (and less affordable ones) close to public transit, walkable streets and mixed with commercial.
The most walkable, transit-rich, mixed-use neighborhoods in the US were overwhelmingly developed before zoning was even invented. These neighborhoods are in very high demand. A prudent developer would look toward these examples of what the market wants.
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To be clear, I'm not arguing against zoning or complete lack of regulations. I think areas where there's little/no zoning have their own set of severe problems. What I am arguing against is for zoning that inherently prioritizes SFH over all other structures (or, if you want to look at it another way, that is unfavorable for other types of structures to be built).
As examples, in the discussion above where 'McMansions' can be built which are disconnected from anywhere else for pedestrian or cycling - sidewalks and bike path with continuity can be a requirement. Recently a nearby municipality passed an ordinance where 40% of all apartment parking must have EV charing available. Zoning ordinances can permit smaller units just as they can prohibit construction in certain areas entirely.
The devil is in he details, and the details can be constructed around the communities we want.
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In the latest edition of: "I went to a city I've heard is good and it was good," Washington, DC is a pretty kickass city and I would gladly live there. Good mixture of uses and walkability, the Metro system works great, it would be easy and enjoyable to live car-free there. Good train access up the Northeast corridor. I'm into the demographic tilt towards a bunch of highly educated public policy wonks, though the inability to escape political talk might grate after a time. Biggest urbanism complaints are just that they need to continue densifying (like every US city...) and that many streets were way too wide.
In my rather time-limited exploration, neighborhood highlights were Georgetown, Adams Morgan, and Q St west of Dupont Circle. I'll have to check out Columbia Heights and Capitol Hill next time I visit.
I live nearby, and agree DC is a nice city. At not just the mall and museums! (but the free museums are great with kids). Areas like Logan and Dupont circle, and around the zoo are also nice! Metro is descent, amazing by US standards. Close access to international airports, coast/beaches, the bay(!), mountains. Philadelphia, NYC few hours away. If you have $900,000+ you can get a nice charming little house in a walkable area.. lol
Every time I think about moving it's missing several of the amenities around this area (which of course cause a lot of people to want to live here..)
I don't think $900k buys you a house in DC unless you are miles from a metro station and/or well out of the heart of DC.
A cursory glance at Zillow filtered for houses or townhomes from $800k-900k reveals a multitude of options in the northern and eastern parts of the city, including several which are extremely close to Metro stops and seem at a glance to be nicely fixed up. Yeah, we get it, expensive cities are expensive. We don't need to constantly hyperbolize the issue.
If you open your search up to condos, there are multitudes of spacious and modern options much closer to the center of the city and/or at lower price points.
I wouldn't consider those areas "the heart of DC", and most of those look like townhomes when I said houses (and assumed that meant SF) but okay.
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In the latest edition of: "I went to a city I've heard is good and it was good," Washington, DC is a pretty kickass city and I would gladly live there. Good mixture of uses and walkability, the Metro system works great, it would be easy and enjoyable to live car-free there. Good train access up the Northeast corridor. I'm into the demographic tilt towards a bunch of highly educated public policy wonks, though the inability to escape political talk might grate after a time. Biggest urbanism complaints are just that they need to continue densifying (like every US city...) and that many streets were way too wide.
In my rather time-limited exploration, neighborhood highlights were Georgetown, Adams Morgan, and Q St west of Dupont Circle. I'll have to check out Columbia Heights and Capitol Hill next time I visit.
I live nearby, and agree DC is a nice city. At not just the mall and museums! (but the free museums are great with kids). Areas like Logan and Dupont circle, and around the zoo are also nice! Metro is descent, amazing by US standards. Close access to international airports, coast/beaches, the bay(!), mountains. Philadelphia, NYC few hours away. If you have $900,000+ you can get a nice charming little house in a walkable area.. lol
Every time I think about moving it's missing several of the amenities around this area (which of course cause a lot of people to want to live here..)
I don't think $900k buys you a house in DC unless you are miles from a metro station and/or well out of the heart of DC.
A cursory glance at Zillow filtered for houses or townhomes from $800k-900k reveals a multitude of options in the northern and eastern parts of the city, including several which are extremely close to Metro stops and seem at a glance to be nicely fixed up. Yeah, we get it, expensive cities are expensive. We don't need to constantly hyperbolize the issue.
If you open your search up to condos, there are multitudes of spacious and modern options much closer to the center of the city and/or at lower price points.
I wouldn't consider those areas "the heart of DC", and most of those look like townhomes when I said houses (and assumed that meant SF) but okay.
Is this an American English thing? On https://www.rightmove.co.uk/ they put townhomes in the "houses" bucket but Zillow does not.
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Is this an American English thing? On https://www.rightmove.co.uk/ they put townhomes in the "houses" bucket but Zillow does not.
Oh, probably. Townhomes are so much rarer in America than in Europe so it's outside of what most people here think of when they hear the word "house."
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In the latest edition of: "I went to a city I've heard is good and it was good," Washington, DC is a pretty kickass city and I would gladly live there. Good mixture of uses and walkability, the Metro system works great, it would be easy and enjoyable to live car-free there. Good train access up the Northeast corridor. I'm into the demographic tilt towards a bunch of highly educated public policy wonks, though the inability to escape political talk might grate after a time. Biggest urbanism complaints are just that they need to continue densifying (like every US city...) and that many streets were way too wide.
In my rather time-limited exploration, neighborhood highlights were Georgetown, Adams Morgan, and Q St west of Dupont Circle. I'll have to check out Columbia Heights and Capitol Hill next time I visit.
I live nearby, and agree DC is a nice city. At not just the mall and museums! (but the free museums are great with kids). Areas like Logan and Dupont circle, and around the zoo are also nice! Metro is descent, amazing by US standards. Close access to international airports, coast/beaches, the bay(!), mountains. Philadelphia, NYC few hours away. If you have $900,000+ you can get a nice charming little house in a walkable area.. lol
Every time I think about moving it's missing several of the amenities around this area (which of course cause a lot of people to want to live here..)
I don't think $900k buys you a house in DC unless you are miles from a metro station and/or well out of the heart of DC.
A cursory glance at Zillow filtered for houses or townhomes from $800k-900k reveals a multitude of options in the northern and eastern parts of the city, including several which are extremely close to Metro stops and seem at a glance to be nicely fixed up. Yeah, we get it, expensive cities are expensive. We don't need to constantly hyperbolize the issue.
If you open your search up to condos, there are multitudes of spacious and modern options much closer to the center of the city and/or at lower price points.
I wouldn't consider those areas "the heart of DC", and most of those look like townhomes when I said houses (and assumed that meant SF) but okay.
Detached home in the “heart” of a city like DC? Set the price as high as you want, they don’t exist and shouldn’t exist. In a place where land is that valuable, you don’t squander it on such a wasteful use.
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Not sure if this was explored earlier in the thread or not, but some private companies are starting to develop some pretty cool master planned communities that are mixed use and pedestrian friendly.
Obviously this can't be done everywhere and even entire cities will probably never develop like this, but it's a nice option for 'neighborhoods' of cities, or suburbs. Maybe even an entire small or mid sized town can be started this way some day.
The company I know of with a handful already in place and more planned is Howard Hughes Corporation (HHC ticker). They have interesting communities in Houston area, Vegas, and Hawaii. I'd like to check these out in person some day. Yes I'm a shareholder.
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In the latest edition of: "I went to a city I've heard is good and it was good," Washington, DC is a pretty kickass city and I would gladly live there. Good mixture of uses and walkability, the Metro system works great, it would be easy and enjoyable to live car-free there. Good train access up the Northeast corridor. I'm into the demographic tilt towards a bunch of highly educated public policy wonks, though the inability to escape political talk might grate after a time. Biggest urbanism complaints are just that they need to continue densifying (like every US city...) and that many streets were way too wide.
In my rather time-limited exploration, neighborhood highlights were Georgetown, Adams Morgan, and Q St west of Dupont Circle. I'll have to check out Columbia Heights and Capitol Hill next time I visit.
I live nearby, and agree DC is a nice city. At not just the mall and museums! (but the free museums are great with kids). Areas like Logan and Dupont circle, and around the zoo are also nice! Metro is descent, amazing by US standards. Close access to international airports, coast/beaches, the bay(!), mountains. Philadelphia, NYC few hours away. If you have $900,000+ you can get a nice charming little house in a walkable area.. lol
Every time I think about moving it's missing several of the amenities around this area (which of course cause a lot of people to want to live here..)
I don't think $900k buys you a house in DC unless you are miles from a metro station and/or well out of the heart of DC.
A cursory glance at Zillow filtered for houses or townhomes from $800k-900k reveals a multitude of options in the northern and eastern parts of the city, including several which are extremely close to Metro stops and seem at a glance to be nicely fixed up. Yeah, we get it, expensive cities are expensive. We don't need to constantly hyperbolize the issue.
If you open your search up to condos, there are multitudes of spacious and modern options much closer to the center of the city and/or at lower price points.
I wouldn't consider those areas "the heart of DC", and most of those look like townhomes when I said houses (and assumed that meant SF) but okay.
Detached home in the “heart” of a city like DC? Set the price as high as you want, they don’t exist and shouldn’t exist. In a place where land is that valuable, you don’t squander it on such a wasteful use.
No exactly. Of course I didn't mean a 2,500 sqft detached single-family house with 1/2 acre yard in downtown DC, lol. There's like 8 of those, and are all owned by the oligarchs, I mean politicians. If you want to live in a dense, urban, walkable area then yes you'd be looking at a townhouse, row house, condo, etc. I kinda took that as a given, sorry. Also "downtown" DC is not the mall, nobody lives there. Northern and NW/NE parts of the city is indeed where you'd want.
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Not sure if this was explored earlier in the thread or not, but some private companies are starting to develop some pretty cool master planned communities that are mixed use and pedestrian friendly.
Obviously this can't be done everywhere and even entire cities will probably never develop like this, but it's a nice option for 'neighborhoods' of cities, or suburbs. Maybe even an entire small or mid sized town can be started this way some day.
The company I know of with a handful already in place and more planned is Howard Hughes Corporation (HHC ticker). They have interesting communities in Houston area, Vegas, and Hawaii. I'd like to check these out in person some day. Yes I'm a shareholder.
Disney's EPCOT concept is pretty neat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLCHg9mUBag&ab_channel=TheOriginalEPCOT
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Probably Idaho. Many co-workers have moved there working remote and extremely happy with cost of living being like 1/5th of the price and the state has a lot of outdoor activities that do not cost a lot of money to enjoy.
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So many American cities have this model where transit stops in the city are functional, walkable places, and then that train gets out towards the edge of the city or crosses city limits into a suburb and instead the stop is just surrounded by parking lots. Those stops surrounded by parking lots might be useful to a handful of commuters, but that is a complete waste of the enormous infrastructure investment that went into putting a train there. For transit to be a useful two-way benefit to the city and to the commuters, the area around the train stop needs to be a place that people actually want to visit!
The housing shortage demands higher density construction with access to good city jobs. Higher density housing construction creates greater need for transportation. Trains and buses move more people in less space than private cars. The logic is really not hard, and yet action is just not being taken in way too many places.
Parts of the NYC suburbs are starting to go this route. The transit company (MTA) owns train stations and parking lots in the suburbs, and they are starting to partner with developers to convert them to apartments and condos, usually with retail at the street level and a parking garage somewhere buried in the complex. It's a nice idea - it revitalizes (or, in some cases, vitalizes) downtowns in the suburbs and provides high-density housing close to transit. The drawback so far is that those flats tend to be incredibly expensive. And typically there is no or very little public transit *within* the suburbs, so all these new people are going to have cars, which is going to exacerbate existing traffic problems even if they're taking the train to NYC for work. As revitalized as a downtown might be, not everything will be walkable and people are going to be dropping their kids off at school and driving for almost every errand.
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Where I live has a pretty intricate biking eco-system, especially if you live near the main greenway that runs north to south for about 40 miles. I can bike to work by jumping on the greenway right out of my neighborhood. I can bike to most restaurants, to the grocery store, to my gym, to my kids daycare, to my kids school, to almost every brewery in the area, etc. If I had unlimited time I could almost certainly get by without a car where I'm at, especially if I didn't mountain bike regularly. I usually only put about 3-4k miles/yr on my truck as it is and most of that is taking my mountain bike to mountain biking trails that are about 8-10 miles from my house. I can get to those via the greenway, but riding 10 miles on a FS MTB would probably take an hour each way and then 1-1.5 hours of riding the trails would make for a very long day. Much easier to just drive the 15 minutes each way from a time perspective and saving wear and tear on the MTB tires from being on the concrete.
https://cast.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/minimalist/index.html?appid=fbb7b62389044dc78830bd327ae99a85¢er=-94.1597,36.3596&level=13/map/index.html
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The fastest falling real estate market in the country is back on our radar. We were in San Francisco on the weekend and went to half a dozen open houses in some great neighborhoods. The busiest property had two other couples, several were completely empty with a realtor on the sofa reading a book. The market has really screeched to a halt it seems. Let's see how far it falls in 2023.
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The fastest falling real estate market in the country is back on our radar. We were in San Francisco on the weekend and went to half a dozen open houses in some great neighborhoods. The busiest property had two other couples, several were completely empty with a realtor on the sofa reading a book. The market has really screeched to a halt it seems. Let's see how far it falls in 2023.
Are you looking for an investment property or are you looking to live there (i.e. the thread topic)?
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The fastest falling real estate market in the country is back on our radar. We were in San Francisco on the weekend and went to half a dozen open houses in some great neighborhoods. The busiest property had two other couples, several were completely empty with a realtor on the sofa reading a book. The market has really screeched to a halt it seems. Let's see how far it falls in 2023.
Are you looking for an investment property or are you looking to live there (i.e. the thread topic)?
Maybe a bit of both!
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The fastest falling real estate market in the country is back on our radar. We were in San Francisco on the weekend and went to half a dozen open houses in some great neighborhoods. The busiest property had two other couples, several were completely empty with a realtor on the sofa reading a book. The market has really screeched to a halt it seems. Let's see how far it falls in 2023.
Are you looking for an investment property or are you looking to live there (i.e. the thread topic)?
Maybe a bit of both!
If you are looking to live someplace, the previous purchase price is largely irrelevant; you can play the guessing game of what it might be worth years from now, but if your hope is to stay there for many years that, too, is only a minor consideration (and very, very hard to predict).
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The fastest falling real estate market in the country is back on our radar. We were in San Francisco on the weekend and went to half a dozen open houses in some great neighborhoods. The busiest property had two other couples, several were completely empty with a realtor on the sofa reading a book. The market has really screeched to a halt it seems. Let's see how far it falls in 2023.
Looks like you better hurry:
Over the last 12 months, San Francisco has seen the second-biggest worker population gain of any area in the United States, according to LinkedIn
Indeed, more people are now coming to San Francisco than leaving. By the end of last year, nearly two people were coming to the metropolitan area for every one that left
A reversal in population decline hasn’t yet shown up in other data sources, but lagging data from the US Postal Service does show a lot fewer people are leaving the San Francisco Bay Area than had been earlier in the pandemic.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/1/18/23542444/san-francisco-bay-area-population-moving-linkedin?fbclid=IwAR3swIGJEC-bSJS-l3CSDJ7T5OdQtunaaCtkCtPHr7csTkwr6heRBCdU42Y
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If you are looking to live someplace, the previous purchase price is largely irrelevant; you can play the guessing game of what it might be worth years from now, but if your hope is to stay there for many years that, too, is only a minor consideration (and very, very hard to predict).
I'm less interested in what it is worth in the future than what it costs now. Prices are falling and we can wait to see where they go. Nothing worse than buying at the peak and watching new neighbors buy in for vastly less (which happened to us in the East Bay around 2010).
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If you are looking to live someplace, the previous purchase price is largely irrelevant; you can play the guessing game of what it might be worth years from now, but if your hope is to stay there for many years that, too, is only a minor consideration (and very, very hard to predict).
I'm less interested in what it is worth in the future than what it costs now. Prices are falling and we can wait to see where they go. Nothing worse than buying at the peak and watching new neighbors buy in for vastly less (which happened to us in the East Bay around 2010).
Sure, everyone likes to get the best price, but very few actually will. Trying to "wait and see" is trying to time the market. Instead of wasting mental energy feeling terrible that someone else might have gotten a better deal than you, focus on whether it's a good decision for you now. If it is, and you are there for the long term, then you can ignore what might have been if you had bought earlier or later.
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The fastest falling real estate market in the country is back on our radar. We were in San Francisco on the weekend and went to half a dozen open houses in some great neighborhoods. The busiest property had two other couples, several were completely empty with a realtor on the sofa reading a book. The market has really screeched to a halt it seems. Let's see how far it falls in 2023.
Looks like you better hurry:
Over the last 12 months, San Francisco has seen the second-biggest worker population gain of any area in the United States, according to LinkedIn
Indeed, more people are now coming to San Francisco than leaving. By the end of last year, nearly two people were coming to the metropolitan area for every one that left
A reversal in population decline hasn’t yet shown up in other data sources, but lagging data from the US Postal Service does show a lot fewer people are leaving the San Francisco Bay Area than had been earlier in the pandemic.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/1/18/23542444/san-francisco-bay-area-population-moving-linkedin?fbclid=IwAR3swIGJEC-bSJS-l3CSDJ7T5OdQtunaaCtkCtPHr7csTkwr6heRBCdU42Y
Ha, my friends own the Fiat in the main photo of that article—they just sent me a link a few hours ago saying their car is famous!
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More on topic, to answer the thread's titular question: honestly my GF and I are likely to at some point move back to my hometown of Minneapolis or else to Chicago where we have a number of friends. Both are noticeably cheaper than SF :-). We are very tentatively planning some slow, one-month-in-each-spot nomadism for a period before that happens. Maybe we'll find someplace we like even more during that time.
For people who don't know where they want to move yet, I would check out the winners of the contests (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/tag/Strongest+Town+Winner) organized by Strong Towns, the organization that advocates financial and social resilience for cities. They tend to be small, walkable, affordable towns, some of which I'd never considered before. E.g. Traverse City, Michigan; Watertown, South Dakota; Pensacola, Florida; or Jasper, Indiana.
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I just finished reading The Deluge, by Stephen Markley. After reading that, I think I need to live at altitude, well away from the coast, and somewhere not susceptible to fire, mudslides, earthquakes, or tornadoes. Hmm.
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I just finished reading The Deluge, by Stephen Markley. After reading that, I think I need to live at altitude, well away from the coast, and somewhere not susceptible to fire, mudslides, earthquakes, or tornadoes. Hmm.
NASA has plans for a permanent colony on the moon…
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I just finished reading The Deluge, by Stephen Markley. After reading that, I think I need to live at altitude, well away from the coast, and somewhere not susceptible to fire, mudslides, earthquakes, or tornadoes. Hmm.
I have similar feelings after a) going through Hurricane Ian, and b) reading The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell. It was an excellent read, but reading it during the immediate aftermath of a major hurricane was perhaps not my smartest choice.
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I just finished reading The Deluge, by Stephen Markley. After reading that, I think I need to live at altitude, well away from the coast, and somewhere not susceptible to fire, mudslides, earthquakes, or tornadoes. Hmm.
I have similar feelings after a) going through Hurricane Ian, and b) reading The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell. It was an excellent read, but reading it during the immediate aftermath of a major hurricane was perhaps not my smartest choice.
Sounds like the safest place would be somewhere in northern Appalachia between Pennsylvania and Maine (hears collective whines "but that's boring!"). However, climate change might throw everywhere for a loop. For example, your hillside hamlet in Vermont might suddenly become vulnerable to mudslides and fires when the native trees die off due to rising temperatures and pests. Dead timber and mud could choke off the region's once clear-running streams, washing out bridges and leading to floods in the valleys. Precipitation changes are also hard to predict. How often will hurricanes sweep inland in the future? How will the North Atlantic Current fare? Could this currently-lush area be hit by California-like droughts someday? Never say never!
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I just finished reading The Deluge, by Stephen Markley. After reading that, I think I need to live at altitude, well away from the coast, and somewhere not susceptible to fire, mudslides, earthquakes, or tornadoes. Hmm.
I have similar feelings after a) going through Hurricane Ian, and b) reading The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell. It was an excellent read, but reading it during the immediate aftermath of a major hurricane was perhaps not my smartest choice.
Sounds like the safest place would be somewhere in northern Appalachia between Pennsylvania and Maine (hears collective whines "but that's boring!"). However, climate change might throw everywhere for a loop. For example, your hillside hamlet in Vermont might suddenly become vulnerable to mudslides and fires when the native trees die off due to rising temperatures and pests. Dead timber and mud could choke off the region's once clear-running streams, washing out bridges and leading to floods in the valleys. Precipitation changes are also hard to predict. How often will hurricanes sweep inland in the future? How will the North Atlantic Current fare? Could this currently-lush area be hit by California-like droughts someday? Never say never!
What about Wisconsin?
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More on topic, to answer the thread's titular question: honestly my GF and I are likely to at some point move back to my hometown of Minneapolis or else to Chicago where we have a number of friends. Both are noticeably cheaper than SF :-). We are very tentatively planning some slow, one-month-in-each-spot nomadism for a period before that happens. Maybe we'll find someplace we like even more during that time.
For people who don't know where they want to move yet, I would check out the winners of the contests (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/tag/Strongest+Town+Winner) organized by Strong Towns, the organization that advocates financial and social resilience for cities. They tend to be small, walkable, affordable towns, some of which I'd never considered before. E.g. Traverse City, Michigan; Watertown, South Dakota; Pensacola, Florida; or Jasper, Indiana.
I'm in Pensacola if you've got questions. I'm not sure how it made that list unless it was intense lobbying.
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I just finished reading The Deluge, by Stephen Markley. After reading that, I think I need to live at altitude, well away from the coast, and somewhere not susceptible to fire, mudslides, earthquakes, or tornadoes. Hmm.
I have similar feelings after a) going through Hurricane Ian, and b) reading The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell. It was an excellent read, but reading it during the immediate aftermath of a major hurricane was perhaps not my smartest choice.
Sounds like the safest place would be somewhere in northern Appalachia between Pennsylvania and Maine (hears collective whines "but that's boring!"). However, climate change might throw everywhere for a loop. For example, your hillside hamlet in Vermont might suddenly become vulnerable to mudslides and fires when the native trees die off due to rising temperatures and pests. Dead timber and mud could choke off the region's once clear-running streams, washing out bridges and leading to floods in the valleys. Precipitation changes are also hard to predict. How often will hurricanes sweep inland in the future? How will the North Atlantic Current fare? Could this currently-lush area be hit by California-like droughts someday? Never say never!
When we lived in western NC, floods and mudslides were not all that uncommon due to how water is funneled down mountains and through valleys. I think inland but flat/foothill-ish is likely to be a safer option. Maybe. But who knows, really?
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I just finished reading The Deluge, by Stephen Markley. After reading that, I think I need to live at altitude, well away from the coast, and somewhere not susceptible to fire, mudslides, earthquakes, or tornadoes. Hmm.
I have similar feelings after a) going through Hurricane Ian, and b) reading The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell. It was an excellent read, but reading it during the immediate aftermath of a major hurricane was perhaps not my smartest choice.
Sounds like the safest place would be somewhere in northern Appalachia between Pennsylvania and Maine (hears collective whines "but that's boring!"). However, climate change might throw everywhere for a loop. For example, your hillside hamlet in Vermont might suddenly become vulnerable to mudslides and fires when the native trees die off due to rising temperatures and pests. Dead timber and mud could choke off the region's once clear-running streams, washing out bridges and leading to floods in the valleys. Precipitation changes are also hard to predict. How often will hurricanes sweep inland in the future? How will the North Atlantic Current fare? Could this currently-lush area be hit by California-like droughts someday? Never say never!
When we lived in western NC, floods and mudslides were not all that uncommon due to how water is funneled down mountains and through valleys. I think inland but flat/foothill-ish is likely to be a safer option. Maybe. But who knows, really?
Flood risk can be mitigated by not living at a relatively low elevation compared to the nearest creek or river. However there are reasons to believe plains and flatlands will have their own habitability challenges which are not so easily escaped. Check out this map of areas now expected to have at least one day of 125F / 51.7C heat indices by 2053. That's only 30 years from now, so someone who's 40 or 50 today and living in these areas might really need to think about if they'll be able to tolerate oven-level temperatures in their 70's, or if one of these at-least-annual events will end up killing them.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FaNoouGXwAEYIk9?format=jpg&name=large)
https://twitter.com/IkeMcCorkle/status/1559204954358915074/photo/1 (https://twitter.com/IkeMcCorkle/status/1559204954358915074/photo/1)
To the west of the main red zone, you have water shortages. To the east, the higher elevations of Appalachia offer some small amount of relief. I am surprised at how little a difference latitude makes. The deadly heat zone reaches all the way to Wisconsin.
In any case, 125F/52C heat index days mean much of the most productive cropland in the Mississippi basin will be unable to sustain summer crops. Maybe earlier spring plantings and a longer fall crop season will make up for it, but there are no guarantees desertification won't take hold when the temperatures kill off trees and other plants.
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I just finished reading The Deluge, by Stephen Markley. After reading that, I think I need to live at altitude, well away from the coast, and somewhere not susceptible to fire, mudslides, earthquakes, or tornadoes. Hmm.
I have similar feelings after a) going through Hurricane Ian, and b) reading The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell. It was an excellent read, but reading it during the immediate aftermath of a major hurricane was perhaps not my smartest choice.
Sounds like the safest place would be somewhere in northern Appalachia between Pennsylvania and Maine (hears collective whines "but that's boring!"). However, climate change might throw everywhere for a loop. For example, your hillside hamlet in Vermont might suddenly become vulnerable to mudslides and fires when the native trees die off due to rising temperatures and pests. Dead timber and mud could choke off the region's once clear-running streams, washing out bridges and leading to floods in the valleys. Precipitation changes are also hard to predict. How often will hurricanes sweep inland in the future? How will the North Atlantic Current fare? Could this currently-lush area be hit by California-like droughts someday? Never say never!
When we lived in western NC, floods and mudslides were not all that uncommon due to how water is funneled down mountains and through valleys. I think inland but flat/foothill-ish is likely to be a safer option. Maybe. But who knows, really?
Flood risk can be mitigated by not living at a relatively low elevation compared to the nearest creek or river. However there are reasons to believe plains and flatlands will have their own habitability challenges which are not so easily escaped. Check out this map of areas now expected to have at least one day of 125F / 51.7C. by 2053. That's only 30 years from now, so someone who's 40 or 50 today and living in these areas might really need to think about if they'll be able to tolerate oven-level temperatures in their 70's, or if one of these at-least-annual events will end up killing them.
https://twitter.com/IkeMcCorkle/status/1559204954358915074/photo/1 (https://twitter.com/IkeMcCorkle/status/1559204954358915074/photo/1)
To the west of the main red zone, you have water shortages. To the east, the higher elevations of Appalachia offer some small amount of relief. I am surprised at how little a difference latitude makes. The deadly heat zone reaches all the way to Wisconsin.
In any case, 125F/52C days mean much of the most productive cropland in the Mississippi basin will be unable to sustain summer crops. Maybe earlier spring plantings and a longer fall crop season will make up for it, but there are no guarantees desertification won't take hold when the temperatures kill off trees and other plants.
The heat index is a measuring of temperature and humidity. So at 100 degrees F and about 56% humidity you would reach it. It's unlikely that the Midwest will see air temperature of 125 which are currently limited to places like Death Valley. When I was in Djibouti the air temperature would go over 110 on a fairly regular basis. I think the highest I experienced was about 115-117. However, that would be in the middle of the day when the humidity would drop. At night the humidity would rise, and the temperature would still be 90-100 so it almost felt worse (albeit without the sun beating down on you).
https://www.weather.gov/ama/heatindex#
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Yeah, heat index is much different than simply the temperature (though both use the same units, which can be confusing and ambiguous) - though a heat index of 125 is nothing to sneeze at.
I wonder what the source for that map is. Chicago has already had a heat index of 125 (during the 1995 heat wave that also had measurements of over 150 in Appleton, WI!). I would guess that many places in the Midwest have already experienced heat index values of 125+. Mt Pleasant, SC had a 124 back in 2011.
Still, that map is serious and Minnesota and the Great Plains of Canada are looking more attractive all the time!
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The fastest falling real estate market in the country is back on our radar. We were in San Francisco on the weekend and went to half a dozen open houses in some great neighborhoods. The busiest property had two other couples, several were completely empty with a realtor on the sofa reading a book. The market has really screeched to a halt it seems. Let's see how far it falls in 2023.
Looks like you better hurry:
Over the last 12 months, San Francisco has seen the second-biggest worker population gain of any area in the United States, according to LinkedIn
Indeed, more people are now coming to San Francisco than leaving. By the end of last year, nearly two people were coming to the metropolitan area for every one that left
A reversal in population decline hasn’t yet shown up in other data sources, but lagging data from the US Postal Service does show a lot fewer people are leaving the San Francisco Bay Area than had been earlier in the pandemic.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/1/18/23542444/san-francisco-bay-area-population-moving-linkedin?fbclid=IwAR3swIGJEC-bSJS-l3CSDJ7T5OdQtunaaCtkCtPHr7csTkwr6heRBCdU42Y
Ha, my friends own the Fiat in the main photo of that article—they just sent me a link a few hours ago saying their car is famous!
Is that Duboce Triangle, @314159 ?
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I just finished reading The Deluge, by Stephen Markley. After reading that, I think I need to live at altitude, well away from the coast, and somewhere not susceptible to fire, mudslides, earthquakes, or tornadoes. Hmm.
I have similar feelings after a) going through Hurricane Ian, and b) reading The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell. It was an excellent read, but reading it during the immediate aftermath of a major hurricane was perhaps not my smartest choice.
Sounds like the safest place would be somewhere in northern Appalachia between Pennsylvania and Maine (hears collective whines "but that's boring!"). However, climate change might throw everywhere for a loop. For example, your hillside hamlet in Vermont might suddenly become vulnerable to mudslides and fires when the native trees die off due to rising temperatures and pests. Dead timber and mud could choke off the region's once clear-running streams, washing out bridges and leading to floods in the valleys. Precipitation changes are also hard to predict. How often will hurricanes sweep inland in the future? How will the North Atlantic Current fare? Could this currently-lush area be hit by California-like droughts someday? Never say never!
When we lived in western NC, floods and mudslides were not all that uncommon due to how water is funneled down mountains and through valleys. I think inland but flat/foothill-ish is likely to be a safer option. Maybe. But who knows, really?
Flood risk can be mitigated by not living at a relatively low elevation compared to the nearest creek or river. However there are reasons to believe plains and flatlands will have their own habitability challenges which are not so easily escaped. Check out this map of areas now expected to have at least one day of 125F / 51.7C. by 2053. That's only 30 years from now, so someone who's 40 or 50 today and living in these areas might really need to think about if they'll be able to tolerate oven-level temperatures in their 70's, or if one of these at-least-annual events will end up killing them.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FaNoouGXwAEYIk9?format=jpg&name=large)
https://twitter.com/IkeMcCorkle/status/1559204954358915074/photo/1 (https://twitter.com/IkeMcCorkle/status/1559204954358915074/photo/1)
To the west of the main red zone, you have water shortages. To the east, the higher elevations of Appalachia offer some small amount of relief. I am surprised at how little a difference latitude makes. The deadly heat zone reaches all the way to Wisconsin.
In any case, 125F/52C days mean much of the most productive cropland in the Mississippi basin will be unable to sustain summer crops. Maybe earlier spring plantings and a longer fall crop season will make up for it, but there are no guarantees desertification won't take hold when the temperatures kill off trees and other plants.
It's true that living at higher elevations means less risk of your home flooding, but many areas "in the mountains" are rural and you may only have access to your home via one or two roads. Those roads are certainly at risk of washing out during flood events, and I've had several friends who experienced the headaches that can cause.
Fortunately, the counties we're targeting are not in the 125+ heat index zone on that map!
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I just finished reading The Deluge, by Stephen Markley. After reading that, I think I need to live at altitude, well away from the coast, and somewhere not susceptible to fire, mudslides, earthquakes, or tornadoes. Hmm.
I have similar feelings after a) going through Hurricane Ian, and b) reading The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell. It was an excellent read, but reading it during the immediate aftermath of a major hurricane was perhaps not my smartest choice.
Sounds like the safest place would be somewhere in northern Appalachia between Pennsylvania and Maine (hears collective whines "but that's boring!"). However, climate change might throw everywhere for a loop. For example, your hillside hamlet in Vermont might suddenly become vulnerable to mudslides and fires when the native trees die off due to rising temperatures and pests. Dead timber and mud could choke off the region's once clear-running streams, washing out bridges and leading to floods in the valleys. Precipitation changes are also hard to predict. How often will hurricanes sweep inland in the future? How will the North Atlantic Current fare? Could this currently-lush area be hit by California-like droughts someday? Never say never!
What about Wisconsin?
I feel like the Great Lakes states are generally well positioned for climate change - plenty of water, not too mountain-y, agricultural, plenty of trees, etc. It's one reason we retired to Wisconsin and not Florida.
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I just finished reading The Deluge, by Stephen Markley. After reading that, I think I need to live at altitude, well away from the coast, and somewhere not susceptible to fire, mudslides, earthquakes, or tornadoes. Hmm.
I have similar feelings after a) going through Hurricane Ian, and b) reading The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell. It was an excellent read, but reading it during the immediate aftermath of a major hurricane was perhaps not my smartest choice.
Sounds like the safest place would be somewhere in northern Appalachia between Pennsylvania and Maine (hears collective whines "but that's boring!"). However, climate change might throw everywhere for a loop. For example, your hillside hamlet in Vermont might suddenly become vulnerable to mudslides and fires when the native trees die off due to rising temperatures and pests. Dead timber and mud could choke off the region's once clear-running streams, washing out bridges and leading to floods in the valleys. Precipitation changes are also hard to predict. How often will hurricanes sweep inland in the future? How will the North Atlantic Current fare? Could this currently-lush area be hit by California-like droughts someday? Never say never!
What about Wisconsin?
I feel like the Great Lakes states are generally well positioned for climate change - plenty of water, not too mountain-y, agricultural, plenty of trees, etc. It's one reason we retired to Wisconsin and not Florida.
They definitely are. As much as I absolutely dread the winters and the dark, I am seriously considering moving back even though I know I'm happier in the sunny SW... UGH.
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My wife and I both grew up in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area ("the Twin Cities"). We lived away for the first 12 years we lived together (New Orleans, DC, and Kigali, Rwanda) before moving back here with 2 young kids. Our first winter back was one of the first years (maybe the first? I don't claim to be a meteorologist) of a really tough "Polar Vortex" winter, and we weren't really into it. Our boiler pump broke one subzero January morning, and the house plummeted to close to freezing. We had an emergency replacement of the boiler, pump, and water heater to keep the pipes from freezing and bursting. And it was just tough to get used to again, and hadn't yet made or reconnected with friends at first. So we started thinking about where else we could live.
So we started researching comparable cost of living indices for any city that looked: big enough for my metropolitan wife, with decent enough schools for public education, and with a warmer climate than Minnesota. We didn't need the COL to be the same or better, as long as predicted pay range for my profession was adjusted within reasonable closeness. For instance, if New York had a much higher COL by 1.6x, but the physician assistants there made 1.5x or more than what I could make here, then it stayed on the list.
There were a few places that were almost as good (Denver, Atlanta, I think -it was 11 years ago), a few that were as good or better, but less interesting (Omaha, somewhere I'm forgetting in New England). But none was better. We have some of the best schools in the country. Consistently in the top 10 best cycling cities (either Mpls or St. Paul or both combined), and best city park systems. Crime isn't especially high, and traffic is much better than other places we've lived and spent time. And summers are lush, green, with long days and a true appreciation for the joy of a warm, sunny day. Thing is, you have to put up with the long, dark winters. Anyway, we're still here, and it's by choice.
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My wife and I both grew up in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area ("the Twin Cities"). We lived away for the first 12 years we lived together (New Orleans, DC, and Kigali, Rwanda) before moving back here with 2 young kids. Our first winter back was one of the first years (maybe the first? I don't claim to be a meteorologist) of a really tough "Polar Vortex" winter, and we weren't really into it. Our boiler pump broke one subzero January morning, and the house plummeted to close to freezing. We had an emergency replacement of the boiler, pump, and water heater to keep the pipes from freezing and bursting. And it was just tough to get used to again, and hadn't yet made or reconnected with friends at first. So we started thinking about where else we could live.
So we started researching comparable cost of living indices for any city that looked: big enough for my metropolitan wife, with decent enough schools for public education, and with a warmer climate than Minnesota. We didn't need the COL to be the same or better, as long as predicted pay range for my profession was adjusted within reasonable closeness. For instance, if New York had a much higher COL by 1.6x, but the physician assistants there made 1.5x or more than what I could make here, then it stayed on the list.
There were a few places that were almost as good (Denver, Atlanta, I think -it was 11 years ago), a few that were as good or better, but less interesting (Omaha, somewhere I'm forgetting in New England). But none was better. We have some of the best schools in the country. Consistently in the top 10 best cycling cities (either Mpls or St. Paul or both combined), and best city park systems. Crime isn't especially high, and traffic is much better than other places we've lived and spent time. And summers are lush, green, with long days and a true appreciation for the joy of a warm, sunny day. Thing is, you have to put up with the long, dark winters. Anyway, we're still here, and it's by choice.
I chuckle a bit when I hear people from the lower 48 talk about how long the winters are. For comparison, London, England has much shorter days in winter, and they are considerably further south than Berlin or all of Scandinavia. Even Paris, France is further North than St Paul. You are closer to the equator than the geographic North Pole.
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My wife and I both grew up in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area ("the Twin Cities"). We lived away for the first 12 years we lived together (New Orleans, DC, and Kigali, Rwanda) before moving back here with 2 young kids. Our first winter back was one of the first years (maybe the first? I don't claim to be a meteorologist) of a really tough "Polar Vortex" winter, and we weren't really into it. Our boiler pump broke one subzero January morning, and the house plummeted to close to freezing. We had an emergency replacement of the boiler, pump, and water heater to keep the pipes from freezing and bursting. And it was just tough to get used to again, and hadn't yet made or reconnected with friends at first. So we started thinking about where else we could live.
So we started researching comparable cost of living indices for any city that looked: big enough for my metropolitan wife, with decent enough schools for public education, and with a warmer climate than Minnesota. We didn't need the COL to be the same or better, as long as predicted pay range for my profession was adjusted within reasonable closeness. For instance, if New York had a much higher COL by 1.6x, but the physician assistants there made 1.5x or more than what I could make here, then it stayed on the list.
There were a few places that were almost as good (Denver, Atlanta, I think -it was 11 years ago), a few that were as good or better, but less interesting (Omaha, somewhere I'm forgetting in New England). But none was better. We have some of the best schools in the country. Consistently in the top 10 best cycling cities (either Mpls or St. Paul or both combined), and best city park systems. Crime isn't especially high, and traffic is much better than other places we've lived and spent time. And summers are lush, green, with long days and a true appreciation for the joy of a warm, sunny day. Thing is, you have to put up with the long, dark winters. Anyway, we're still here, and it's by choice.
I chuckle a bit when I hear people from the lower 48 talk about how long the winters are. For comparison, London, England has much shorter days in winter, and they are considerably further south than Berlin or all of Scandinavia. Even Paris, France is further North than St Paul. You are closer to the equator than the geographic North Pole.
Londoners complain like hell all winter and most of spring and summer.
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People complain everywhere about something or other.
We're further north than London, hence have even shorter days; the days might be short but the temperatures don't drop to Arctic levels. We had an unusually cold spell just before Christmas, 9 days when the temperature dropped below freezing. One day got to all of -6C, two days later it was 11C.
Dealing with very low temperatures and deep snow for long periods is not something we have to do in the south of the UK.
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When we lived in Germany (and not even northern Germany), I definitely struggled with the short, dreary days. If course it was pretty gray even in the summer--I recall reading that our city had fewer sunny days than Seattle--but winters were challenging. By about this time in the year, I could sort of feel the weight of the darkness and it was a slog trying to get to spring.
I also think everyone's tolerances for that are different, so I no shade (hahaha! I crack myself up) to anyone at a lower latitude who struggles.
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I chuckle a bit when I hear people from the lower 48 talk about how long the winters are. For comparison, London, England has much shorter days in winter, and they are considerably further south than Berlin or all of Scandinavia. Even Paris, France is further North than St Paul. You are closer to the equator than the geographic North Pole.
The difference between Minneapolis and those European cities you mention is that Minneapolis has much harsher winter weather. While London does experience more darkness (about an hour less sunlight on the Winter Solstice), there are entire weeks in Minneapolis every winter where it's unsafe to go outside for 30 minutes with exposed skin. I went to visit family in that area over the holidays. On a "warm" (~15 F) day we did take the kids outside for some sledding, and I took a short walk in the woods, but beyond that we mostly sheltered inside.
Where I live now (Seattle) is much closer to London than Minneapolis in terms of darkness and climate during the winter. The darkness and the bitter cold both mess with you, but for me it's no contest: I prefer the milder weather, darkness and all.
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I chuckle a bit when I hear people from the lower 48 talk about how long the winters are. For comparison, London, England has much shorter days in winter, and they are considerably further south than Berlin or all of Scandinavia. Even Paris, France is further North than St Paul. You are closer to the equator than the geographic North Pole.
The difference between Minneapolis and those European cities you mention is that Minneapolis has much harsher winter weather. While London does experience more darkness (about an hour less sunlight on the Winter Solstice), there are entire weeks in Minneapolis every winter where it's unsafe to go outside for 30 minutes with exposed skin. I went to visit family in that area over the holidays. On a "warm" (~15 F) day we did take the kids outside for some sledding, and I took a short walk in the woods, but beyond that we mostly sheltered inside.
Where I live now (Seattle) is much closer to London than Minneapolis in terms of darkness and climate during the winter. The darkness and the bitter cold both mess with you, but for me it's no contest: I prefer the milder weather, darkness and all.
I moved from one of the sunniest US cities (Los Angeles) to one of the least sunny (Bellingham, WA; similar climate to Seattle, London, The Netherlands). We're about as far north as you can get in the lower 48; actually north of every significant population center in eastern Canada. There are plenty of people here who suffer from SAD during the long winter months.
However, I'm not finding the lack of sun to be an issue. I attribute this to two things: my upbringing in overcast western MI, which had far worse winters; and my dogged determination to keep going outside and doing things. I still find outdoor activity in natural settings to be rejuvenating even when the skies are gray and there's a bit of drizzle. Heck, sometimes the drizzle can add to the enjoyment on a good hike.
That said, I recognize that people are different, so if they get depressed by the dark, I'm not going to claim that a northern latitude is right for them if they just tweak a couple of things. Maybe that won't work for them.
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I was thinking about how much things suck when it's dark outside when I go to work and when I leave work. Work seems to be the common denominator. It made me wonder if people got SAD back before there was such a thing as an 8 hour day in an office. Did the hunter/gatherers get SAD?
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I chuckle a bit when I hear people from the lower 48 talk about how long the winters are. For comparison, London, England has much shorter days in winter, and they are considerably further south than Berlin or all of Scandinavia. Even Paris, France is further North than St Paul. You are closer to the equator than the geographic North Pole.
The difference between Minneapolis and those European cities you mention is that Minneapolis has much harsher winter weather. While London does experience more darkness (about an hour less sunlight on the Winter Solstice), there are entire weeks in Minneapolis every winter where it's unsafe to go outside for 30 minutes with exposed skin. I went to visit family in that area over the holidays. On a "warm" (~15 F) day we did take the kids outside for some sledding, and I took a short walk in the woods, but beyond that we mostly sheltered inside.
Where I live now (Seattle) is much closer to London than Minneapolis in terms of darkness and climate during the winter. The darkness and the bitter cold both mess with you, but for me it's no contest: I prefer the milder weather, darkness and all.
I grew up in Northern Ontario.
Our town would be swinging between -30 to -50 for a solid two to three months each winter. We were always outside. Hiking, tobogganing, skating, cross country skiing, cutting firewood, playing road hockey, snowmobiling, dog sledding, building snow forts, etc. Just dress appropriately and there's no problem (there are some weird things you have to learn - like you breathe through your nose because if you suck a big cold breath in through your mouth it will freeze your capillaries in your throat and you will start coughing up blood, and you blink often because it's not hard to get frostbite on your eyeballs - especially in the wind). But there's certainly no reason to spend most of your time indoors!
I love cold weather.
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I chuckle a bit when I hear people from the lower 48 talk about how long the winters are. For comparison, London, England has much shorter days in winter, and they are considerably further south than Berlin or all of Scandinavia. Even Paris, France is further North than St Paul. You are closer to the equator than the geographic North Pole.
The difference between Minneapolis and those European cities you mention is that Minneapolis has much harsher winter weather. While London does experience more darkness (about an hour less sunlight on the Winter Solstice), there are entire weeks in Minneapolis every winter where it's unsafe to go outside for 30 minutes with exposed skin. I went to visit family in that area over the holidays. On a "warm" (~15 F) day we did take the kids outside for some sledding, and I took a short walk in the woods, but beyond that we mostly sheltered inside.
Where I live now (Seattle) is much closer to London than Minneapolis in terms of darkness and climate during the winter. The darkness and the bitter cold both mess with you, but for me it's no contest: I prefer the milder weather, darkness and all.
I grew up in Northern Ontario.
Our town would be swinging between -30 to -50 for a solid two to three months each winter. We were always outside. Hiking, tobogganing, skating, cross country skiing, cutting firewood, playing road hockey, snowmobiling, dog sledding, building snow forts, etc. Just dress appropriately and there's no problem (there are some weird things you have to learn - like you breathe through your nose because if you suck a big cold breath in through your mouth it will freeze your capillaries in your throat and you will start coughing up blood, and you blink often because it's not hard to get frostbite on your eyeballs - especially in the wind). But there's certainly no reason to spend most of your time indoors!
I love cold weather.
Look, I grew up doing all that stuff too. I know how to dress appropriately for the weather and still do stuff outside in that environment, but most of the time I prefer to remain indoors when the temperature is cold enough to cause your eyelashes to freeze shut. To each their own though!
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Like I said, we’ve chosen to stay in St. Paul. I’m not saying that the winters are too dark or too cold. We do fine in them, with a combination of loving outdoor sporty things and making the indoors cozier -fully embracing hygge. I only meant that many people complain about the Minnesota winters, and it’s worth addressing directly. I know there are colder and darker places. I visit some of them, and they’re great, too!
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The fastest falling real estate market in the country is back on our radar. We were in San Francisco on the weekend and went to half a dozen open houses in some great neighborhoods. The busiest property had two other couples, several were completely empty with a realtor on the sofa reading a book. The market has really screeched to a halt it seems. Let's see how far it falls in 2023.
Looks like you better hurry:
Over the last 12 months, San Francisco has seen the second-biggest worker population gain of any area in the United States, according to LinkedIn
Indeed, more people are now coming to San Francisco than leaving. By the end of last year, nearly two people were coming to the metropolitan area for every one that left
A reversal in population decline hasn’t yet shown up in other data sources, but lagging data from the US Postal Service does show a lot fewer people are leaving the San Francisco Bay Area than had been earlier in the pandemic.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/1/18/23542444/san-francisco-bay-area-population-moving-linkedin?fbclid=IwAR3swIGJEC-bSJS-l3CSDJ7T5OdQtunaaCtkCtPHr7csTkwr6heRBCdU42Y
Ha, my friends own the Fiat in the main photo of that article—they just sent me a link a few hours ago saying their car is famous!
Is that Duboce Triangle, @314159 ?
Not too far, I'd call it Lower Pacific Heights.
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I was thinking about how much things suck when it's dark outside when I go to work and when I leave work. Work seems to be the common denominator. It made me wonder if people got SAD back before there was such a thing as an 8 hour day in an office. Did the hunter/gatherers get SAD?
Good question. This winter and the short days, and selling (giving) all my best daylight hours to my employer really affected me this year. Then a coworker-friend (another department) was dismissed and everything looked better. Thankful for our income and not needing to relocate to find work.
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My wife and I both grew up in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area ("the Twin Cities"). We lived away for the first 12 years we lived together (New Orleans, DC, and Kigali, Rwanda) before moving back here with 2 young kids. Our first winter back was one of the first years (maybe the first? I don't claim to be a meteorologist) of a really tough "Polar Vortex" winter, and we weren't really into it. Our boiler pump broke one subzero January morning, and the house plummeted to close to freezing. We had an emergency replacement of the boiler, pump, and water heater to keep the pipes from freezing and bursting. And it was just tough to get used to again, and hadn't yet made or reconnected with friends at first. So we started thinking about where else we could live.
So we started researching comparable cost of living indices for any city that looked: big enough for my metropolitan wife, with decent enough schools for public education, and with a warmer climate than Minnesota. We didn't need the COL to be the same or better, as long as predicted pay range for my profession was adjusted within reasonable closeness. For instance, if New York had a much higher COL by 1.6x, but the physician assistants there made 1.5x or more than what I could make here, then it stayed on the list.
There were a few places that were almost as good (Denver, Atlanta, I think -it was 11 years ago), a few that were as good or better, but less interesting (Omaha, somewhere I'm forgetting in New England). But none was better. We have some of the best schools in the country. Consistently in the top 10 best cycling cities (either Mpls or St. Paul or both combined), and best city park systems. Crime isn't especially high, and traffic is much better than other places we've lived and spent time. And summers are lush, green, with long days and a true appreciation for the joy of a warm, sunny day. Thing is, you have to put up with the long, dark winters. Anyway, we're still here, and it's by choice.
I chuckle a bit when I hear people from the lower 48 talk about how long the winters are. For comparison, London, England has much shorter days in winter, and they are considerably further south than Berlin or all of Scandinavia. Even Paris, France is further North than St Paul. You are closer to the equator than the geographic North Pole.
I've been watching a lot of gardening videos this year, and I have been really surprised at how mild the climate is around London - you can grow some stuff all year round.
Meanwhile, I'm watching the snow pile up...
I do not like anything at all about winter. I always joked that I was the only person in Florida who loved the summer there. But I'm in Wisconsin and not Florida by my own choice, and I just have to put up with winter. Some people really like winter, I hear.
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My wife and I both grew up in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area ("the Twin Cities"). We lived away for the first 12 years we lived together (New Orleans, DC, and Kigali, Rwanda) before moving back here with 2 young kids. Our first winter back was one of the first years (maybe the first? I don't claim to be a meteorologist) of a really tough "Polar Vortex" winter, and we weren't really into it. Our boiler pump broke one subzero January morning, and the house plummeted to close to freezing. We had an emergency replacement of the boiler, pump, and water heater to keep the pipes from freezing and bursting. And it was just tough to get used to again, and hadn't yet made or reconnected with friends at first. So we started thinking about where else we could live.
So we started researching comparable cost of living indices for any city that looked: big enough for my metropolitan wife, with decent enough schools for public education, and with a warmer climate than Minnesota. We didn't need the COL to be the same or better, as long as predicted pay range for my profession was adjusted within reasonable closeness. For instance, if New York had a much higher COL by 1.6x, but the physician assistants there made 1.5x or more than what I could make here, then it stayed on the list.
There were a few places that were almost as good (Denver, Atlanta, I think -it was 11 years ago), a few that were as good or better, but less interesting (Omaha, somewhere I'm forgetting in New England). But none was better. We have some of the best schools in the country. Consistently in the top 10 best cycling cities (either Mpls or St. Paul or both combined), and best city park systems. Crime isn't especially high, and traffic is much better than other places we've lived and spent time. And summers are lush, green, with long days and a true appreciation for the joy of a warm, sunny day. Thing is, you have to put up with the long, dark winters. Anyway, we're still here, and it's by choice.
I chuckle a bit when I hear people from the lower 48 talk about how long the winters are. For comparison, London, England has much shorter days in winter, and they are considerably further south than Berlin or all of Scandinavia. Even Paris, France is further North than St Paul. You are closer to the equator than the geographic North Pole.
I've been watching a lot of gardening videos this year, and I have been really surprised at how mild the climate is around London - you can grow some stuff all year round.
Meanwhile, I'm watching the snow pile up...
I do not like anything at all about winter. I always joked that I was the only person in Florida who loved the summer there. But I'm in Wisconsin and not Florida by my own choice, and I just have to put up with winter. Some people really like winter, I hear.
Gulf Stream. A current from the south (Florida) that keeps most of GB and even further north much more temperate than the northern US and Canada.
Yes the Gulf Stream but also warm air coming up from the Carribean with it. One explanation I heard is that the Rocky Mountains block the flow of air at our latitude (50 north) so it comes up from the south instead.
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Any thoughts on Hot Springs, Arkansas? Housing prices seem to be fairly cheap and there's a national park right in town. The mountain bike trails there got a high rating from IMBA.
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Any thoughts on Hot Springs, Arkansas? Housing prices seem to be fairly cheap and there's a national park right in town. The mountain bike trails there got a high rating from IMBA.
I live a good distance away, but visit there often. HS seems like a great retirement destination. It's a resort/recreation town with a rich history, awesome hiking/biking, a horse racing track / casino with a fun vibe, and of course some very large freshwater lakes. This is a very low cost of living destination. It has a mix of characteristics of Louisville, KY, Eureka Springs, AR, the Fayetteville, AR metro, and I dare say New Orleans (for the miniature downtown bar scene and fun-loving attitude). The city's mentality is about having fun.
Upsides:
- Beautiful lakes, especially Lake Ouachita (pronounced "wa sha ta") with lots of options for camping, fishing, scuba, watersports, sailing, boat rentals, manmade beaches, etc. Lake Hamilton is closer to town, surrounded by condos and mansions, and full of boats. Lake Catherine is sort of a mixture of the two. All three lakes are long-established hydroelectric projects. Ouachita drains into Hamilton which drains into Catherine.
- Very cheap real estate and a generally low cost of living depending on how few motorized toys you can stand to own.
- The location is geologically stable, not generally prone to flooding, wildfires, or hurricanes.
- Mountain biking, as mentioned, though perhaps not as massively developed as Fayetteville, AR.
- White water canoeing / kayaking opportunities within a short drive. You do this in the springtime. You do the lakes in the summer. You hike in the fall/winter. You bike whenever.
- Very clean air and very clean tap water (they actually bottle and sell their tap water).
- Museums, history, and interesting geology. E.g. on some beaches of Lake Ouachita, like a Joplin campground, most of the rocks contain fossils!
- More amenities than a town, but fewer problems than a big city.
- H.S. is a good latitude for people who hate winter and never want to shovel snow again. It can snow, but maybe once a year with the slush lasting for 1-3 days.
- Nearby things to do include all the activities in Little Rock (a place most folks in H.S. are scared of, but which has anything you can't find in H.S.), digging for literal diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds state park, Mount Magazine, Mount Nebo, and Petit Jean Mountain state parks, etc. You're also in a great motorcycle touring area.
Downsides:
- H.S. is off the beaten path and not exactly an economic dynamo. Interstate 40 bypassed the city long ago, though a four-lane highway connects the city to the interstate 30-40 miles away. The closest international airport is probably Memphis, at ~3 hours away. The closest regional airport is Little Rock at just over an hour away. The economy is dependent upon tourism, yet not particularly volatile because they are the low-cost provider for tourism; when recession hits tourists trade down to H.S. instead of going to fancier places. I would call the lakes a durable asset, but I wonder about the future of horse racing and people's appreciation for the place's museums and history. If you raise your kids here, expect (hope) that they'll probably move away in search of economic or educational opportunity. On the bright side, Arkansas' colleges are dirt cheap, especially for residents, and a statewide lottery provides scholarships on top of that.
- H.S. is not a college town like Fayetteville, Tulsa, Springfield, etc. and it isn't a hub of industry either. You'll probably find the education level of your neighbors a bit low, especially the crowd in their early 20's. A typical conversation might be more about getting one's jet ski running more so than science, history, arts, or literature. It's blue collar and non-elite.
- Like everywhere in Arkansas, June-August usually means a 90+ degree day with relative humidity over 80%. If you don't mind getting a little sticky, H.S. is the place to be because of its proximity to the lakes. For the cost of a small day use fee at the various parks, campsites, and marinas, you can swim in the lakes without a wetsuit about 5 months out of the year and it feels very much like a tropical vacation.
- H.S. has a neat historical downtown area with cool BnB's, but the surrounding old neighborhoods have not seen revitalization to the extent of many other places. The city is small enough there's not as much incentive to cut commutes. Yet the area attracts artists and non-conformists so there's possibility! Sprawl is occurring thanks to a bypass highway, cheap land, and geographically distributed employment. You can cheaply live in either an old downtown craftsman or a very large newer home on the periphery of town.
- Arkansas is a red state, which means underfunded public schools, slum neighborhoods in every city, car dependency and sprawl, a lack of gynecological services, widespread skepticism about scientific facts, casual racism, brain drain for medical specialists, and periodic invitations to join someone or another's church. Your sensitivity to these factors may determine your enjoyment of the place. Overall though H.S. is a friendly place, and you are well compensated for the downsides via a low cost of living.
- Car ownership is a must wherever you live in H.S. You will eventually feel immense pressure to trade that car up to a truck and boat!
- Visitors from out West might be surprised by some of our parasites, like mosquitos, ticks, seed ticks, and chiggers, and by our poison ivy, which is all over the woods except in the winter.
- If you're looking for the next big thing, H.S. is probably not it. Expect nothing to change in the next 20-30 years. There are just no catalysts. In this regard it's a lot different than the booming and similar Northwest Arkansas area.
I'd suggest putting H.S. on your list of places to visit. It costs virtually nothing anyway. Maybe stay downtown at the historic Arlington Hotel and hit the bike trails, spa museums, bars, art shops, observation tower, Mid-America Museum, etc. Definitely visit lake Ouachita or camp on its shores. If you visit in the spring, go to a horse race, drink a mint julep, and waste a few bucks betting on the dark horse for the giggles.
If your tastes are more suburban / golf-y, check out Hot Springs Village (a separate town/development just to the north). If you want a bigger scene with lots of employment, lots of growth and development, and slightly higher costs, etc. check out Northwest Arkansas.
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Any thoughts on Hot Springs, Arkansas? Housing prices seem to be fairly cheap and there's a national park right in town. The mountain bike trails there got a high rating from IMBA.
I live a good distance away, but visit there often. HS seems like a great retirement destination. It's a resort/recreation town with a rich history, awesome hiking/biking, a horse racing track / casino with a fun vibe, and of course some very large freshwater lakes. This is a very low cost of living destination. It has a mix of characteristics of Louisville, KY, Eureka Springs, AR, the Fayetteville, AR metro, and I dare say New Orleans (for the miniature downtown bar scene and fun-loving attitude). The city's mentality is about having fun.
Upsides:
- Beautiful lakes, especially Lake Ouachita (pronounced "wa sha ta") with lots of options for camping, fishing, scuba, watersports, sailing, boat rentals, manmade beaches, etc. Lake Hamilton is closer to town, surrounded by condos and mansions, and full of boats. Lake Catherine is sort of a mixture of the two. All three lakes are long-established hydroelectric projects. Ouachita drains into Hamilton which drains into Catherine.
- Very cheap real estate and a generally low cost of living depending on how few motorized toys you can stand to own.
- The location is geologically stable, not generally prone to flooding, wildfires, or hurricanes.
- Mountain biking, as mentioned, though perhaps not as massively developed as Fayetteville, AR.
- White water canoeing / kayaking opportunities within a short drive. You do this in the springtime. You do the lakes in the summer. You hike in the fall/winter. You bike whenever.
- Very clean air and very clean tap water (they actually bottle and sell their tap water).
- Museums, history, and interesting geology. E.g. on some beaches of Lake Ouachita, like a Joplin campground, most of the rocks contain fossils!
- More amenities than a town, but fewer problems than a big city.
- H.S. is a good latitude for people who hate winter and never want to shovel snow again. It can snow, but maybe once a year with the slush lasting for 1-3 days.
- Nearby things to do include all the activities in Little Rock (a place most folks in H.S. are scared of, but which has anything you can't find in H.S.), digging for literal diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds state park, Mount Magazine, Mount Nebo, and Petit Jean Mountain state parks, etc. You're also in a great motorcycle touring area.
Downsides:
- H.S. is off the beaten path and not exactly an economic dynamo. Interstate 40 bypassed the city long ago, though a four-lane highway connects the city to the interstate 30-40 miles away. The closest international airport is probably Memphis, at ~3 hours away. The closest regional airport is Little Rock at just over an hour away. The economy is dependent upon tourism, yet not particularly volatile because they are the low-cost provider for tourism; when recession hits tourists trade down to H.S. instead of going to fancier places. I would call the lakes a durable asset, but I wonder about the future of horse racing and people's appreciation for the place's museums and history. If you raise your kids here, expect (hope) that they'll probably move away in search of economic or educational opportunity. On the bright side, Arkansas' colleges are dirt cheap, especially for residents, and a statewide lottery provides scholarships on top of that.
- H.S. is not a college town like Fayetteville, Tulsa, Springfield, etc. and it isn't a hub of industry either. You'll probably find the education level of your neighbors a bit low, especially the crowd in their early 20's. A typical conversation might be more about getting one's jet ski running more so than science, history, arts, or literature. It's blue collar and non-elite.
- Like everywhere in Arkansas, June-August usually means a 90+ degree day with relative humidity over 80%. If you don't mind getting a little sticky, H.S. is the place to be because of its proximity to the lakes. For the cost of a small day use fee at the various parks, campsites, and marinas, you can swim in the lakes without a wetsuit about 5 months out of the year and it feels very much like a tropical vacation.
- H.S. has a neat historical downtown area with cool BnB's, but the surrounding old neighborhoods have not seen revitalization to the extent of many other places. The city is small enough there's not as much incentive to cut commutes. Yet the area attracts artists and non-conformists so there's possibility! Sprawl is occurring thanks to a bypass highway, cheap land, and geographically distributed employment. You can cheaply live in either an old downtown craftsman or a very large newer home on the periphery of town.
- Arkansas is a red state, which means underfunded public schools, slum neighborhoods in every city, car dependency and sprawl, a lack of gynecological services, widespread skepticism about scientific facts, casual racism, brain drain for medical specialists, and periodic invitations to join someone or another's church. Your sensitivity to these factors may determine your enjoyment of the place. Overall though H.S. is a friendly place, and you are well compensated for the downsides via a low cost of living.
- Car ownership is a must wherever you live in H.S. You will eventually feel immense pressure to trade that car up to a truck and boat!
- Visitors from out West might be surprised by some of our parasites, like mosquitos, ticks, seed ticks, and chiggers, and by our poison ivy, which is all over the woods except in the winter.
- If you're looking for the next big thing, H.S. is probably not it. Expect nothing to change in the next 20-30 years. There are just no catalysts. In this regard it's a lot different than the booming and similar Northwest Arkansas area.
I'd suggest putting H.S. on your list of places to visit. It costs virtually nothing anyway. Maybe stay downtown at the historic Arlington Hotel and hit the bike trails, spa museums, bars, art shops, observation tower, Mid-America Museum, etc. Definitely visit lake Ouachita or camp on its shores. If you visit in the spring, go to a horse race, drink a mint julep, and waste a few bucks betting on the dark horse for the giggles.
If your tastes are more suburban / golf-y, check out Hot Springs Village (a separate town/development just to the north). If you want a bigger scene with lots of employment, lots of growth and development, and slightly higher costs, etc. check out Northwest Arkansas.
Well written and lots of good information - thanks!
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Any thoughts on Hot Springs, Arkansas? Housing prices seem to be fairly cheap and there's a national park right in town. The mountain bike trails there got a high rating from IMBA.
I live a good distance away, but visit there often. HS seems like a great retirement destination. It's a resort/recreation town with a rich history, awesome hiking/biking, a horse racing track / casino with a fun vibe, and of course some very large freshwater lakes. This is a very low cost of living destination. It has a mix of characteristics of Louisville, KY, Eureka Springs, AR, the Fayetteville, AR metro, and I dare say New Orleans (for the miniature downtown bar scene and fun-loving attitude). The city's mentality is about having fun.
Upsides:
- Beautiful lakes, especially Lake Ouachita (pronounced "wa sha ta") with lots of options for camping, fishing, scuba, watersports, sailing, boat rentals, manmade beaches, etc. Lake Hamilton is closer to town, surrounded by condos and mansions, and full of boats. Lake Catherine is sort of a mixture of the two. All three lakes are long-established hydroelectric projects. Ouachita drains into Hamilton which drains into Catherine.
- Very cheap real estate and a generally low cost of living depending on how few motorized toys you can stand to own.
- The location is geologically stable, not generally prone to flooding, wildfires, or hurricanes.
- Mountain biking, as mentioned, though perhaps not as massively developed as Fayetteville, AR.
- White water canoeing / kayaking opportunities within a short drive. You do this in the springtime. You do the lakes in the summer. You hike in the fall/winter. You bike whenever.
- Very clean air and very clean tap water (they actually bottle and sell their tap water).
- Museums, history, and interesting geology. E.g. on some beaches of Lake Ouachita, like a Joplin campground, most of the rocks contain fossils!
- More amenities than a town, but fewer problems than a big city.
- H.S. is a good latitude for people who hate winter and never want to shovel snow again. It can snow, but maybe once a year with the slush lasting for 1-3 days.
- Nearby things to do include all the activities in Little Rock (a place most folks in H.S. are scared of, but which has anything you can't find in H.S.), digging for literal diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds state park, Mount Magazine, Mount Nebo, and Petit Jean Mountain state parks, etc. You're also in a great motorcycle touring area.
Downsides:
- H.S. is off the beaten path and not exactly an economic dynamo. Interstate 40 bypassed the city long ago, though a four-lane highway connects the city to the interstate 30-40 miles away. The closest international airport is probably Memphis, at ~3 hours away. The closest regional airport is Little Rock at just over an hour away. The economy is dependent upon tourism, yet not particularly volatile because they are the low-cost provider for tourism; when recession hits tourists trade down to H.S. instead of going to fancier places. I would call the lakes a durable asset, but I wonder about the future of horse racing and people's appreciation for the place's museums and history. If you raise your kids here, expect (hope) that they'll probably move away in search of economic or educational opportunity. On the bright side, Arkansas' colleges are dirt cheap, especially for residents, and a statewide lottery provides scholarships on top of that.
- H.S. is not a college town like Fayetteville, Tulsa, Springfield, etc. and it isn't a hub of industry either. You'll probably find the education level of your neighbors a bit low, especially the crowd in their early 20's. A typical conversation might be more about getting one's jet ski running more so than science, history, arts, or literature. It's blue collar and non-elite.
- Like everywhere in Arkansas, June-August usually means a 90+ degree day with relative humidity over 80%. If you don't mind getting a little sticky, H.S. is the place to be because of its proximity to the lakes. For the cost of a small day use fee at the various parks, campsites, and marinas, you can swim in the lakes without a wetsuit about 5 months out of the year and it feels very much like a tropical vacation.
- H.S. has a neat historical downtown area with cool BnB's, but the surrounding old neighborhoods have not seen revitalization to the extent of many other places. The city is small enough there's not as much incentive to cut commutes. Yet the area attracts artists and non-conformists so there's possibility! Sprawl is occurring thanks to a bypass highway, cheap land, and geographically distributed employment. You can cheaply live in either an old downtown craftsman or a very large newer home on the periphery of town.
- Arkansas is a red state, which means underfunded public schools, slum neighborhoods in every city, car dependency and sprawl, a lack of gynecological services, widespread skepticism about scientific facts, casual racism, brain drain for medical specialists, and periodic invitations to join someone or another's church. Your sensitivity to these factors may determine your enjoyment of the place. Overall though H.S. is a friendly place, and you are well compensated for the downsides via a low cost of living.
- Car ownership is a must wherever you live in H.S. You will eventually feel immense pressure to trade that car up to a truck and boat!
- Visitors from out West might be surprised by some of our parasites, like mosquitos, ticks, seed ticks, and chiggers, and by our poison ivy, which is all over the woods except in the winter.
- If you're looking for the next big thing, H.S. is probably not it. Expect nothing to change in the next 20-30 years. There are just no catalysts. In this regard it's a lot different than the booming and similar Northwest Arkansas area.
I'd suggest putting H.S. on your list of places to visit. It costs virtually nothing anyway. Maybe stay downtown at the historic Arlington Hotel and hit the bike trails, spa museums, bars, art shops, observation tower, Mid-America Museum, etc. Definitely visit lake Ouachita or camp on its shores. If you visit in the spring, go to a horse race, drink a mint julep, and waste a few bucks betting on the dark horse for the giggles.
If your tastes are more suburban / golf-y, check out Hot Springs Village (a separate town/development just to the north). If you want a bigger scene with lots of employment, lots of growth and development, and slightly higher costs, etc. check out Northwest Arkansas.
Well written and lots of good information - thanks!
I agree. Just doing a google streetview tour it looks exactly like you describe it. We plan on doing a road trip to Arkansas later in the year so we'll give Hot Springs a look. I noticed Bill Clinton's childhood home is on Zillow. It seemed reasonably priced but it needs lots of work.
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If you want a bigger scene with lots of employment, lots of growth and development, and slightly higher costs, etc. check out Northwest Arkansas.
Agree 100% with what ChpBstrd said. HS is a cool area to visit. They have some old bed and breakfasts right up the hill from the main street, some neat bars, little breweries, and the bathhouses are interesting to visit, but I don't think I'd want to live there. It's not really near anything. I'd prefer to live in Eureka Springs if you are interested in small town vibes. Plus Eureka has a much better MTB scene with Passion Play and Lake Leatherwood right there and NWA is only about an hour away. I have nothing but good things to say about Northwest Arkansas. We moved here about 10 years ago and we've really loved it. I even went fully remote and we had an opportunity to go wherever and we chose to stay. But it seems the secret is out a bit. When Covid hit this place exploded. So many people took the remote work as an opportunity to move here and almost all said the reason they moved was for the outdoor life.
I guess a lot of people complain about the politics in Arkansas and I think if that's a real big part of your persona it'd probably be tough to live here, but almost all of my friends tend to be pretty liberal. But, I hang out with mostly very highly educated people, most of my closest friends all have PhDs (i.e. corporate people or professors at UofA) and/or mountain bikers and they all tend to be liberal. If you are big into religion your friends will almost certainly be very conservative.
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I I've heard that Houston has no zoning at all, has that made for more walkability than other big Texas cities? I've never been there.
Nope. But your house can be "conveniently" located between a gas station and an antique store, U-Haul rental place, tire store, landscaper selling large trees, a tattoo parlor, or other businesses you aren't going to be walking to regularly.
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A random tip for those considering a visit to Hot Springs, Arkansas - if you can make it to the Poetry night on Wednesday at Kollective coffee you won't regret it. Cute coffee shop, and an amazing community of people. They accept visitors and anyone can get up and read. I was truly blown away by my experience at it 4 years ago and I'm not typically a big poetry person :) https://hotspringsarts.org/poetry/#:~:text=Hot%20Springs%20has%20been%20hosting,Avenue%20in%20downtown%20Hot%20Springs. (https://hotspringsarts.org/poetry/#:~:text=Hot%20Springs%20has%20been%20hosting,Avenue%20in%20downtown%20Hot%20Springs.)
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I I've heard that Houston has no zoning at all, has that made for more walkability than other big Texas cities? I've never been there.
The city has no formal zoning but many cities and suburbs within the metro area have fairly strict rules (e.g. West Univ, Bellaire, River Oaks) so it's not as bad as it sounds. In addition, blocks in the city can apply for setback rules, etc, as long as all the neighbors agree to them. This has proven a popular way of keeping developers from jamming 3-4 townhouses on an lot amid older bungalows and building right to the sidewalk.
Houston is not very walkable due to 1) appallingly hot and humid weather most of the time, 2) a city of the 60s/70s sprawl designed around cars, and 3) a massive metro sprawl about 60 miles across. Worse yet, there really is no public effective public transportation.
It is a city of great contrasts. Extremely friendly, cheap and liveable in many ways but with appalling weather, traffic, some crime, high property taxes, etc.
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I I've heard that Houston has no zoning at all, has that made for more walkability than other big Texas cities? I've never been there.
The city has no formal zoning but many cities and suburbs within the metro area have fairly strict rules (e.g. West Univ, Bellaire, River Oaks) so it's not as bad as it sounds. In addition, blocks in the city can apply for setback rules, etc, as long as all the neighbors agree to them. This has proven a popular way of keeping developers from jamming 3-4 townhouses on an lot amid older bungalows and building right to the sidewalk.
Houston is not very walkable due to 1) appallingly hot and humid weather most of the time, 2) a city of the 60s/70s sprawl designed around cars, and 3) a massive metro sprawl about 60 miles across. Worse yet, there really is no public effective public transportation.
It is a city of great contrasts. Extremely friendly, cheap and liveable in many ways but with appalling weather, traffic, some crime, high property taxes, etc.
My sister lived in Houston for a while, and I went to visit her in the summer. Not recommended! As far as walkability goes, it's more a case of dashing from one air-conditioned spot to another. Walking from the car to the mall entrance was enough to leave me a sweaty mess.
We didn't have to deal with traffic much, but we did make the mistake of leaving the Galleria mall just before rush hour, and it took almost an hour to drive the six miles back to my sister's place.
I had a friend also living there at the time. He had a typical 3br house. When we visited, he first showed me how small the yard was, and then said it didn't matter, because the only time he went out there was to use the grill. It was too hot and humid to actually sit out there.
Another thing I noticed was how cold it was in restaurants. Apparently if the temp hits 100F outside, the restaurant must set their thermostat to 50F. No kidding, it was so cold I would have left before ordering if it were up to me. It was the same everywhere we went, but at least I learned to bring something warm to wear after the first time. The food was almost cold by the time it got to the table, and these were pretty nice restaurants.
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Saw this today on YouTube: https://www.strongtowns.org/strongesttown
Might contain good candidates for anyone looking to relocate away from a big metro area.
Count me as a fan of these smaller places like Brattleboro as seen in the video. No idea of what it actually is like of course.
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Saw this today on YouTube: https://www.strongtowns.org/strongesttown
Might contain good candidates for anyone looking to relocate away from a big metro area.
Count me as a fan of these smaller places like Brattleboro as seen in the video. No idea of what it actually is like of course.
This is a good example of why towns/cities are really about the community, connection, and people. It's not that Brattleboro doesn't have a nice natural or built environment, but rather the people and their planning that make it a special place. I hope they can hold on to that as more people move there, as opposed to so many places in the US that put up exclusive barriers that end up eroding community.
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I am super skeptical of Brattleboro being a strong town when it’s population has been constant for 30 years. Let’s see how strong they are once the status quo is challenged.
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I am super skeptical of Brattleboro being a strong town when it’s population has been constant for 30 years. Let’s see how strong they are once the status quo is challenged.
Eh... most people seem not to want this definition of the good life, and that's why they strive to live in expensive places where they can sit in traffic jams. They'd look at a small town like this and ask "how much money can I make there?" or say "I bet there's no jobs." and turn back to their hour-long commutes and cookie-cutter subdivisions.
Sure, places like Brattleboro appeal to lots of people, but many more would find the "amenities" to be po-dunk and amateurish compared to what their city has (for a $50 admission fee).
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Count me as a fan of these smaller places like Brattleboro as seen in the video. No idea of what it actually is like of course.
There are still dozens of pleasant little towns in the USA like Brattleboro where I'd happily settled for the rest of my life. One place I really love is Patagonia, AZ. Unfortunately, it is very difficult for Canadians to pack up and move to the USA.
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Count me as a fan of these smaller places like Brattleboro as seen in the video. No idea of what it actually is like of course.
There are still dozens of pleasant little towns in the USA like Brattleboro where I'd happily settled for the rest of my life. One place I really love is Patagonia, AZ. Unfortunately, it is very difficult for Canadians to pack up and move to the USA.
Ah, one of the Old Stomping Grounds. Used to work on a raptor project on Sonoita Creek.
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Count me as a fan of these smaller places like Brattleboro as seen in the video. No idea of what it actually is like of course.
There are still dozens of pleasant little towns in the USA like Brattleboro where I'd happily settled for the rest of my life. One place I really love is Patagonia, AZ. Unfortunately, it is very difficult for Canadians to pack up and move to the USA.
Definitely. We found another "good one" and have been here for several decades now.