How to decide where to live

[SteveinMN]

I miss the logic of a car driving for you, causing you to be a fan of driving a car?

Most people I know would rather have root canal than drive. For them, autonomous vehicles will be a godsend. Me, I think I'll keep my manual-transmission I-drive-it car as long as I can.

[jp1]

I would also be concerned about finding something that will be age in place-able. My parents, shortly after they retired, moved from the house I grew up in, not a large house or a large plot of land, but still, moved into a condo in an elevator building. They were torn between getting a condo and purchasing the house I was raised in (we had rented it for 22 years and the landlord was a few years older than my parents and looking to retire/sell). Ultimately the condo won out, and it soon proved a good thing when my mom broke her ankle. But they also loved it every time it snowed and shoveling had to be done or every time the lawn got mowed, by the resident manager, or when the roof needed to be replaced and someone else had to manage that, etc.

Personally I don't need land. I've lived in apartments in dense cities my entire adult life so any single family house will seem fancy-pants to me even if the neighbors are only 15 feet away like Steve's. The convenience of the city is just too enticing. I like that we have a Safeway and a butcher and a fruit/veggie stand and a nice wine store all within 2 blocks, a library a ten minute walk (or 5 minute lightrail ride) away, and so on. If we had land I might grow a few veggies and perhaps even some chickens so that we didn't have to buy store stale eggs, and might even mess around with some carpentry projects, but anything more than a quarter acre would probably be wasted on us. A college town that has decent amenities and services but is cheaper than San Francisco would be perfect. But that's me. Not necessarily anyone else. Everyone has their own priorities. No matter where it is, though, we will likely rent for at least a few months and make sure that we like being there. I don't want to be like Iris's friends and make such an expensive mistake as buying a place that I want to sell a couple years later.

[Alan]

Most people I know would rather have root canal than drive. For them, autonomous vehicles will be a godsend. Me, I think I'll keep my manual-transmission I-drive-it car as long as I can.

While not self-driving, my current car is the smartest vehicle I've ever driven. If I want to make a phone call, I just tell it who to dial, issue voice commands to change audio or climate control, there are front facing cameras which monitor lanes and alert me if I get too close to one or the other, my cruise control adjusts itself to compensate for slower vehicles I may approach, while stopped at a traffic light it alerts me when the car in front of me moves and the manufacturer assures me that the car will automatically stop if something blocks my path although I've never tested that feature, my high beams automatically switch to low when oncoming traffic is detected.
My problem with that sort of technology comes from the fact that those systems sometimes turn themselves off during inclement weather such as a heavy rain which can adversely affect visibility. What would an autonomous car do in that case?

[pinkytoe]

It isn't the driving I detest, it's the way most people drive now. Speeding, running red lights, cutting others off. Does that happen less in smaller cities? I read about the trains and subways of most other developed countries and wish we had those choices.

[iris lilies]

Someone asked our friend who moved back to the city "when did you decide to move back?" And she said "I didnt decide, DH decided that we were moving after watching me sit on the sofa and cry every night." They had moved to the best zip code in St. Louis and found there was no way to engage with neighbors.

Yesterday we visited our very close friends at their new country place. For them, it will be a good move because she has always wanted to have a huge garden, chickens, and maybe goats. She has lived for 30'years in a city house with a yard so tiny, there isnt even room to park a car. So, she is like me, making gardens all over the neighborhood, but never really owning any of it. Now she has a huge flat piece of land that can hold an orchard, a huge vegetable harden, chikcens, other small animals.

[JaneV2.0]

It isn't the driving I detest, it's the way most people drive now. Speeding, running red lights, cutting others off. Does that happen less in smaller cities? I read about the trains and subways of most other developed countries and wish we had those choices.

Not to mention everyone's pet peeve--drivers looking down at their phones, texting. It's no coincidence that TV spots selling cars usually show them on deserted roads.

[JaneV2.0]

Someone asked our friend who moved back to the city "when did you decide to move back?" And she said "I didnt decide, DH decided that we were moving after watching me sit on the sofa and cry every night." They had moved to the best zip code in St. Louis and found there was no way to engage with neighbors.
....

I'm afraid this will be me (though I'm not a crier...) if I leave Washington. I'm attached to this part of the world; it never gets old to me.

[pinkytoe]

I wonder what it is that speaks to us about a place and makes us feel at home. I've always been fascinated by that topic - the sense of place. It seems to be missing in so much of the US. as geography, history and culture are rearranged, replaced and or/forgotten. It doesn't seem like most people care about such things anymore.

[JaneV2.0]

I heard somewhere that pigeons are attracted to the place where they were conceived. (Or maybe I hallucinated it, the concept seems crazy.)
For me, that would be Victoria, BC. Fairly close.

I need hills, water, vegetation. Los Angeles feels like a crater to me; I was uneasy the whole time I was there. San Francisco, I was happy as a local clam, and I was transfixed by the sound in Seattle. I was born in coastal Astoria, maybe that's the influence.

[catherine]

I wonder what it is that speaks to us about a place and makes us feel at home. I've always been fascinated by that topic - the sense of place.

I agree. I think my tooling around on Ancestry.com has only solidified it for me. My ancestors landed and settled in Massachusetts and Connecticut and that's where 90% of us stayed. (I'm a rebel--I moved to New Jersey). It's one of the reasons going back to my New England roots by moving to VT appeals to me. If I had no kids and my DH wasn't around or didn't care, I'd probably move back to CT. I miss being near the water and near the family I have left there.