Where to Live?

[ebznflows]

Hello everyone. This is my first post.

 

Lately I have been thinking about life, what is important, and what is currently missing in mine. I love my husband, and I love my son and we have another child on the way, so overall things are pretty good. However, what is missing for me, I think, is a community of peers. I am past the point of diminishing returns in terms of happiness of just acquiring more stuff and checking the boxes of societal expectations. I know now that our relationships with people are what is truely important, not how fancy your countertops are or how many trophies your kids get. I long to live in a place where people have time to visit eachother's houses, maybe even on a weekday, and just hang out and talk and our kids can play. Where people are not so swamped by the hectic day to day expectations of careers, and activities and commuting, that they can't make these bonds with neighbors.

 

Has anyone found it? Have any of you found an oasis of real people who have time for the important things in life? Where in the US or the world would you live if you had the choice?

[Culain]

That kind of Oasis has yet to exist anywhere, wherever you go it will be a struggle to find good people. Unless you live in an area where you're being attacked then I probably wouldn't recommend moving anywhere, but I would personally be worried if I lived in a busy US city right now because both economically and mentally the future looks bleak for the country.

[fractional slacker]

Quality people are not super rare, IMO, but they are difficult to discover.  Fast and loose "friends" or people you can do activities with are a dime a dozen. However, you are not likely to share values or develop a close bond with those types. Like fast food, they are convenient but empty calories.

 

Quality people are either reluctant to engage with a crazy society for obvious reasons and limit their accessibility, or they are content and not necessarily searching for more friends. It's a difficult puzzle to figure out as most on this board can attest to.

 

Now add to that you are a married person with kids, and you have added several more hurdles to jump over.I suppose some parts of the country are better than others. Certainly you would probably best avoid small religious towns, which is stating the obvious. New Hampshire and the FSP is interesting. Retirement cities are places that would lower the odds. Not sure that is much help. But there ya go.

How do you know there are no quality people within 20 miles of your current home? 

[Magnus]

Hello everyone. This is my first post.

 

Lately I have been thinking about life, what is important, and what is currently missing in mine. I love my husband, and I love my son and we have another child on the way, so overall things are pretty good. However, what is missing for me, I think, is a community of peers. I am past the point of diminishing returns in terms of happiness of just acquiring more stuff and checking the boxes of societal expectations. I know now that our relationships with people are what is truely important, not how fancy your countertops are or how many trophies your kids get. I long to live in a place where people have time to visit eachother's houses, maybe even on a weekday, and just hang out and talk and our kids can play. Where people are not so swamped by the hectic day to day expectations of careers, and activities and commuting, that they can't make these bonds with neighbors.

 

Has anyone found it? Have any of you found an oasis of real people who have time for the important things in life? Where in the US or the world would you live if you had the choice?

 

I've lived in a few places in America, and haven't found any place that fits the description.  I wish I had, because it sounds nice, the way you describe it. 

 

My explanation for their absence is that most of the close-knit communities you describe were wiped out by the forced redesign of urban space to accommodate cars, beginning in the 1920s and 30s, but taking effect in earnest after WWII.  It ended the small, walkable neighborhoods that existed pretty much everywhere, except for a few niches in old, hard-to-destroy places like New York, San Francisco, New Orleans and a few pockets here and there, such as student areas around college towns.  The ordinary small-house kinds of neighborhoods were mostly banned, with the advent of larger and larger lot-size mandates, setback requirements, maximum density regulations, zoning restrictions, and an effective ban on build-your-own mail order houses that were popular from 1890 to 1940.  The smaller houses (i.e., more walkable neighborhoods) that survived are mostly either in very pricey historic (pre-car) neighborhoods that were specially preserved (e.g., Haight-Ashbury, the Garden District, Beacon Hill), or they were just left to decay, being left for poor people, which means that they are either slums or have been bulldozed.  The government more or less forced the middle class to buy 2,000+ square feet of single-story air-conditioned space, on a quarter-acre lot.  Multiply that by thousands of houses, with no stores in walking distance, and they call it a "neighborhood." 

 

That was also the time that television came on the scene.  Combined with the loss of walkable urban space, it pretty much ended the kind of easy, casual, public interaction you're describing. 

[ebznflows]

How do I know there are no quality people in a 20 mile radius? There probably are but that's an hour of driving here! I was thinking more a 1 mile radius. Anyone here love their neighborhood?

 

Maybe a new development of starter homes would attract a bunch of young families at the same time... Actually, come to think of it, that describes the neighborhood I grew up in and as an idiot teenager couldn't wait to leave. However, my parents had bbqs and book clubs and bowling tournaments and as kids we played jailbreak in the street. Pretty awesome looking back on it. I think maybe my mom knew what she was doing cultivating that.