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I didn't say that I never went farther than 10 minutes from my front door. I said, "most of life happens within a 10 minute walk" meaning most of one's daily activities are within a 1/2 mile of home.
That's quite different from never.
My wife's office was about 1.5 miles from our house. We would meet for lunch once a week. My parents lived 50 miles away. The beach was 60 miles. So yeah, I left my neighborhood a couple times per week but not because I had to. Because I wanted to.
Now to put it back in its original context, I said that in response to a condescending comment that was suggesting that when people have kids and "have to plan for things" that people quickly give up on city living - or at least on not owning a car.
So, how can one be well travelled? I'm not sure what running errands, taking the kids to school, or going to work have to do with traveling per se but, In my life I've lived in 10 US states (4 of them while in the Army), visited every state east of the Mississippi (except for MS) and have seen a lot of states west, visited most of eastern Canada + Vancouver, a bit of the Caribbean, most of western europe and now I live in Australia. There's a lot of the world I still want to see and some I'll never get to but I think I'm off to a pretty good start.
I happen to agree that with kids you have to plan more, especially when you have more than one.
I agree you've been around. I've been to 44 states, lived in 7 (most of the time in 3 of those), visited several Canadian provinces, several European countries and Brazil. I think there are people everywhere, cities, suburbs, small towns and rural who haven't been far out of their own bubble.
You don't need to live in a big city to live that lifestyle, though. You might prefer the constant energy of a place like NYC (I don't) but others might like the vibe of Madison, WI or Portland, ME. You don't need to live in a metro of +5 million to be able to live in a neighborhood where you can walk to most things and where there are a reasonable amount of offerings catering to 20-30 somethings.
I didn't say you did, though I'd prefer the big city, to me it seems the northeast region in the places I've been... that lifestyle is in bigger volume. I fully well know many people don't like high energy cities... but i do as well as many others. Madison is probably a lot like how Ann Arbor is in Michigan. College town walkable but small and in Ann Arbor you need a car to get out of the town, unless you want to wait on bus service that comes every 30 or 40 minutes and in some spots stops at 10 pm. To better explain myself, a place like Ann Arbor feels like a single neighborhood if it were put in a place like Chicago or NYC.
That is also why I mentioned if I want something smaller, I could chose a place like Red Bank, NJ... It was kinda like Ann Arbor(minus the college) but with a metro train connected to other spots in New Jersey or NYC.
That is also why I mentioned if I want something smaller, I could chose a place like Red Bank, NJ...
yeah, I grew up with my parents dragging me to Monmouth St. for haircuts and riding my bike to Jack's Music as a teenager.
I love it there. I would move back in a minute but for two things - the politics and the long commutes. If I could find a local job that paid well I would suffer people's ignorant diatribes (or hide out in Asbury Park).
I love it there. I would move back in a minute but for two things - the politics and the long commutes. If I could find a local job that paid well I would suffer people's ignorant diatribes (or hide out in Asbury Park).
I could be wrong, but I think Red Bank is the third-most-liberal borough on the Jersey Shore now, after Asbury Park and Long Branch.
I'm not "anti-car" but what I am is "anti having to drive everywhere just to do simple errands" type of person. However, most of the country is like this so it won't change completely, but many cities are doing what they can, little by little, to create walkable areas if they didn't already have them.
Also, someone mentioned the "family car" being back in style. It's funny because while my parents own two cars, for over a decade until they retired not too long ago, they both worked at the same company. After a little bit they almost never used two cars just because. Most of the time it's just one and they only use two if one has a doctor's appointment while the other has something else to do. Whenever I come to visit them, they almost exclusively use one car now.
Even if these urban residents do own cars, they will drive them less and therefore keep them much longer, resulting in fewer new car sales.. We live in a walkable urban neighborhood and have a 4 year old car with only 14,000 miles on it. I see no reason why this car won't last well over 10 years.
Even if these urban residents do own cars, they will drive them less and therefore keep them much longer, resulting in fewer new car sales.. We live in a walkable urban neighborhood and have a 4 year old car with only 14,000 miles on it. I see no reason why this car won't last well over 10 years.
Buying a "new car" seems to be a very personal thing. DH and I keep our cars a long time. You should have seen our 10 yo minivan! On second thought, maybe not! It barely ran by the time we got rid of it; I think the dealership gave us like $200 for it (in 2003). I don't remember how many miles it had on it, other than "a lot". Recently, our daughter's 14 yo car (which we owned) gave up the ghost, literally, on I-70/225 in Aurora, CO. Like the other car, it had been driven "a lot". We gave it to charity. I am currently driving a 2003 car, the replacement for the minivan. It has ~90K miles on it, and there's really nothing wrong with it, so we'll keep it a while longer. Most cars these days can last through at least 100,000 miles.
Cars do last the longest when they are lightly used. A few thousand miles a year is great. But when one ends up sitting for months due to lack of need, then it becomes an albatross.
Well, lucky you. Like I said, I grew up in a crappy suburb that has just recently started getting very basic amenities. There are nicer, more affluent suburbs that provide many more amenities than my hometown provided. Of course, there are many more suburbs that provide little more than Applebees or the Olive Garden and no decent bookstores. As someone who grew up in a suburban area that suffered a complete lack of good bookstores, a decent movie theater, subpar shopping, lousy schools, and a relatively uninteresting population of people, I obviously have a very different outlook on city life and all it has to offer. The suburb where I attended college was 30 minutes away and at the other end of my county; it was the complete opposite in almost every way of my hometown, yet it still didn't offer all that my city does - though it does provide very easy access to my city.
Again, I'm not trying to bash suburbs or rural areas. As I said, they have their positives too, but you can't argue that there aren't very specific amenities that are only found within urban areas. If they weren't valuable or desirable, people wouldn't pay extraordinary sums of money to live in such proximity to them. I think the poster who said, "I don't believe you have all this within a mile of your home" basically proves my point: I have greater access to a wider variety of amenities than most Americans. I don't see any way to argue that I don't. My family, friends, community, and arts all enrich my life and I'm very thankful for all they've given me.
I'm sorry that whatever place you grew up in felt so lacking, but it still doesn't change my point that the majority of suburbanites have the same access to all of the "amazing" amenities of the city, culturally-wise or whatever else. What I'm trying to say is that I don't see how it's any kind of big deal for most people whether or not they are a 10 minute walk or a 20, 30, 45 or possibly even 60 minute drive/transit ride away from these things. Other people have different values and interests in life, and may not find the need to be so "culturally enlightened" as you've painted it by needing to live so close to these things. Maybe they like the amenities that they have there and they don't mind the travel time from the urban area in exchange for more space, more quiet, different pace of life, etc. And I'm sorry you had such a miserable experience in Staten Island...I grew up here, and I don't really mind it that much, at least not as much as I used to. Sometimes I still think about getting out of here, but one of the things I do like is having the city so close, mainly for commuting purposes. I don't see how this differs from most of the suburbs in the NYC area, which are within an hour more or less away from Manhattan. Same goes for just about every other ring of suburbia around major cities, such as when I was out in Cincinnati for a few weeks. And if someone doesn't like their metropolitan area because they feel that it's lacking in "cultural enlightenment" then they can move out to somewhere else, this is a huge country with a lot of different types of cities and areas to live, such as what you did.
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