Hi,
I'm looking for suggestions on our next place to live. My husband and I are 30-something professionals currently live in downtown Atlanta, but we are hoping to move in the next year or so. The problem is that we have different (and sometimes conflicting) ideas of what kind of place we'd like to move to. Here's a compilation of the things we've mostly agreed on:
1. Walkable: we would love to get rid of our car entirely. We want to be able to walk/bike/take transit to groceries, coffee shops, bookstores, and cultural opportunities. And we really want a pretty downtown, with nice little storefronts and big sidewalks. However...
2. Near wilderness. We (well, ok, this one is mainly me
) would also like to live somewhere that mountains are easily accessible--preferably without driving. A college town on the edge of a national park would be ideal.
3. Not too far from family, and preferably on a train line to family. His family is in central Virginia; mine's in Atlanta. Problem is that the east coast is so built up everywhere there's passenger rail, so finding open space in those areas is hard. He's more concerned about this requirement than I am, so being farther from Atlanta and closer to Virginia would be fine (like, say, Pennsylvania).
4. Cultural life. As I mentioned, a college town would probaby be ideal. We want to be able to get to the outdoors, but we also want to be able to get to plays, theaters, etc.
5. Technology jobs in the area would be nice, but not essential, because our plan is to live small and telecommute.
6. Small to midsized: big enough to have culture, and small enough to know the neighbors. I lean toward small (5000-10000 population), but my husband wants more like 20000 minimum. Along the same lines...
7. Reasonably diverse in terms of ethnic groups, culture, and political opinions. I realize we might be asking too much of a small town here! But we'd rather not live somewhere that's extremely conservative or extremely liberal (we're very liberal now, but we both grew up very conservative, and we like to hear both sides of issues). And I know that smaller towns are generally not diverse, but I hate the idea of raising our kids somewhere they'll rarely even see, much less make friends with, anyone of another color. We also plan to adopt in the future, so there's a good chance that we'll be a biracial family.
8. Finally, of course, not too expensive! Ideally we would like to be able to buy some land for pretty cheap and design our own house. We really want to build with natural materials, so a place without too many restrictions on building codes would be nice, too.
Any ideas? Yes, I know: I really want to live in Europe.
I lived in a tiny town in Romania for a year and thought it was heaven. But my husband doesn't want to live that far from family. So we are holding out hope that we can find something that will suit both of us!
Of the places we've looked at so far, we like Staunton, VA (but it's a little far from the mountains); Charlottesville, VA (but it's expensive); Asheville, NC (but there's no train); and Ithaca, NY (but again, no train, and it's expensive). We think there might be some great places in West Virginia, but we haven't been able to go out and look at many towns there yet. Some of the recommendations from ****.com that I liked at first glance were Roanoke, VA (but it's kind of spread out, and I don't know if there's much of a downtown); Hendersonville, NC (but I haven't been there yet); Lynchburg, VA (but I'm a little scared of it because I went to college near there, and it was SO fundamentalist then); Boone, NC (but haven't been there); Morganton, NC (haven't been there either); and Waynesville, NC (again, haven't been yet). And of course, it seems like all of these places are pretty monocultural.
Any other suggestions? Anyone who live in any of those towns want to tell me how it stacks up? Should we ditch the wilderness idea and move back to DC (where we were both living when we met)? Could we find the otherwise-perfect place if we sacrificed being close to family? Could we find it if we don't care about price? Of the towns we haven't visited yet, which ones do you think we should definitely give a try?
Thanks for any ideas you can offer!
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