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We moved a few months back to the southeast after 6 years in the Phoenix area. Over the time we lived in the Phoenix are, a lot of folks asked us how we did it with the heat, the sprawl, the so called "lack of culture". But we used to love living in the area.
A job opportunity brought us to the southeast, and it was one of the most difficult decisions, because we just couldn't imagine a better place to live than Phoenix. We just loved the convenience of the area. We were in the east valley, and for most shopping or other activities, we hardly had to drive more than 15-20 minutes. What others often referred to as lack of culture, with all the strip malls, we looked at as amazing convenience. The roads are fantastic - just so easy to drive on, and no need for GPS or Google Maps. Also sidewalks and streetlights on every road! After moving away, we realized how well-developed the Phoenix area is. I understand that part of it is just the landscape, that such infrastructure would be more expensive in other places, but it's been difficult to adjust. We loved the weather as well - the southeast is not so bad - but Phoenix area is definitely more of what we prefer. We didn't mind the hot summers at all. By the sixth year, I think we were numb to the heat. We also loved how there were so many parks! Of course, there's a lot more natural greenery here in the southeast, but we liked the more structured parks in the Phoenix area.
Anyway, my point of making this thread was to see if there were others who lived in the Phoenix area for a long time, and then moved away and miss it dearly. We are slowly getting to like where we live now, and of course, it's a better job, but we still miss our lifestyle in the Phoenix area.
Hey! I have a friend that made the same move as you last year. small world.
Anyway, My wife and I left Phoenix for Raleigh a few years back. We suddenly remembered why the east coast is a bit tougher to deal with. Windy undersized roads that are bumper to bumper, older infrastructure, and all the other little annoyances. We left Raleigh for Wilmington Nc, then Palm Coast FL, and now Tampa.
We both find ourselves longing for the convenience of Phoenix. Here if something is 15 miles away it's going to take at least 30-40 minutes to get there, and if it's rush hour it's worse. I spent an hour last week during morning rush taking my dog to a pet sitter 4 miles away! I should have just walked!
Everytime we move to a new area we end up looking for an area that reminds us of the east valley. But in the end nothing has been an equivalent. My wife is currently pursuing her master's degree and we've already discussed going back west after she is done. I'm fearful of returning to the heat, but eventually we have to face the reality that we are continually searching for the east valley in a different geographic location.
I love the sprawl so many hate. Sprawl is modern americana. it is our culture! Like it or hate it, it's who we are. Americans adore their large strip malls loaded with corporate stores. If we didn't they wouldn't be popping up everywhere.
I've also found that the cultured areas are also ones everyone avoids. People like to live near culture and history, but very few want to be in it. Every town I've lived in has had a "historic district". Nearly all of them are full of empty storefronts, have miserable parking and are desolate after dark. I think people like to talk about their town's amazing history while enjoying a frappuccino at the starbucks inside the new super target. They might drive through the historic district once a year to update their references...
Funny how we all look at things differently! We lived in Phoenix (East Valley) for 25+ years. We moved to Raleigh, NC in 2012. One of the things we like BEST about Raleigh is the convenience of living here. Our household joke is no matter where we are going, when DH asks me how long it will take to get there, I can confidently say "25 minutes or less." That would include the neighboring cities of Durham, Cary and Chapel Hill. We don't have to drive 45+ minutes to get to the one indie movie theater in Phoenix Metro anymore - there are 5-6 of them here within that 25 minute drive.
I would disagree with Vinny's thoughts about historic districts. Look at Boston, Philly, Raleigh and many, many more for examples.
That said, I do miss the better connections at the larger PHX airport. I miss Pro's Ranch Market and the Asian grocers and restaurants in the East Valley. I regret that YOU have Portillo's and we don't. I miss the streetlights and straight roads. But for us, the convenience is here, not in Phoenix Metro. And we find the people to be MUCH friendlier.
Funny how we all look at things differently! We lived in Phoenix (East Valley) for 25+ years. We moved to Raleigh, NC in 2012. One of the things we like BEST about Raleigh is the convenience of living here. Our household joke is no matter where we are going, when DH asks me how long it will take to get there, I can confidently say "25 minutes or less." That would include the neighboring cities of Durham, Cary and Chapel Hill. We don't have to drive 45+ minutes to get to the one indie movie theater in Phoenix Metro anymore - there are 5-6 of them here within that 25 minute drive.
I would disagree with Vinny's thoughts about historic districts. Look at Boston, Philly, Raleigh and many, many more for examples.
That said, I do miss the better connections at the larger PHX airport. I miss Pro's Ranch Market and the Asian grocers and restaurants in the East Valley. I regret that YOU have Portillo's and we don't. I miss the streetlights and straight roads. But for us, the convenience is here, not in Phoenix Metro. And we find the people to be MUCH friendlier.
In my one trip to Raleigh I spent well over 30 minutes driving from Cary to Raleigh on a Friday evening, I was actually surprised with how much traffic there was in what feels like a relatively small metro area. But maybe I just caught it on a bad day? I remember being thankful for how much larger and modern Phoenix freeways are.
No idea what you mean about one indie theater? Filmbar and vallry theater are dedicated to it and I know both Shea 14 and Camelview show Indies regularly. If you were 45 minute east of Tempe were you even in the valley? That sounds like you'd be in Gold Canyon. And if you like things like historic districts and indie theaters why on earth would you move to the very fringe of the valley? Odd...
Glad to hear you're enjoying Raleigh, at one time we considered NC but it just wasn't a good fit, me and humidity just don't get along well.
Funny how we all look at things differently! We lived in Phoenix (East Valley) for 25+ years. We moved to Raleigh, NC in 2012. One of the things we like BEST about Raleigh is the convenience of living here. Our household joke is no matter where we are going, when DH asks me how long it will take to get there, I can confidently say "25 minutes or less." That would include the neighboring cities of Durham, Cary and Chapel Hill. We don't have to drive 45+ minutes to get to the one indie movie theater in Phoenix Metro anymore - there are 5-6 of them here within that 25 minute drive.
I would disagree with Vinny's thoughts about historic districts. Look at Boston, Philly, Raleigh and many, many more for examples.
That said, I do miss the better connections at the larger PHX airport. I miss Pro's Ranch Market and the Asian grocers and restaurants in the East Valley. I regret that YOU have Portillo's and we don't. I miss the streetlights and straight roads. But for us, the convenience is here, not in Phoenix Metro. And we find the people to be MUCH friendlier.
If I need to stay on the east coast it would probably be Raleigh. I agree that it was easy to get around there, although not as easy as Phoenix. My trouble with Raleigh was doing anything on the weekends. Twice I tried to go to costco on a saturday and couldn't find a parking space (has the Apex store opened yet? That would probably help!). There were also a few shops I wanted to visit in Cameron Village, but again, weekends it was impossible to find a place to park. I felt like Raleigh had too many people for the businesses that were opened.
It's a great city and we were very close to purchasing a beautiful place out in Johnston county before we decided to go to the beach.
As far as historic districts, they absolutely work in the big cities like you listed because tourists are willing to go there. But in smaller towns and cities that don't have a tourist draw they are not viable. Historic Fuquay-Varina? Who's going there??
We moved to the Bay Area, California for a bit. Bay Area is much better than Phoenix in terms of stuff to do and see, not to mention much better weather.
But it's not worth the sacrifice in quality and size of housing. And you have to live in a million dollar home to attend a decent school district there.
Back in Scottsdale now and much happier. Everything in Phoenix is new , cheap, and nice. If we want our Cali fix, it's a 1-2 flight away.
We moved to the Bay Area, California for a bit. Bay Area is much better than Phoenix in terms of stuff to do and see, not to mention much better weather.
But it's not worth the sacrifice in quality and size of housing. And you have to live in a million dollar home to attend a decent school district there.
Back in Scottsdale now and much happier. Everything in Phoenix is new , cheap, and nice. If we want our Cali fix, it's a 1-2 flight away.
It's the difference between living in a place that is underrated versus overrated on a national level, from my time in NY I knew so many people that couldn't care less about seeing Times Square for the 1000th time, they actually go out of their way to avoid it. But you pay through the nose because everyone thinks they want to be there. The value you get in a place like Phoenix is hard to pass up.
Funny how we all look at things differently! We lived in Phoenix (East Valley) for 25+ years. We moved to Raleigh, NC in 2012. One of the things we like BEST about Raleigh is the convenience of living here. Our household joke is no matter where we are going, when DH asks me how long it will take to get there, I can confidently say "25 minutes or less." That would include the neighboring cities of Durham, Cary and Chapel Hill. We don't have to drive 45+ minutes to get to the one indie movie theater in Phoenix Metro anymore - there are 5-6 of them here within that 25 minute drive.
I would disagree with Vinny's thoughts about historic districts. Look at Boston, Philly, Raleigh and many, many more for examples.
That said, I do miss the better connections at the larger PHX airport. I miss Pro's Ranch Market and the Asian grocers and restaurants in the East Valley. I regret that YOU have Portillo's and we don't. I miss the streetlights and straight roads. But for us, the convenience is here, not in Phoenix Metro. And we find the people to be MUCH friendlier.
Funny that I used to joke the same about getting around the east valley when we lived there, except it was 15 minutes or less. The longest I had to drive was for work (20 minutes), and we could easily have avoided that by finding a house closer. We just wanted something newer and so had to be an extra 5-10 minutes away.
We lived in Durham ourselves for a short while before moving to the east valley. We hated it initially (we had moved from southern California), but by the time we had to leave, we had started liking some aspects. The one thing that we hated irrespective though was the traffic for a metro of its size at that time. Vinny also mentioned about rarely finding a space to park or taking well over 30 minutes for distances of 15 miles or less, and I seem to remember something similar as well. We're now in the Greenville, SC area, and the traffic is horrendous, considering it's way smaller than the Raleigh area. Having said that, just like Vinny mentioned, if we had a choice of a place on the east coast, we'd probably prefer Cary or the Brier Creek area.
To me there's something so systematic about how Phoenix sprawled out that it makes it still convenient to find and do the things most (or at least those with interests similar to ours - and we don't have too many special interests) would want to. The best part was that if I had to shop some groceries on the way back from work, and missed one store, I could always find the same store again in the next 5 minutes on the route to home without have to go out of my way.
I was born and raised in Oklahoma after college I moved to Arizona with my sister. Mind you I never had any interest in Arizona. After 2 years there, we moved back to Oklahoma for 2 years then moved to Texas. Flash forward, we are headed back to Arizona in May! I don't know what it is or was but I'll be back for a third time. Let's hope that the saying the third times a charm holds true!
We moved a few months back to the southeast after 6 years in the Phoenix area. Over the time we lived in the Phoenix are, a lot of folks asked us how we did it with the heat, the sprawl, the so called "lack of culture". But we used to love living in the area.
A job opportunity brought us to the southeast, and it was one of the most difficult decisions, because we just couldn't imagine a better place to live than Phoenix. We just loved the convenience of the area. We were in the east valley, and for most shopping or other activities, we hardly had to drive more than 15-20 minutes. What others often referred to as lack of culture, with all the strip malls, we looked at as amazing convenience. The roads are fantastic - just so easy to drive on, and no need for GPS or Google Maps. Also sidewalks and streetlights on every road! After moving away, we realized how well-developed the Phoenix area is. I understand that part of it is just the landscape, that such infrastructure would be more expensive in other places, but it's been difficult to adjust. We loved the weather as well - the southeast is not so bad - but Phoenix area is definitely more of what we prefer. We didn't mind the hot summers at all. By the sixth year, I think we were numb to the heat. We also loved how there were so many parks! Of course, there's a lot more natural greenery here in the southeast, but we liked the more structured parks in the Phoenix area.
Anyway, my point of making this thread was to see if there were others who lived in the Phoenix area for a long time, and then moved away and miss it dearly. We are slowly getting to like where we live now, and of course, it's a better job, but we still miss our lifestyle in the Phoenix area.
I lived in downtown Miami just minutes from South Beach. It was fun but couldn't wait to move back. I missed a lot of things about Phoenix. The roads in south Florida are a mess. The roads are peeling on the major interstates and turnpikes. The traffic is horrible. The drivers are all aggressive. The people are rude. It has an east coast mentality. I missed how Phoenix has nice restaurants, stores, car dealerships etc on every corner practically. In Miami, they didn't have as many of those things and going to the Apple Store for example was a nightmare. Whereas living in the east valley, I can go to one of several stores that are close to one another with little to no wait. I loved not having to compete in the grocery store especially at the deli; people often had to wait 30 minutes just to get meats and cheeses. The quality of the hospitals there paled in comparison to what we have here both in terms of the quality of doctors and the equipment and available services.
The weather in Phoenix is far better. The summers in South Florida is one long wet season as if you lived in the rain forest. It rained every day. In the summers, I had to deal with a torrential downpour at night on the way home and despite this, people still drove 70-80 on the freeways making it a scary experience. I would rather have the dry heat with pleasant mornings and evenings and no insects. I don't like high humidity. You have to run your air conditioner 24/7 all year long to feel some semblance of dryness.
The lack of culture is overblown. I lived in arguably the most diverse city in the United States and it didn't feel much different than Phoenix aside from the fact that more people in Miami can't speak English than in Phoenix.
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