3 ms·

I've personally found a great alternative to living in major cities is not the suburbs but smaller cities. I grew up in the Northeast and now live in a smaller

I've personally found a great alternative to living in major cities is not the suburbs but smaller cities. I grew up in the Northeast and now live in a smaller city in the West (pop ~250,000). I can get to SF in a few hours, but locally I still have most of the things I'd want from a city: great restaurants, art, fun tech community, music, easy to access airport etc. I also have many of the perks of living in a smaller community: very little traffic, incredibly affordable cost of living, get to know the owners of most restaurants/businesses I frequent etc. The crazy thing is that living in a house 10 minutes from the center of downtown I pay a fraction of what my friends and relatives back East do to live in a suburb so far away from the metro area they live near that they visit it only once or twice a year. Especially with more and more remote work becoming available, if you're getting sick of living in a major metro area I highly recommend checking the diverse range of smaller cities across the US, imho it is a vastly superior experience to living in an expensive suburb.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
Des Moines. Here me out! I live in the Chicago suburbs; I commute to the West Loop every day. Traffic! High costs! And so forth. This weekend, I was in Des Moines for a wedding. I met people in their historic East Village. Great bar scene, great craft brew scene. Everyone was friendly! Everyone bicycles around! I would actually consider picking up from Chicago and living in Des Moines, as it seems to be the midwest version of AshvilleNC or perhaps Ann Arbor, but before Ann Arbor blew up and got expensive. I would have never thought I'd say, "Des Moines is pretty fucking awesome, and I could live here."
- acjohnson55 12y ago
  You should check out Lexington, KY as well, if you like Des Moines. It's a similar sized city and a similar distance from Chicago. It's got a lot of culture and history. It's also quite close to other cities, so you kind of get to collect on the benefits of living in a larger metro. Not sure it's quite as cheap as Des Moines though.
contingencies 12y ago
My great alternative was leaving the west at 19, and trying out different cities overseas. Now 33, I've had multi-month to multi-year stints in five different cities in mainland China (~100,000 - 24 million), Bangkok, London, Los Angeles and Taipei. Like you, I've found that the smaller ones appeal more to me, with maybe bi-weekly trips to a larger city. With kids on the way, after an exploratory trip for the serious consideration of buying some forest in New Zealand, my wife and I now look forward to checking out France. If I had invested in a mortgage, there's no way I'd be this mobile, with such rich experience. I've never owned a car, or driven one (legally), but for one slab of my self-managed 'weekend' spent five hours yesterday on a motorbike riding through some of the most spectacular scenery I've yet found, the upper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanpan_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanpan_River ... no regrets with this path, life is fantastic!

toomuchtodo 12y ago

Des Moines. Here me out! I live in the Chicago suburbs; I commute to the West Loop every day. Traffic! High costs! And so forth. This weekend, I was in Des Moines for a wedding. I met people in their historic East Village. Great bar scene, great craft brew scene. Everyone was friendly! Everyone bicycles around! I would actually consider picking up from Chicago and living in Des Moines, as it seems to be the midwest version of AshvilleNC or perhaps Ann Arbor, but before Ann Arbor blew up and got expensive. I would have never thought I'd say, "Des Moines is pretty fucking awesome, and I could live here."

acjohnson55 12y ago
You should check out Lexington, KY as well, if you like Des Moines. It's a similar sized city and a similar distance from Chicago. It's got a lot of culture and history. It's also quite close to other cities, so you kind of get to collect on the benefits of living in a larger metro. Not sure it's quite as cheap as Des Moines though.

contingencies 12y ago

My great alternative was leaving the west at 19, and trying out different cities overseas. Now 33, I've had multi-month to multi-year stints in five different cities in mainland China (~100,000 - 24 million), Bangkok, London, Los Angeles and Taipei. Like you, I've found that the smaller ones appeal more to me, with maybe bi-weekly trips to a larger city. With kids on the way, after an exploratory trip for the serious consideration of buying some forest in New Zealand, my wife and I now look forward to checking out France. If I had invested in a mortgage, there's no way I'd be this mobile, with such rich experience. I've never owned a car, or driven one (legally), but for one slab of my self-managed 'weekend' spent five hours yesterday on a motorbike riding through some of the most spectacular scenery I've yet found, the upper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanpan_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanpan_River ... no regrets with this path, life is fantastic!