Where do you want to live?
Where do you want to live?
Do you want to live in the city or country? Either way, why? Is there a specific place you'd like to live?
I lived in Suburbia as a child. Happiness is a thin veneer over the contempt the majority of neighbors feel for each other.
I lived in rural towns for much of my young adult life. Monopolized utilities and services, as well as the issue of small-town indoctrination, were reliably present.
I currently live in a metro. The rampant corruption and vehicle-oriented culture are noxious.
I guess I want to live in outer space. It's pretty quiet up there and I'd imagine it doesn't really smell all that bad.
In space, everyone knows you farted.
I currently live in a metro. The rampant corruption and vehicle-oriented culture are noxious.
Not all metros are that shitty. IDK about corruption, but at least in Europe there are cities with less car-oriented culture.
The Shire
A stable country with solid social safety nets where the people I love are not considered criminals simply for existing would be ideal.
Beyond those requirements, I could live in a cabin in the woods, a trailer in a park, a mansion in the countryside or an apartment in the city. It wouldn't matter as much.
Sounds like good decision making there.
A nice little cabin in the woods and by a lake.
Far enough from the nearest town that I don’t have neighbors, but close enough that I can reasonably make a grocery run each week.
I want to live on a sailboat and be nomadic.
I'd like to live in the woods in the PNW. It's pretty, I like the weather and there aren't too many bugs (compared to other parts of the country).
Not in one single place.
I am lucky right now that my life is spread over 2 continents, with vastly different cultures and climates, and I love it
I also love the contrast, because not any single place is perfect, and switching every few months is just the best
There's no single one-size-fits-all solution to your question. But maybe there are several answers.
Countryside, as far away as possible while still having a reliable internet connection
I'm thinking of moving to Mongolia one day. Vast open spaces and a bitter cold winter. It's nice to be forgotten by the world.
I lived there for a while, it’s very cool, it feels like going back to the wild Wild West. Bonus points if you like to drink, deduct points if you’re a vegetarian (they mostly just have meat dishes).
Ireland or Finland. Senegal or Mexico when the cold gets unbearable
Somewhere in the countryside with lots of nature around but not too far away from civilization. Ideally in a small country mostly unaffected by geopolitics and with a temperate climate.
I want to live in the woods in New Hampshire again some day. It's a beautiful place and also a place where the state and local governments don't make me grind my teeth in frustration all the time*. I would have a house, a lot of land, and no neighbors except for pine trees.
I had most of that already and I left, because I was very lonely - I think I talked to another person face to face about once every few weeks. I thought I would be OK with that because I was used to being alone, but having no family, no friends, and a 100% remote job was too much for me. Apparently even I start going crazy if I am that isolated. Now I live somewhere I really don't like (New York City) but I'm close to my family.
*New Hampshire is a rather libertarian state. Taxes are low but the town where I lived (population 15,000) didn't provide water, sewers, or garbage collection. Many things are legal that aren't legal in most other places. For example, you can drive without insurance, set off fireworks, and do almost anything with a gun except shoot another person. The state motto is "Live free or die," and I would tell my guests that as long as they did one or the other, the state's duty to them would be satisfied.
That sounds nice. I work remotely now and don't talk to people outside of my home very often, but I do have a family that lives with me and they provide plenty of interaction. When we were moving, I did spend a few weeks completely alone here and it did get pretty lonely. I'm sorry you now live somewhere you don't like.
I want to live in an area that has a great music scene. It has to be clean and pleasant with plenty of community engagement and friendly people. I have to be able to afford a home, food, healthcare, and some things that I and the family just want. I don't want to be scared for myself or my transgender kids, or my wife. I don't want to be scared of the government or the people who wanted this version of it.
Basically, I want to live in United States that was promised to me when I was a kid. No matter where it is.
EDIT: Or Cicely, AK.
I'm basically there. I wish my property were a bit bigger with some woods and a freshwater stream coming out of the mountains, but I'm like 95% happy. Here is rural northern Japan. Having a grocery store closer would be neat. Maybe if the town grows again (it's at around 50% of its pre-tsunami population) the one nearby will reopen.
Awesome that you're basically there - it sounds like the idyllic environment I've seen in a lot of Ghibli shows. I definitely get the grocery store thing ... I've lived in a few rural areas and the trip to get supplies is always a bit of a downer.
I want to either live in the city. Walking to everything, choices for stuff to do, people...
Or
Be in a cabin near a small in the middle of nowhere. With Internet though :p
Sounds like your preferences are pretty flexible.
Forgot to mention, never the burbs!
I only do well in cities. I need diversity, culture, community, and transit. You don't get that in the middle of nowhere.
I think you can get a pretty good community in a remote place, but "the middle of nowhere" has some flexibility; it's very true that if you're nowhere enough, you probably won't have enough people for a community.
Ireland sounds nice
Always the city. I would like to remove Buffalo from the US and transplant just over the border to Canada and move there. It's such a cool city.
Between the flags on the Paseo Boriqua, Humboldt Park, Chicago
That's pretty specific.
I'm not familiar, but an image search makes it look like you're describing the middle of a roadway. Did I find the wrong thing?
Not the middle of the roadway, but the buildings lining it. Paseo Boriqua is the cultural heart of the neighborhood.
Canary Islands (Spain) because it is one of the best climate in the world. Always mid, average temperatures are around 20 degrees so winters are nice and summers not too hot. + you can go to the beach every day and it is Europe so you’ve got EU quality of life.
But I wont do it. Canarians are dying because of tourism, AirBnB and nomad workers. They can’t pay rents, there’s water shortages and too many old retired fucks from UK or Germany unable to speak Spanish and owning 25 apartments to short term rent. Fuck them, I wont be part of the problem.
So next solution is staying home, which happens to be one of the best country in the world for quality of life (Switzerland), so that’s not too bad. Food is not the best but France and Italy are less than 2h away by train.
I just need Tokyo to be a 2h train ride as well (for food yeah, again) and that would be perfect.
A city. Or a small town with city level amenities and reachability. Some place where I don't need a car for regular and even some irregular errands.
I'm quite pleased with where I am right now, a provincial capital in NL. If I'd have to scale down, Houten looks quite promising. If I'd be forced to scale up and leave the country, the four places that pop to my mind that interest me are Freiburg (DE), Vienna (AT), Helsinki (FI) and Oslo (NO).
Toronto right downtown. I like the city, I like transit, I like having four seasons, I like having underground walkways, I like doggies on transit.
Definitely agreed on the last two.
Agent 47's cabin. For those that don't know, he's the main character from the Hitman games - and yes, his crib is epic.
Insert joke along the lines of 'I don't.'
More seriously, I've thought about this a bit. The simple answer is already seen in other responses: rural enough to escape crowds, close enough to urbanity to get good internet. The more perspicacious answer is overly complex: someplace where the weather is mild enough not to kill you if you lose your keys, and likely to stay that way despite climate change, mountainous enough to have nice views and avoid flooding, flat enough to build, sparse enough for land to be affordable, populous enough to be able to get the things I want without making a long trek, wooded enough to get the benefit of trees, bare enough to allow access, not too many racists or zealots, not too rich or poor of neighbors, neighbors not close enough to disturb me, but not so far that I couldn't run over for something if needed, somewhere politically stable, somewhere I can work without a million-mile commute, where the soil doesn't suck, where there's a pleasant amount of rain and sun...
It's not a small question.
You're mostly describing where I live! It's really nice here. However, a few of your points are things that are lacking that I definitely wish I had. Oh well - I think this is the happiest I've ever been with my surroundings.
I'd like to leave the United States first. Someplace diverse where I can walk or use public transit, and that has clean water and air. If there's wilderness, hiking trails, or any other kind of nature relatively close that would be pretty swell.
Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but I felt like sharing. I am in a stage of life I want to live wherever I find stability, it can be anywhere.
I've moved a lot searching for a better place and always found both happiness and misery in those four countries. There are problems everywhere and choosing those I actually care about makes my daily life a bit more meaningful.
Would love to live in the Portinscale Keswick area of the UK. I might never settle down in one place though as there is so much to explore.
I'm an urban person, so I want to live in a dense city where there is great public transportation and you can easily walk to essential places (i.e. grocery store). I also prefer indoor spaces over outdoor, so a city where there are a lot of indoor activities. Places like Singapore and Tokyo.
I think you're the first person in this thread who hasn't said something related to being remote/isolated. Good luck in achieving your dreams!
The irony here is I used to live in a dense megacity, although not a developed country, and moved to a city with urban sprawl and no public transportation. I hope to still eventually get to my ideal living environment, but it's not happening in the near future.
Converted croft on a remote Scottish island with horizon all round, facing west so I can watch the sun go down.
What is a croft in this context?
Crofting refers to the land ownership system which is unique to Scotland, and a croft is technically a peice of land, but I'm talking about a crofter's dwelling. There are a huge number of these derelict centuries old stone buildings which would've traditionally housed both livestock and people. They often have a cow shed at a lower level connected to the main dwelling so the heat would rise from the animals.
I want to live here in the US in Florida, but in the timeline where Al Gore actually got all the votes counted and won. We are in "uptown" of a mid size city and it's awesome, I don't like living in the country but having a yard and garden is nice, and I don't need to drive much as we are close to many amenities.
City would be my second choice, I do enjoy living in a city, walking to bar or grocery, everything right there and so much to do.
Literally anywhere without property taxes so I don't have to earn money to own small piece of land. Just to be able to grow my crops, breed my animals and don't care about anything. Don't have to be big land. Just amount that I can survive without owning any money. That would be nice.
I want to stay here in germany, Augsburg or maybe move to Hamburg or Aachen.
But if political it keeps going down then i have to sadly leave for my own safety
Really, talking realistically I’d move far north domestically, far from cities.
But if we’re talking ideally, I would definitely love Longyearbyen or the region in general. But that’s not even remotely feasible, if we are being entirely honest.
I'd never heard of that, but it looks very nice. A local merchant says that his brother lives in Norway and he loves to visit.
Canada where all the rich ppl go I assume they know better than me
Interesting reasoning!
On some planet where is an intelligent life.
Cabin in the woods near a river or lake somewhere in Alaska. I love the cold and the snow. I want big dogs. I like chipping wood for heat. I enjoy being along the evergreens.
I want to live like on the edge of a city. Like right out side the tall buildings, small single-family homes, in a very diverse and welcoming society without bigotry.
I'm Chinese-American, PRC is too authoritarian, USA is declining into fascism, Europe doesn't seem to be too immigrant friendly. I don't fucking know, this world is bullshit. I want to live in an alt-universe where republican party collapsed and we have a Progressive Party of America, and the Democratic Party, with every declining membership and support. President Sanders... etc, etc...