A friend of mine, David Seymour, posted this article on G+ today:
Letting Go of the Suburban Dream
After nine years, we did what some people would deem inappropriate. Others might even call it unthinkable. We sold our suburban house, got rid of 90 per cent of our stuff and moved back to the city.
Give the full article a read.
This story was (nearly) written for me. In June we sold our suburban house and all of our belongings in a series of epic garage sales and Craigslist postings. Now we have as many possessions as can be unreasonably transported via checked baggage on a flight.
Saying goodbye to suburban life.
We felt some of the same pains as the author of this article… neighbors we didn’t know, needing to drive everywhere, etc. We both work from home though, so we do see our kids a lot more than the regular commuting couple. And unlike the author, I put a premium on being able to open the back door and let my kids run out into a yard or common space. Often that’s the only way to preserve what’s left of my sanity.
While I spent a lot of my youth living in cities (Vancouver, Houston, Los Angeles, Toronto) and still like the concentrated nature of downtown areas, I don’t know if I could do it again. It feels a little too beehive-esque to me now that I’ve grown to like space and occasional quiet. Also, our four kids complicate finding a downtown living space large enough.
Obviously downtown areas make walking/biking much more possible than it is in the suburbs. And I vastly prefer self-transport to owning a car. However, one small problem with getting yourself around in Vancouver is the weather. It’s not always pleasant biking in the driving rain, which is a not-infrequent occurrence. By not infrequent I mean it rains almost year-round, in varying degrees.
So for me the ideal combination of lifestyles is:
- Housing large enough that my kids don’t have to share their room with more than 1 other sibling
- An easily accessible, ground-level common area or yard the kids can use
- A location that allows us to easily walk or bike everywhere in town
- Weather that is almost always good, making walking/biking possible
I’ll let you know what we find.
