- Apr 21, 2010
- 99,273
- 60,606
The answers to the two title questions are for most folks overlapped, but I suspect they aren't entirely the same.
Where I live and why:
Why I don't live elsewhere:
- Where: Washington, D.C. -- downtown
- Why:
- Because I like cities where I can walk to much of what I want to do and where, when I don't walk, it rarely takes more than ten minutes to get where I want to go.
- Because D.C. is, to my eyes, a beautiful city (the parts people live in as well as the federal part of the city) with an abundance of trees and parks.
- I grew up in D.C. and insofar as nothing has militated that I move elsewhere, I just haven't.
- It's reasonably close to both the shore and the mountains.
- D.C. is fairly well insulated from natural disasters.
- D.C. has good public transportation and decent access to the rest of the world via air travel.
- D.C. is one of the nation's intellectual hubs.
- D.C. is a small city.
- D.C. is diverse -- there are people of (nearly?) all races, creeds, nationalities, and lifestyles in D.C.
- The weather is temperate.
- The variety of dining options is awesome.
- There're decent performing arts.
Where else do I think I could live happily?
- Mostly because living in D.C. isn't, for me, "broken," so there's no point in my trying to "fix" it by moving elsewhere.
- The type of work I undertook to pursue as a career has no physical location constraints.
If there's any central theme to why I live where I do and don't live where I don't, it's that I have no desire to live in places where nature's unforeseen "drama" can "reach out and touch" me and my family in our home.
- In the U.S.
- Chicago
- Austin, TX
- Denver, CO -- provided I didn't think Yellowstone would erupt during my lifetime
- Columbus, OH
- Philly
- Minneapolis-St. Paul
- Nashville
- Any number of "old word" style cities -- downtown is a nice place and one can walk to "everything" -- on the East Coast Piedmont plateau or Mountain Northwest (well north and/or west of Yellowstone) that is far enough from the ocean not to have to worry about hurricane storm surge and having a topography that is varied enough to keep tornados to a minimum and that doesn't generally have earthquakes.
- Outside the U.S.
- Any major European city -- capital cities are my preference -- that doesn't need a wall of some sort to keep out the ocean and that isn't prone to quakes and volcanic eruptions. I would love to live in Amsterdam, but there's no way I would live in A-dam. Paris would be my first choice.
I live here. Why? Look at the place and ask yourself why not!
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