I am equally happy living in both urban and suburban environments, hubby is mostly urban except without the patois and bling. I compared a desirable city north of us to where we live now:
North City
+ better public school test results
+ can be in Vancouver within 90 minutes
+ cost of living a little lower: housing and utilities are less
+ closer to my friends
+ better bookstores
+ lower violent crime rates
+ marginally lower property tax rate
+ higher comfort index
+ less-expensive houses
+ culture
+ sunnier
- mass transit barely used
- walkscores are lower, unless I want to be within ten blocks of the interstate (cancer risk). Definitely getting a Leaf, Volt or Prius if we move up.
- higher property crime rates
- cul-de-sacs galore: accident potential
- groceries costs are higher
- smaller library system
- snows more
- more politically diverse: most every local election goes the way we want it to in our current city
- rains more
I don't want so much land as I want a house that's within walking/bicycling distance to some good schools and I don't have to take the car freaking everywhere. We could move to a condo or townhouse in our current city but the schools would still suck. It would help also to have little noise from barking dogs, so maybe no suburban stuff.
Maybe I'll investigate the school district and see how its curriculum is different from "if we just corporatize everything or let the Gates and Broad Foundations run our schools everything will be great!!" Seattle.
Thinking of moving
March 15th, 2012 at 08:21 pm
March 15th, 2012 at 09:09 pm 1331845784
I forget how old your boy is, but for elementary school I'd recommend Parkview, Sunnyland, Geneva, Silver Beach, Northern Heights or Carl Cozier (though most of the elementary schools are pretty good). For middle schools Whatcom, Kulshan, or Fairhaven in that order. Shiny middle school is not on my list. For high schools "insert name of city" High or Squalicum High. I believe "insert name of city" High has the highest reading scores in the state. The other high school is horribly outdated and run down.
March 15th, 2012 at 09:35 pm 1331847300
March 15th, 2012 at 11:22 pm 1331853727
There are a ton of small two bedrooms/1 bath for sale for reasonable money in some very good neighborhoods that have been for sale for a while. Not because they aren't nice houses, but because they are smaller square footage and only have the one bath. There are a lot of bigger families that just can't fit into smaller quarters. 3 to 4 children per family seem to be the norm here from what I've seen of my kids' classmates, so the bigger houses get snatched up while the smaller ones sit.
There are a lot of sidewalks in this city outside the city center. Most side streets have them on one side of the road and the bigger cross streets have them on both. There are a few without sidewalks, but they tend to be more on the outskirts of town or up on some of the steeper hills' side streets that don't get the traffic. There are less the further north you go in the city as that was all annexed land that was originally rural.
March 16th, 2012 at 07:10 pm 1331925003
March 17th, 2012 at 05:39 am 1331962795
March 17th, 2012 at 05:59 am 1331963977
Sorry if any of this sounds ignorant: I've been to Bellingham only a few times, not long enough to know if it's a small yet self-sustaining city--I won't have to go to Bellis Fair for everything, will I? I barely go to the mall anymore: only to check out sales in JC Penney furnishings and the odd card offering at Papyrus.
I checked up on Ryan Stiles: he and his wife Patricia have a few properties in the county. He has a house on a lake, some in Bow and one in Glacier.
March 17th, 2012 at 09:51 am 1331977902
Well, I almost never go to the mall except to shop for clothes, and even then I prefer to go other places as much as possible. There's other smaller shopping areas. Down town has used book stores, a drug store, dozens of small, quirky restrauants, upscale clothing stores, a toy shop, a hobby shop. There are grocery stores spread all over the city. It really depends on what you are looking for but I tend to go almost a year at a time without setting foot in the mall, unless I am getting my hair cut, getting new glasses, or seeing movie. And even those can be done elsewhere in town.
March 17th, 2012 at 04:43 pm 1332002622
March 17th, 2012 at 04:44 pm 1332002648
March 17th, 2012 at 06:57 pm 1332010625