{"id":982,"date":"2008-08-08T09:35:06","date_gmt":"2008-08-08T14:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/?p=982"},"modified":"2008-08-08T09:36:06","modified_gmt":"2008-08-08T14:36:06","slug":"urban-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/archives\/2008\/08\/08\/urban-life\/","title":{"rendered":"urban life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I sometimes joke that we live in the urban suburb. i love our neighborhood. we can walk to groceries, the bus, restaurants, our local bookstore, coffee shop and movie theatre.<\/p>\n<p>However, it is not dense. Not dense in a chicago or new york way. but it&#8217;s city living as far as I&#8217;m concerned.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also been joking about writing a manifesto lately. things to guide us as &#8220;feature-creep&#8221; takes hold. things like, we will never buy a minivan. <a href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/ajc3\/2741892975\/\">ride your bike as much as possible.<\/a> the location of any future residence must be no more than:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>2 blocks from a bus\/train line (currently, 2)<\/li>\n<li>4 blocks from the grocery store (currently, 6)<\/li>\n<li>8 blocks from a library (16)<\/li>\n<li>4 blocks from a couple different restaurants (5)<\/li>\n<li>2 blocks from a coffee shop (5)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Just as it seems that it is becoming easier and easier to live &#8220;in the city&#8221;, with a family, and have these things that I consider important, it also seems that most of our friends have moved out to the suburbs.<\/p>\n<p>In a future job, I would like to utilize my considerable SimCity skills. So I read a lot of articles on urban planning, transit, etc.<\/p>\n<p>This one recently caught my attention, <a href=\"http:\/\/tnr.com\/story_print.html?id=264510ca-2170-49cd-bad5-a0be122ac1a9\">Trading Places<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This is the generation that grew up watching &#8220;Seinfeld,&#8221; &#8220;Friends,&#8221; and &#8220;Sex and the City,&#8221; mostly from the comfort of suburban sofas. We have gone from a sitcom world defined by &#8220;Leave It to Beaver&#8221; and &#8220;Father Knows Best&#8221; to one that offers a whole range of urban experiences and enticements. I do not claim that a handful of TV shows has somehow produced a new urbanist generation, but it is striking how pervasive the pro-city sensibility is within this generation, particularly among its elite. In recent years, teaching undergraduates at the University of Richmond, the majority of them from affluent suburban backgrounds, I made a point of asking where they would prefer to live in 15 years&#8211;in a suburb or in a neighborhood close to the center of the city. Few ever voted for suburban life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, I don&#8217;t know. How about it, friends? Those of you who grew up in the suburbs, flirted with the city and headed back? How about those who&#8217;ve made the jump one way or the other and are not going back?<\/p>\n<p>Sonja and I often discuss where we might live next, and the discussion generally comes down to:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t have a family in that place&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They do it in Chicago and New York.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So, hence the manifesto. How do you want to live? How do you match your lifestyle with your living space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I sometimes joke that we live in the urban suburb. i love our neighborhood. we can walk to groceries, the bus, restaurants, our local bookstore, coffee shop and movie theatre. However, it is not dense. Not dense in a chicago or new york way. but it&#8217;s city living as far as I&#8217;m concerned. I&#8217;ve also [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[275,34],"class_list":["post-982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts","tag-minneapolis","tag-urban-planning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pf4VN-fQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":984,"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions\/984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}