just drive further.
Last year Brad moved up to the DC area from Charlottesville. "The DC area" ended up being Winchester VA, about 90 minutes from my house. For less than we paid for our little house, he got a big, brand new house in a giant new neighborhood with a pool and constant activities for kids. The neighborhood looks out of place in the middle of rural Virginia -- Winchester is "the sticks" -- but it probably won't be rural for long.
When a friend sent us this Washington Post article about a builder who has skipped all the VA land and gone straight to West Virginia, a lively discussion ensued. (by the way, Charles Town WV is closer to my house than Winchester.)
Brad followed up the article with an amen:
I wrote this big response and thought it might be worth posting:
I obviously come at this from a different perspective.
To me the people in that article reflect the increasing American desire for "nice", where "nice" generally means "big" or "new". People are so into "nice" that they're willing to trade off 2 (or more) hours of their day to have it. If you're at work for 9 hours and sleeping/dressing takes 8 hours, that 2 hours is like 30% of the remaining time. That is to say, you're spending a third of your life in your car.
There's also the social issue: if everyone's this far spread out, how do people ever get together to hang out?
Our house is pretty small, and it needed/needs love, but I'll be able to cruise home and have lunch with Bradee and the kid whenever I want. We're also 20 minutes from DC, 10 minutes from our friends in Arlington or Alexandria, etc. We can go have breakfast with Karen on a whim, it's no big deal to see a show at the Black Cat, etc.
(Of course, now my neighborhood is unattainable for normal people. That ruins everything.)
I acknowledge that NoVa is different than rural VA, but I wouldn't call it a cesspool. We have community here, and good communities form here, and that's a beautiful thing. Even if we have to put up with all the lawyers driving H2's.
Rural VA is charming but it's not perfect either; there are lots of stupid, angry people that live out there. We had a couple tree guys over last weekend that were exactly the kind of people my kids pretty much never need to be around (and I rarely say that).
There's lots of research on urban planning. I don't think much of it is fond of the model we're building -- these central hubs with ever-increasing numbers of suburbs out in orbit. IIRC, the path to goodness is a balance of
- business
- residential
- retail
- communal (parks, etc)
This is how you get actual neighborhoods where people walk to dinner, where people bump into each other at the park or the rec center, where people have small manageable houses and lots so they don't spend 100% of their time holed up in, or working on, their house. Also, by putting business close to residential, hopefully you end up with less 2-hour commuters.