I visited Edinburgh on a rainy day in December, and in cold, wet weather Edinburgh is the apotheosis of a city as far as I'm concerned. It felt damn near mythical.

a city so nice that they (british empire) tried to make it twice (dunedin, new zealand which i have been to). dunedin of course is dùn eideann.

Being that I am lazy and have a hard enough time speaking Spanish I would move to Vancouver. I need my mountains and ocean and I would want to stay on the West Coast of North America.

Edinburgh is nice, but the weather and darkness are just too much. I am very easily affected by seasonal depression. I have to get on a plane to escape London at least one weekend per month from October to March, and it’s not even as bad as Scotland.

i also very much appreciate the sun although i *particularly* appreciate the aesthetics of muted, glorious autumnal and winter sun...i get a reverse form of seasonal effects at the latitude in NA where i spend the majority of my time from the intensity of the damned sun during the summer, which would = sicily/north africa in europe.

Spain in general and Barcelona in particular. In my view, the ultimate combination of history, architecture, culture, lifestyle and food. Add great weather, beaches and the Mediterranean: Unbeatable.

Monaco has great weather, walk-able and urban with few of the urban problems, great cultural institutions, mountains scenery, beaches with beautiful water, and fantastic festivals.

Then go out in the early morning or evening. Here in December it’s basically the golden hour at lunchtime and dark the rest of the day.

Winter is pointless unless there are proper mountains nearby for skiing. But summer heat with humidity also sucks, I agree with that.

So to answer the question, maybe I would split the year between London and Cape Town. Same time zone as Europe helps. Although I could also do Paris (spring and autumn), French west coast (summer) and French Alps (winter).

OK, but you can get everything you just mentioned in the French and Italian Riveria, but half the price, better food, few hideous 1960's condo blocks and few(er) third world mafioso types.

And Monaco really only semi-walkable, given the topography. There are little walkable enclaves. To me, its primary appeal is avoiding taxation or civil/criminal inquiries.

You shut your sass mouth. On the contrary, the weather and darkness are just enough.

You like what you like and I like what I like.

You can "realistically raise kids" anywhere it's true, but "optimally" is another question.

And once you have them, it's the one "job" in life that you really don't want to fuck up.

What a good question. I've been thinking about sustainability, lack of snow (I spent 20 years growing up in North Dakota (It's in the middle of the USA on the border of Canada)), economy, and work-life balance.

I keep coming back to central Italy. The main issue I see is water availability?? there are no very large rivers in central Italy, they don't have rivers long enough to have a lot of big tributaries, right?

It’s people with this holier than thou attitude towards raising children that turn me off of the idea of having kids at all. I’m not sure whether we will anyway, but if I actually believed that the moment I had children they needed to be the only thing in my life that mattered, then I wouldn’t even consider it.

I’m going to live where I want to live, based on a whole range of factors that are important to me. That includes country, city, neighborhood. I’m not, for example, moving to the burbs or a particular area because of schools, or because it’s supposedly “child-friendly”. People grow up in the slums of Mumbai and become successful, people grow up in Texas exurbs with huge backyards and great public schools and become complete fuck-ups. It really doesn’t matter all that much.

i qualified my statement...when you are actually having kids things like healthcare, childcare options, resources, social support all come into the picture in a highly personal way based upon the options/choices actually available to you (mumbai). these all balance out in different ways depending on on location/resources. example: in the u.s. local social/family support (being able to leave a child with her cousins/aunt for an evening for instance) of raising children tip higher in my opinion thanks to our shitty healthcare/childcare system.

another example, we can afford for my wife to stay home and work from home as a part / 1/4 time real estate agent/lawyer in low cost part of the u.s. but no way would this work where she might be writing contracts in a language other than english/high cost place/etc. that all factors into what i meant by “realistic,” perhaps it was the wrong word but i meant “realistic” for me. childcare is astronomically expensive in the us and in some other areas of the west..i presume london can be a challenge, dont know what is provided for under that system.

if you’ve never seen a daycare bill in an area that you’d actually live say in new york prepare to be horrified.

ive watched married couples with young kids get divorced over these very questions, its nothing light.

^ Child care is actually much cheaper in the UK, and in most of Europe, than in the US, probably because government picks up a big part of the living expenses of people in that income bracket (namely healthcare). I’ve had friends with kids who moved from (expensive) west London to suburban NYC who said their child care costs roughly doubled.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the way you worded your posts on this.

It's not holier than thou, it's that people generally don't know what it's actually like and how they will react when placed in situations X, Y and Z, until they actually live it. This includes getting a cancer diagnosis, witnessing something truly horrifying, winning life-changing millions of dollars, having a an old, dying ill parent totally dependent on your for months or years, and yes... becoming a parent yourself.

For most normal people, becoming a parent turns your life and your view of it totally upside down. You learn what it means to be second fiddle, not just in the eyes of others, but in your own eyes as well.

Just one example is how the country you are originally from almost destroyed and literally destroyed (in certain cases) some its greatest cities at one point, due in large part to tens of millions of individual decisions made by people based on a perception of what was "best for their kids".

I’ve always thought it was because they didn’t like black people. And I’m not technically from the US originally, I just moved there when I was very young and stayed until the end of my 20s. Beside the point, I know.

Regardless, if I were to have children it would be on the basis that certain things are not to be compromised for the sake of achieving some sort of parenting-book ideal of a childhood environment. Especially when they’re going to be too young to remember the first several years and at boarding school for the last several. :)