Quote:
Originally Posted by stephenm
Suburb.
I don't base my living decisions on the location of my employer. It's based on where I want to live.
|
I've been reading everyones post and I wanted to chime in with my two cents.
This is the best way (the quote above) to describe the issue of inner city versus suburban. People's situation (life, money) will dictate where they live. Someone who might be single may be inclined to live in an inner city rental, but after getting married buy a house to raise a family.
In my situation, I'm single and I live in the inner city in a condo. But the person I'm seeing - we've talked about the day we move in together and we want to stay inner city. We've also talked about kids and we are perfectly prepared to purchase a larger condo (2 or even 3 bedroom) to have 1 child and raise them as an urbanite. Here in Calgary - may be. Somewhere else, potentially. I come from Halifax, which has a nice sized walkable downtown and a lot of new condo development around it. So we might move back and live there. But I could also see staying in Calgary for a number of years and getting the right condo in the Betline.
The difficulty with the suburb versus inner city argument is that we've been raised with this idea that you can't raise a quality family except in a single detached dwelling - this is my theory anyway. That simply isn't true. I know many families that are growing up in high density and their children do just as well in education and social development as someone in the burbs, sometimes I'd argue even better. When I look at home; there are lots of inner city schools and parks around where I'd want to live in halifax (I admit I don't know the Beltine very well; but I'm sure I could find the schools when the time comes).
Part of getting past this issue is realizing that a family can be raised anywhere. The next step is then taking away the imbalance between homes in the inner city and the suburban areas. That is the way more difficult step and honestly I don't know how you do it.