This is version 1.0 of this document. I’m still figuring it out.
Introduction
I continue to be engaged with the idea of moving away from the Nashville area in search of housing that better reflects my interests. Housing in the Nashville area is significantly more expensive than housing in some of the other places where I’d be happy to live. In fact, it’s come to my attention that I may be able to rent out my house in Nashville, which I own outright, to finance much nicer housing elsewhere. Social connections, familiarity, and inertia are the only thing binding me to this place. My income is not currently dependent on being anywhere in particular, or the economy of any one particular city.
I’ve tentatively ruled out some obvious choices: Asheville (housing costs are too high), LA, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, Boulder, Atlanta (sprawl), Bloomington-Normal, IL (been there), Memphis (petty prejudice, far from favorite wild places). Top candidates recently have all in the Ohio River Valley or tributaries: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Knoxville, Chattanooga. I’ve also played fantasy real estate with the Big Bend region of Texas, New Orleans (LA), Pueblo (CO), Eureka (CA), Silver City (NM), and Eureka Springs (AR).
What are some of the factors I’m considering in picking a city
Cost of housing. I want to live where housing in the central part of town is relatively cheaper than the national average for all housing, and preferably where there are some good deals for bachelors like me who will make compromises on safety and schools. Examples of places I’ve considered that fit this criteria include Pueblo, Eureka (CA), Knoxville (TN), Chattanooga (TN), Cincinnati (OH), and Pittsburgh (PA). Some non-obvious examples that don’t fit the bill are Flagstaff (AZ), Asheville (NC), Santa Fe (NM), and Denver (CO).
Intercity transit. At the very minimum, I should be able to get off of a plane in an international airport and arrive via public transit to the core of this city. This can be straightforward (e.g. land at BWI in Baltimore and take a bus home; plane to El Paso, train to Alpine, TX; take the El from O’Hare), more complex (get off an airplane in Nashville and catch a Greyhound bus to Knoxville, since the Knoxville city bus doesn’t go to McGhee Tyson Airport; ATL to Chattanooga with Groome Transit, a privately held shuttle with regularly scheduled service), or positively byzantine (airplane to El Paso, Amtrak to Deming, Corre Caminos on a Tuesday or Thursday to Silver City). The very best possibility is easy access to Amtrak northeastern corridor. A city without regularly scheduled public intercity bus, train, or plane service is going to be a tougher sell, while those with all three are very attractive, ceteris paribus.
Intracity transit, density and/or smallness. I value availability of public transit, walkability, and bikeability. This is why I’m not moving to LA or Atlanta, the LA of the South, any time soon. I see you, I-85 that catches fire! I see you, entire city that prefaces highway names with “the.” I see you, suburban sprawl that refuses to tax itself to provide for public transit! Phoenix, your light rail and bike trails aren’t fooling me! I want some combination of small or dense.
Access to contra dancing. Contra dancing is currently on hold everywhere in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus. However, I would prefer, ceteris paribus, a locale that has regularly hosted a weekly or monthly contra dance previous to the pandemic.
Buddhist sangha. I have been involved from time to time in the practice of Soto Zen. The availability of a temple and qualified religious teacher would be a nice thing to add to my life. Places of which this is true do include Bloomington (IN), Sewickley (near Pittsburgh, PA), New Orleans, just as examples.
Advocacy and volunteering. I am interested in conservation work, along with social and racial justice advocacy. It would be good if there were opportunities to serve this way wherever I moved.
Things I’d like to learn. It’d be convenient if there were resources for knitting, kayaking, glass arts, community mediation, and restorative justice since those are things I want to learn.
Access to wild places. I aspire to recreate ever more frequently by hiking, biking, and paddling. The distance to wild public lands is important to me, as is the distance to one of the triple crown trails (CDT, AT, PCT)
Location in the world. For now, I’ve settled on the US, in part because of travel restrictions. I probably want to keep a residence in the US for the foreseeable future, even if I wander elsewhere.
Location within the US. I feel most connected to Appalachia and the midsouth. I have family still in Atlanta, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Cleveland. I love the Appalachian mountains. I wish I could stay in Tennessee, but some of my other priorities about urban design make this harder. It seems like I may be bound to stay in Appalachia or at least the Ohio River valley. I see that there are great adventures in the intermountain West, the Northwest US, and the high Chihuahuan desert.
Climate. I prefer a pleasant year-round climate, if possible. Eureka, CA probably fits the bill the best. Failing pleasant year-round climate, I prefer to avoid the extremes of snow, cold, humidity, or heat. I can’t imagine enjoying Vermont or Cleveland in winter, nor Miami in summer.
Petty prejudices. I don’t know much about the flatter parts of the US, and am not sure I want to, unless they be next to a major navigable river. Same goes for anything that touches New Jersey. Also, it’s hard for me to imagine myself as a Yankee, where Yankee is Philadelphia and points further to the Northeast. I suspect that I’d spend most of my time really angry about social and political issues if I moved to certain cities in Alabama or Mississippi. I have other prejudices, some ignorant.
Tax structure. I am sensitive to state income tax, and prefer low income and property tax rates. I’m more tolerant of sales tax. The state of New York charges outlandish taxes all around; property taxes are especially brutal. If I move to Saint Louis, there’s an extra 1% of my income that will go to the City. Meanwhile, over here in Tennessee, the Legislature is balancing the budget on the backs of poor people by eliminating both public services and only income tax we’ve ever had, while making my life easier.
Educational institutions. I want access to a public University or community college. Also, I will put up with a lot of other shortcomings for a burg centered around a major University.
Demographics. Sometimes I think about how neat it would be to live again where my second language, Spanish, is broadly spoken, e.g. borderlands with Mexico.
What architecture am I looking for?
Additionally to my quest to find the right city, I have a very specific sort of housing that I would prefer to live in. Here’s a quick list, followed by discussion.
- Older. Most likely built before WWII. Possibly built well before that
- Has no or little front lawn. Landscaping, if any, is in a rear lot that is entirely obscured by the facade and fencing
- Finished space of less than 1250 square feet in size, but could be significantly smaller
- Priced to show reflect that the cost of quality work in finishes and electrical/HVAC/plumbing updates is offset somewhat by the small size of the dwelling
- Easy access to grocery store, public transit, and the city center, preferably even without a car
- Unfinished storage space on ground level, e.g. basement or garage, would be welcome, though not required.
- Could be a townhome, brownstone, row house, shotgun, camelback.
- Exit should preferably be to the street, not to an interior building hallway
For general context, I describe myself as an urbanist. I believe many decisions we made from about 1945 until recently about how to design cities and towns were stupid. They were the product of some combination of consumerism, irrational exuberance about the utility of the automobile, and racism. These are the forces that brought you endless sprawl in places like Atlanta. If I sound angry about these things, it’s because I am angry.
(When I say “we,” I mean all Americans, but especially the white middle class and above, of which I and my ancestors are members, who actually had power in the situation.)
Everyone had to have a little bit of the countryside. We moved in, tore down the natural features, destroyed the habitat, and then named the neighborhoods after what we destroyed. We could all live in the Oak Hills subdivision, the Cedar Brook community, or Greyfox Street. Each ticky-tacky box came with its own little lawn, like a grass farm for oppressive conformism. Everyone drove everywhere. Increasingly, only the most impoverished used public transit or walking. The entire spacial relationship of life became centered around the car.
(Oh, while I’m at it, can I say “fuck the mall”? Fuck the mall.)
We tore down a lot of older, denser neighborhoods to make space for stadia, roads, and parking lots. We also did this to get rid of black people, though it was called “slum clearance” or “urban renewal.” We impoverished the housing stock of the cities by getting rid of livable, albeit neglected, houses of a sustainable older design. In the name of removing blight from cities, we added the blight of acres and acres of roads to take people to and from their suburbs. We hollowed out the very heart of our great cities.
Little by little, our houses got to be gargantuan. Two thousand square feet is considered small in some markets. A two thousand square foot house is more than I can imagine ever needing in a lifetime. For every additional square foot, it costs more to heat, fix, and clean. For every additional square foot, there is more damage to the environment, more inducement to buy a bunch of crap to fill the space, and more separation from ones neighbors. I find it both exhausting and alienating.
We came up with silly rules about zoning that kept shops away from housing, required car parking for new development, and required that structures be set back from the street some large distance. These sorts of rules enforced sprawl and made mixed-use neighborhoods very difficult to develop. They kept the “wrong sort of people,” especially those without cars, out by making public transit inconvenient to use.
Fortunately, we didn’t completely decimate our older housing stock nationwide. Some of the cities that developed before widespread automobile adoption still have the density that supports walking, transit, and biking. Some cities have neighborhoods, often around former mills and industrial employers, that are full of reasonably-sized houses on little lots. Because space was at a premium before the automobile, these houses don’t waste it.
I am almost certainly looking for a house that is at least eighty years old, or else has been built more recently to imitate the style of such a structure.
I suspect I am looking for a terraced house, townhome, shotgun, camelback, or row home. There are lots of these throughout the parts of the US that were booming at the end of the nineteenth century. These are, most especially, those on the rail and river transit routes of the time. On a map, these are concentrated in an area with its easternmost boundary on the mid-Atlantic coast from Newport to Boston, and from there in a triangular swath having its vertex at St. Louis. This area includes Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, two cities at the height of their development in the age before automobiles. Baltimore and Harrisburg (PA) also have prominent row houses.
Of course, there are other places with this sort of housing. Atlanta has its Reynoldstown millhouses that I’m about twenty years too late to be able to afford. New Orleans has a great number of houses that meet my preferences. San Francisco is chock full of rowhouses, albeit with prices way beyond my means. I looked at a very well renovated little house in Knoxville a bit ago that was left over from when the town had a steel mill.
I want to live in a neighborhood, preferably mixed use, where I can walk, bike, or take transit to where I want to go. I don’t want a lawn to mow. If I must have a lawn, I want it to be so small that if it were the Federal government, even Grover Norquist would approve. I do want a patio or courtyard, but I want it behind the front of my building, and enclosed by walls or fence, if at all possible. I want a porch or stoop right up next to the street so I can greet my neighbors when they walk by.
I want the exterior of my house to look the same even if I haven’t been around for a while. A front porch is fine, but landscaping that needs monthly or more frequent attention is less than optimal.
If I can’t find the perfect rowhouse, townhouse, camelback, or shotgun without a lawn I’m looking for, I may settle for a small house with an equally small yard in which I can grow rocks or pinestraw. These exist in most, but all, cities. But my preference is for a house that comes almost right up to the sidewalk. I might also settle for purchasing an older multiunit dwelling.
The circumstances under which I will accept a condo are limited to it being an apartment or a flat in a unique, small, subdivided building surrounded by a heterogeneous neighborhood. I don’t want to live in a vast tract of condominiums, nor a high rise condo building. And I have a strong desire that my housing unit deliver me directly to the outside, in contrast to delivering me to an interior hallway.
I want a house that has no more than 1250 square feet of finished space. Less is certainly fine. I’ve seen houses as small as 650 square feet that would meet my needs. 1000 seems really quite fine. I prefer two bedrooms. I also would not object to a garage or extra storage.
I want to pay under $200,000 for this home. (Parenthetically, I mention that this is about enough money to buy a blood test for a Barbie doll in Nashville right about now.) The closer to that top figure, the closer to ideal the house should be. As I mentioned, one advantage of a smaller house is that it can be made to have finer things with relatively less expense. I want wood floors and ceramic tile. I think engineered vinyl flooring is an affront against all that is good and holy in the world. If possible, I want good insulation, efficient HVAC, updated electrical and plumbing, and a dishwasher. If I can’t have these things, then I will pay a lower price for the house and put them in myself.
These are my thoughts so far about where I would live.
