Modern Vespa

(I couldn't decide if this was [NSR] or [SSR], or possibly [TNR] for "tenuously scooter related", so I opted to leave it un-tagged).

My wife and I have been talking about where we want to live someday for as long as we've been married. It's not that we've hated where we've lived (North Oakland and Campbell, both in the SF Bay Area) but we've always felt that we could probably find someplace more interesting to live if job and family weren't factors.

The usual format of this seemingly endless search for someplace to live would go something like this:

jess: "How about Aspen?"
mrs jess: "Too cold."

jess: "New Mexico?"
mrs jess: "Too hot."

jess: "Hawaii?"
mrs jess: "No islands!"

jess: "Vancouver?"
mrs jess: "Washington or Canada?"
jess: "Yes."
mrs jess: "Too cold. Or too wet. Or possibly both."

(Rinse and repeat, stretched over 20 odd years, mostly odd).

I'm now about three weeks away from retirement, though, and so over the last few years we've gotten more serious about figuring out exactly what it is that we want in a place to live. We think we've even identified the city we want to live in, or at the very least the specific region of the specific country where we'd like to spend our retirement years.

Along the way, one of the things that I've been personally interested in is the question: What makes a great city? There are obviously many answers to that, depending on what each person values, but it has led me on a quest to really understand the "vibe" I get from some cities, which is entirely absent from others.

I've been watching videos on city planning and this one popped up. Fairly fascinating look at how not to design a city.

I suggest a place where ever-faster climate change cannot do any damage in the future, that is, for the next thirty years. Consult a climatologist and identify safe areas and then choose.

Texas has got to be the worst for walking. Even my in-laws old neighborhood didn't have sidewalks and it was in a small town. It had lawns with a curb, no bike lanes and then the street.

We've had similar discussions. We have discussed living in two locations based on season. I even developed a spreadsheet to address some of the items important to us.

Where we currently live in Arlington/Rosslyn VA it is very pedestrian and bicycle friendly. It is easier to get around DC on a bike or standing scooter than driving. We lived in Old Town Alexandria VA before, great walking town and vibes. If I could pick Old Town up and move it somewhere else, it would be great, but Northern Virginia is not a place we would want to retire. I think one has to spend some time to get a true vibe of a place, but the bad ones can take no time at all.

Here are a couple websites that are interesting to see potential impact of future climate change.

For the US specifically:
https://projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/

For sea level rise:
https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/tools/slr.html

Be thankful you don't live here

Someplace where you don't feel rushed, with a balance of main street and nature.
I'm tired of moving, or I'd pick:
Vashon Island, WA
Carpinteria CA
Portland, ME
Eureka, CA

CLE is the Place to Be in 2073!! Bring your job and come now while home prices are still a bargain!

See you soon,

Chris from CLE

Only 50 years from now. Smart people get in early.

On another note, as I look for an additional possible retirement location, I do consider future weather and passing the property to our son. I do hope the possible futures depicted don't come to realization.

I have been to Cleveland twice, enjoyed both visits.

I would happily retire to my family home in Northern California but sanity no longer resides there.

I almost hate to suggest it (because we are getting a bit crowded compared to 1984 when I moved here), but I will. Consider Denver proper. Not the suburbs, but the city.

I have been here 37 years and the climate is almost perfect. Sure, we have winter, but it is not much. When it does snow, even 8-12", it usually melts off the next day or two.

We regularly have 70 degf days in January, February, etc. The sun is a constant, so even if it is 40 degf it feels good outside. Humidity has something to do with this because it is typcially 30% or less. Bugs (roaches, mosquitos, etc.) are at a minimum because of the dry climate.

Housing is on par with California on cost, so don't think you can sell there and bank some $$.

When I consider where I would go on retiring (8 years off for me..at 70) I really can't think of anywhere else I would rather be.

North of the Belmont Shore area in Long Beach is attractive (I lived there for a while in the 80's), as housing is no more expensive than Denver and it is close to the beach, but I am not sure I want to deal with drought and earthquakes.

I'll probably stay here. We love our area of Denver because of the Mexican culture in our neighborhood (Sloan's Lake area, which was previously more Italian in the 50's and 60's).

In the gentrification process over the 25 years we have been in this neighborhood, the culture has changed some, but it still retains much of the Mexican charm we value, while adding in more diverse businesses and people. The mix reminds me some of DC, where I travelled frequently. There, as in our area, people are people and they get along.

We are close to downtown, with the Auraria Campus (UC Denver, Metro State), the Denver Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Mile High Stadium, Coors Field, Pepsi Center, Erico Motorsports (Vespa/Piaggio dealer), etc. Also, many very good restaurants...our past time is eating out.

If you decide to visit to check it out, then please contact me and I will help you navigate the town to see the best of what it has to offer,

I was born and raised in Ohio and moved to Colorado in 1984. There are two places I would live in Ohio....Cleveland and Yellow Springs. But, I have gotten used to sunshine, so I don't think I will move back! We are getting back there a bit more often these days because my daughter is going to Kent State. She has yet to experience her first Ohio winter...we warned her and she is ready to stay inside (cold, no sun and high humidity will be brutal for a native Coloradan).

A bit more than just city design...

Smaller streets with no more than 4 lanes, preferable just two lanes for most of it, lot of open space, good public transportation, underground utilities, lots of public access, cafes, art venues, new and old architecture, restaurants, roundabouts ( ), no giant supermarkets, reasonable parking; relatively lower building (no high rises). Population < 200K-300K. Must have at least one university. Relatively locally grown foods. No right wingers, antivaxxers, nazis, white supremacists. Diverse cultures and economic classes.

Good weather, not mosquitos, Internet access everywhere, minimal impending disasters (e.g. earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, volcanos, tidal waves)

Santa Cruz is just about perfect for me tho I wish it were consistently 5-10 degrees F warmer.

Miguel

I betcha Florida has it beat with the exception of all the beaches to walk. Glad I moved to the Carolinas - more better days. But still miss the ocean

Alrighty then! I was raised in YS and moved away in 1981. I still have family there.

Those are all aspects of city design! This takes more than just city design, but obviously are important too. Large colleges strategically placed in a city can achieve much of this, though, so maybe it really all comes down to design after all.

I would argue that sanity no longer resides anywhere else.

Tell you the truth, add in low cost of living and you are pretty much describing CLE. We still have the vast majority of the amenities from when we were the "Sixth City" but only one third of the people.

And don't forget we are a costal town - the lake and beaches are quite beautiful.

Not to mention over thirty breweries…

Chris from CLE

As you age, you also need to have access to good health care.
Also, for us, is access to a good international airport, as we love to travel.

I wouldn't want to live in any city - regardless of the design! A small village would do me. Must have a decent pub though...

The video you posted really clicked with me, thanks! In the USA I often need a car, but while in our neighborhood in town in Greece it's hardly ever. I can walk(but usually scoot ) for 95% of what I need and a frequently run short bus ride gets you down to most offices etc you might need or to the subway for all the rest. Best to be retired though, and avoid the commuter crowds.

Scooters seem generally safer in Europe as well, so that's a nice option. Sure traffic gets crazy in some places, but ppl are a lot more used to scooters there and they get thru pretty easily. I hate riding my scoot here on busy streets, I seem invisible to so many drivers.

Have you considered Porto in Portugal? It sounds ideal if I wasn't already well settled elsewhere.

Oh yeah, I see that you have. If you can't find a good fit there, come on over to Greece and I can hook you up source: [NSR] Giving Up a Good Job

Yep. Porto is our intended destination, though we're going to be test-driving it for a month or two at a time over the next few years.

I went to Wright State from 1979-1984 (long time for a B.S. I know, but I worked about 2 years of it at WPAFB in a Co-op program).

In those years I spent a lot of time in YS. It was still so Hippy back then and suited my life style.

My favorite memory is finding a book at the used bookstore downtown that was titled something like "How to identify, determine age, and prepare roadkill for your commune". Should have bought it, but I did get a bunch of 60's/70's back to the earth books that I still have.

Just saw a nice bungalow for sale on Zillow near downtown that needs some interior finish, but it is so cheap compared to Denver...around $225K I think. You can't buy anything decent here for twice that.

I still love Ohio...all my family is there...now including my daughter who will probably stay after graduation. So, many more visits in store. I need some Youngs Dairy unpasteurized whole milk & fresh made sausage sandwich with mustard, and of course some HaHa's Pizza.

I have a buddy from college that continued at WPAFB and retired from there. He lives on a 10 acre "farm" just outside of YS in a home built in the mid-1800's. Nice life. Barn, horses, cross-county ski trails he made, etc.

I went to Cleveland for the first time when we took my daughter to Kent State. For some reason I never got there in my first 24 years! Downtown was great. It was so cool to be right on the lake. I could see myself in a "loft" downtown, so inexpensive.

This one? https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/911-Xenia-Ave-Yellow-Springs-OH-45387/34182763_zpid/

That's the one! Easy to finish, probably less than $30K if you do some work yourself. Also, I would build a nice garage/workshop out back.

Phayao, Thailand.
Might be more than 5-10 degrees warmer?
Oh darn. No public transport. Just walk everywhere.

City design plays a lesser role behind what speaks to you personally. You could live in the best designed city and it wouldn't matter if the place doesn't speak to you.

I would move to Killarney, IE in a heart beat if I was retired, or had a way to legally make income there!

I think the central premise is that the city design probably contributes many of the qualities that people generally value, whether directly or indirectly.

My wife and I are now both retired.

We sold up our home and moved into a semi-detatched property that my late mother left me.
My son and his family live in the one unit and we live in the other. There is also a small flatlet on site (usually utilised for a live-in domestic worker) that we have refurbished for my daughter who just cannot cut the apron strings.

Try talking your wife out of that living arrangement to go elsewhere...

We are currently on vacation in the Western Cape province, having delivered a BMW R75/5 by trailer to a friend who relocated here. We scouted about for options and looked at property prices here. For the market price of my existing home, I could not buy a new smaller place on a quarter to a third of the land here, without paying in 25-30% more.

Realtors down here are crazy!
"This is what property is worth here..." they say.
"That is what property COSTS here, not what it is worth!" I said. "How many you have actually sold recently?"
Silence.
December is always a busy time for them as up-country people come down on their annual Summer holiday and the wives drive around in their BMW X5's looking at places to buy.

I think I'll wait for another six months until my next visit to my friend and see...
I believe things will be much cheaper.
The well-heeled up-country folks are buying off-shore right now...

Don't expect flights to Mars for another 20 years.

Streets should always be lined with trees, not telephone cables.

Latina, Italy.

Quality* coffee must be only a few minutes walk away.


* Apparently a rare thing in the US

+1

Except the cities seem to follow me.

When young, the closest city for me was our capital, Helsinki. In the city scale, not a large one. Less than 700 000 in the city proper and around 1,5Milj including the surrounding areas.

I buzzed there for party weekends, had a great time.
Still, when it was time to move, I was already ready for a bit smaller, cozier city.

Lived in a bit smaller city (although travelled abroad a lot too, mostly for work) quite many years, gradually moving from the city center towards the outskirts of the city. Mostly because the city kept growing, becoming more growded and dense of everything - buildings, traffic, people.

Then finally moved to a smaller town. Been living here now quite some time too. And quess what a small(ish) town wants to be, when asked from the local politicians? A small city, of course! More people, more business... so while I've been living here, we have had lots of new blocks of flats built, larger shopping centers (killing smaller shops), empty spaces filled with something... usefull The darn cities keep following me.

If I didn't like so much my short and quick commuting, I'd be ready to move again further away, to the countryside proper.

Deciding where to move after retiring is a big deal. We retired 15 years ago and went through those considerations. We knew we wanted to be someplace that we didn't have to deal with cold and snow again (after selling our home in the Black Hills in western South Dakota). We had also built a small vacation home in deep south Texas (Port Isabel/South Padre Island area, also known as the Tropical Tip).

We were fortunate that my job gave us time in the winter months to "practice" being retired. We took our motorhome all over the Sunbelt, from southern California to Florida to see what area suited us. One of the big desires for us at that time is what we found in the Tropcial Tip: subtropical climate and an island that has canals, making it possible to have a dock just steps from our back door, with water access to the Intracoastal Waterway and the Gulf of Mexico.

That last thing (house with water access) just got less important when we sold our last boat a few weeks ago. If you like warm and humid, this is the place; a few months of cooler weather in the winter (70º typical daytime high in January).

We considered other places to live, generally with a consideration of "best places to retire" that often pop up on Facebook. The one downside of living here: the riding is moderately sucky - mostly flat, straight roads, and a driving population that I call a cross between NASCAR and Tijuana Taxi. That's why we haul our scoots to other places where we can enjoy some great riding. OK, one other downside: it is SO far from here to anywhere... it takes us 2 - 3 days of driving to get out of the state.

Our daughter keeps lobbying for us to move to Arizona... because apparently we aren't getting any younger. All this to say: we found what works for us right now, but it also includes months of getting away. I get itchy feet after a couple months of being anywhere.

Good luck with the decisions.

Porto would be great!

I'm not sure where I would move. I have traveled a fair bit, but I'd like to travel more to have an informed fantasy

I would say there are not a lot of cities in the US that feel right to me for the purposes of my retirement. It would probably be a large town nature-adjacent if staying in the US.

I want to retire to every place we have visited lately.

Tuscany? Of course! Who wouldn't want to live there?

Greek Islands? Naxos and Páros have everything I might want.

Spain? Several towns we visited in Catalonia would work.

Portugal? Same as Spain. As for Porto, I picked up a cold in Lisbon that was at its worst after a cold, damp ride from Coimbra, plus it rained while there, so i missed some of its goodness.

Back in the US, we are staying in Asheville, NC this week. I could easily live here.

But our Jacksonville house in the huge, historic and protected neighborhood of Avondale, has everything we need, so staying put works too.

I will retire next year. We will probably do as you are doing, keep our house and spend extended stays in different places.

We are already planning to spend a month in Woodstock, Vermont next year. Probably Asheville too. Switzerland and Italy as well.

That will probably be our MO until the money runs out.

Or we find the perfect place.

Bill

Asheville is lovely. Woodstock is ok, but there are better places to squirrel away in for the long haul in VT (I grew up there).

Before seeing the Huston video, I always thought Huston was not for me and for many more reasons than walking.
In the valley where I live it is getting better, but it still needs so much more and so many more people are moving here making it challenging. All new roads or expanded roads incorporate sidewalks with bike lanes, that helps. Many of the expanded roads butt up to older roads without sidewalks or bike lanes which can be a challenge.
I like to ride bicycles and scooters, lived in New Mexico (which in my mind gets too cold, not too hot, Valley of the Sun where I live now, gets too hot) I was able to ride my bike just about everywhere, the main challenge were the hills, hills everywhere being as Albuquerque is in a valley that slops down to the Rio Grande on both sides of the city, which ebbs south, I lived in the Bosque so everywhere I wanted to go was either up or down never level.
Now living in the Valley of the Sun what I am challenged with are speeding cars obviously on a bicycle I am a slow-moving target so lights on all the time! On the scooter all I can say is 300cc is just barely enough for the Blvd.'s, the freeways are scary.

I am now looking for a city that is in America, west, accepts seniors, pedestrian-bicycle friendly, temperate in weather, affordable, friendly, nearby shopping, Pickle Ball courts, with affordable good golf courses; Where is that?

If you haven't already, start watching expat videos about the countries on your list. They can be very informative regarding visa requirements, cost of living, and general pointers for making the transition.

For Portugal, we have been watching Expats Everywhere, and it's definitely been helpful and informative.

For Italy, not exactly expat-specific, but we watch Nicki @ The Positano Diaries for a slice-of-life view of Italy.

Lots of resources are out there to help facilitate a full-time or part-time transition.

That video crystalized why I love the city I work in. I live in Nashville, IN which is a small artist colony/tourist destination in the "hills" of Brown county. We love the feeling of living in the mountains and the roads are really fun to ride.

But the city I work in is Bloomington, IN and aside from being the home of IU it is definitely pedestrian and bike friendly. In fact, the city is just finishing the 7-line project which is a two lane protected bike path from campus all the way west to the B-line (another ped/bike path) that they carved out of 7th st. They are also continually upgrading sidewalks. It is a great city for alternative transportation. It also has a fleet of electric hybrid buses.

I do have to ride or drive 30 minutes to work but once I am parked I rarely use the car and walk or ride the bus everywhere. I love it. If we ever get tired of living in the "hills" I would move into Bloomington without hesitation.