Where to live?

[cjsmith]

Question stolen from aleeceh: If I could move anywhere, and the people I care about most (rfrench) would come with me, where would I live? I have the assets and skills I have today.

I have been thinking about this. I don't know the answer, but I have narrowed down some of my criteria.

1. Must allow general aviation and have a small airport nearby (for Rob to teach). Would be nice if it's uncrowded enough to have hangars available (for the nice aerobatic airplane I'd like to own).
2. Salary to cost-of-living ratio must be better than Silicon Valley.
3. Physically beautiful landscape. I will not be happy in an area that appears to me to be ugly. This probably implies uncrowded. Finland looks awfully lovely in the fall. So does New Hampshire.
4. Climate not beastly hot. Phoenix or Austin probably wouldn't agree with me. Winters are fine, though. I grew up with them and I miss them.
5. If outside the US, resident alien status must not suck or (Rob and?) I must qualify for citizenship. (I am willing to and would consider it my duty to learn the language. Rob might not enjoy it, though, so that effort would have to be taken into account.)
6. The laws of the state or country must not be personally abhorrent to me. I won't be happy in an area where what I perceive as the wrong things are supported and rewarded, while what I perceive as good and valuable things are penalized. Widespread and accepted corruption would bother me.
7. The local prejudices of the area must not be major limiting factors for me. I can't be in the closet about being an intelligent and capable woman. I probably can't be closeted about coming from the USA or having lived in California. I won't be happy any place I'm barred from driving a car because of my sex. I won't be happy living anywhere that's likely to be at war with the US, not only because that's a really bad situation to be in, but because there are many people here I care about.

I'm not sure I've caught them all here. It's a start.

Comments

[platypus]

Lots of military presence here, which tends to skew conservative. It's not quite what I would have thought myself, but San Diego went for Arnie for governor, went for Bush for president... I voted as hard as I could, but to no avail. Luckily I work for a university, and although the conservative student newspaper occasionally makes me choke on my lunch, I work with largely open-minded people. The poor students seem a bit divided.

Madison's hippieism is only slightly moderated by being a smallish city in Wisconsin. A quarter of the population of the place is in college (second largest university in the US, or it was when I went there). Between that and the state government being located there, they tend to be pretty progressive (and there's a fair number of save-the-turkeys protests and stuff). Madison is the kind of place that is amused by a kite festival in February. I love me some Madison.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

I would probably be happiest in a moderate-ish place. A liberal town surrounded by conservatism, or the other way round, tends to keep people on both sides more focused on real-life issues than a monoculture clear out to the horizon would do. From the description, Madison is a lot like that.