Stirling Westrup wrote:
> Lets see, why do I live in a city? 1) I don't have to own a car, since
> there is adequate public transit. 2) There is a 24 hour restaurant down
> the block, and several 24 hour convenience stores within a couple of
> blocks. 3) There is, within walking distance, two cafes, 10 restarants, 4
> fast-food joints, a major mall, and three different computer stores. 4)
> There is a wide diversity of different people that I can end up
> interacting with. 5) I can buy ingredients for greek, lebanese, chinese,
> and Caribean food without leaving my home suburb. 6) High Bandwidth
> internet service is readily available.
You're right, I love that same sort of stuff about cities too. Public
transport is a big one; I'm about to move to somewhere that I need a car
again, gack. Decent cafe's are a must!
I wonder if it's all about food; I hate working, for instance, in an area
without good restaurants/cafes. I worked in an industrial area for over a
year, horrible, the only food in walking distance came from one of two awful
takeaways (one of which turned out to be under a brothel; that's Canberra
for you), or microwaved crappola from a service station. A year of hell.
Big cities are really fun to live in if you have no kids and are fighting
fit. For a family, it's a bit of a bummer; everything costs more, and it's a
little wilder than might be desirable.
I've been looking at some of the beatiful rural towns around Australia, for
instance on the south coast of New South Wales. It's paradise, rainforest,
just amazing. But I think if you are a little way inland, even though it is
beautiful, the towns are struggling. Why? No jobs, no opportunities.
I think you could turn around a couple of towns like that by turning them
into high-tech havens. Bring in broadband, subsidize or start business which
appealed to techies/tech companies, and try to attract higher class
restaurants, cafes, etc. Maybe you could try to attract tech companies to
base themselves there, or at least build really top teleworking
infrastructure, to attract teleworkers.
Really we'd need a better teleworking industry to make that a goer. Better
get back to it...
>
> > I can understand it if you live in Singapore, for instance, or Macau,
but I
> > don't get it in a country like Australia, or the US for that matter.
> > There's space. The cars are fast; build a few more highways.
>
> Some of us think there are already too many highways.
I do hate driving myself. But then, I'm trying something different.
Emlyn
>
> > Personally I love a dense city; they're interesting places to be in,
> > stimulating. But they are really irritating if you have to fight your
way
> > through them every day.
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:37:37 MDT