Apply for jobs in a walkable city and just go for it if you're in the US
Apply for jobs in a walkable city and just go for it if you're in the US
Like if it's even an option for you at all, make the move. It's such a better quality of life it's crazy, cannot be exaggerated.
Obviously not easy, but if it's even at all potentially feasible do what you can to make it happen.
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(Besides NYC) what walkable cities?
Chicago and Philly are dramatically cheaper and plenty walkable
Chicago kinda, Philly barely
depends on where you are in philly, but it's significantly better than stroads on stroads for ever and no sidewalks lol
parts of philly are very walkable though, like all of south
Boston is extremely walkable, it's a relatively small big city and most of it was built before cars. I've got a picture of my old apartment building with dirt streets and a horse carriage out front. I used to regularly walk from one end of the city to the other for leisure. The T is surprisingly good public transit for america too. They've even been doing free fares on some of the bus routes for the last few years, and just extended that experiment because it was pretty successful.
People drag it for not being a grid sometimes (the "paved-over cowpaths" myth) but that's because the streets go around hills since they needed to be traversed by people and horses.
In terms of affordability Boston is worse than NYC
Oh my God my partner and I recently looked at a bunch of cities to decide where to apply for jobs, and we were fucking floored when we saw how expensive Boston was.
Why the fuck is rent more than NYC and SF??? It was literally over $1000 more per month than the other cities on our list including DC, Seattle, and Chicago.
So the thing with the Boston rental market is it depends on what time of year you're looking. Like 75% of Boston leases open on Sept. 1 and end on August 31. Most apartments come on the market for the current year in the first 3 months of the year (Jan/Feb/March) so if you're looking outside of that time window there's much less available and the prices are higher.
Edit: There's also no rent control which helps nothing
Why the fuck does the Boston rental market work the same way as my shitty little college town
Because Boston is the biggest, shittiest, college town in the country.
Because Boston is actually like 20 colleges in a trench coat
On the plus side, Allston Christmas rules
You literally cannot even get through traffic hardly around the week that college students are moving in in Boston
Boston is so expensive
DC is very walkable. The metro is slightly less extensive than NYC but is way more reliable imo and also not nasty.
But the NYC subway is free
Seattle's downtown, Fremont, and Ballard neighborhoods. But be careful because each of those extend past the walkable area (like Fremont and Ballard extend past their walkable area and include straight up suburbs).