Where You Should Live: Five Factors to Keep in Mind

I ran across this post on Instagram by Bobby in Space (who posts about design and the psychology of place) and wanted to pull it onto the actual internet. Here are some snippets of his “5 hills I will die on as someone who studies the psychology of place”. I don’t think these are universal (e.g. people who live in rural areas likely prioritize other needs) or even necessarily the most important considerations (climate, sunlight, crime, schools), but they resonated with me.

1. Your 10-minute radius matters more than almost anything else about where you live: Think about what you can get to in ten minutes without making it a whole thing. I can get coffee, get groceries, go to a park, and go to a friend’s place.

This is the biggest thing that was missing for me living in rural VT for the past 10 years. My 10-minute radius required a car to access and even then was not teeming with options. My 10-minute radius here in Tokyo is, obviously, bonkers. It makes me so happy. A photo I took inside my 10-minute area a couple of weeks ago:

2. More space can give you a smaller life: This one I’ll actually argue about. Idk why we’re obsessed with getting more sq footage, but sometimes the bigger house means you spend way more time inside it. House, car, work, car, house. Meanwhile, someone in a tiny apartment might walk downstairs, grab coffee, run into someone they know, walk to dinner, stop at the park. Technically they have less space. Butttttt their actual life might be way bigger.

One of the things living in NYC taught me was how to treat the city as an extension of your home. I’m not sure people who live in rural and suburban areas think that way about the relationship between their homes and locations.

3. The best neighborhood amenity might literally just be other people outside. […] You don’t even need to talk to any of them. Just seeing other people out living their lives makes you feel like you’re part of something.

Yep. I have been so missing this in my life. My first few days here in Tokyo, I was craving being in huge crowds of humanity so much that I spent a lot of time in ultra-busy areas like Shinjuku and Shibuya.

4. Moving somewhere new will change you, just probably not in the way you think: trust me, I still tend to do this. I think that a new city can solve all my problems. But it will not. You’re still going to be you.

Haha, yeeeeep. Even a month into my travels, I have been disappointed to learn that my bad habits are still with me. Would really like to speak to the manager about that one…

5. Where your friends live should influence where you live way more than we admit: I don’t even feel the need to explain this one. Relationships are the most important thing you’ll do in your life. Go live near people that light you up

Even though it’s halfway across the world from where I’ve been living for the past 50+ years, I’ve seen more friends here in Japan in the past month than in the past 3 months in VT. It’s not going to be like that everywhere I go and I’m not near the most important folks in my life here, but it’s nice to have it while I’m here.

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• travel