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My urbanist fantasy
I mostly love the town I live in, except that I really miss living in a more urban area with good walkability and transit.
I also love being in the Seattle area, except that everything feels so far away because of the transit situation. And when I do end up in the city I get so fed up with the constant presence of every tech company I cannot stand the existence of.
Sometimes I think about moving and starting a new chapter of my life, but I’m not sure what that would look like.
Here are things that are valuable to me:
* Affordable housing and food
* Being able to have a recording studio in or near my home, without noise leaking in from or out to neighboring homes (including an acoustic drum kit)
* Having access to transit that doesn’t completely wipe me out just to get to the nearest usable bus stop
* Having access to trans-affirming healthcare and not having to worry about being hate-crimed
* A local government that has committed to remembering that trans rights are human rights
* Access to long-distance transit (i.e. well-connected train and/or bus station, and not too hard to get to an airport)
* Good pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure
* Clean air
* Good and affordable Internet
And here are things that are nice to have:
* A decent food culture
* Access to forests and large bodies of water
* A local trans community
* A local furry community
* Coffee shops that emphasize flavor and technique (ideally third-wave and with good decaf)
* Majority English speakers
Things that would make life easier for me but aren’t strictly required:
* Not needing company sponsorship to move there
* Still being able to use my 110V hardware
Whenever I go on a Quixotic quest to find such a place, nothing really turns up. So far the least-bad option that keeps turning up is Victoria, Canada, but moving there would require some finagling to make it legal, and it' salso still a bit isolated for my tastes.
I feel like the best option is to just stay in White Center and just become an advocate for better transit and bike infrastructure. To that end I’ve sent messages to my local representatives, and I’ve already gotten some encouraging responses. Maybe I can help change this town to be the place I want to be, or at least less-bad than how it feels right now.
Here’s how White Center currently scores on the above points:
* Affordable housing and food: Not particularly great. At present I’m paying around $2500/month for housing (including property tax and insurance), and that’s on the low end. Food is about twice as expensive here as most of the US.
* Recording studio in/near home: I do! It’s in my basement. Basements are super uncommon here. But I have one, and it works great for this. Other houses here have yard space for a backyard recording shed, which is also acceptable.
* Transit access: This is of course my biggest frustration. There is a bus stop right around the corner of my house, which was a big factor in why I bought this place, but a few months after I moved in the bus line that stops there got its service _significantly_ reduced and now it only runs every 70 minutes and during commuting hours. In the five years I’ve lived here, I’ve only taken that bus twice, and I had to plan ahead. The time I still spent waiting for the bus was longer than it’d have been to walk to the next nearest bus stops, which are about 15 minutes away (but require traversing hills and so it wipes me out bad).
* Trans-affirming healthcare: Yes, and actually it’s better in White Center than in Seattle proper, amazingly enough. At least for general practice. For everything else I have to travel to Renton or Seattle, which gets back to the transit issues.
* Trans rights being human rights: White Center is pretty libertarian, but in an anarcho-socialist way. So it suits me just fine. Seattle proper is also quite good. Neighboring Burien, not so much.
* Long-distance transit: Our airport is pretty good, and it’s super easy to get to from White Center. Train travel is much more limited, but such is the case for all of the US. Train and bus access are just okay, and require traveling to Seattle proper.
* Good pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure: Seattle is great about this. White center, not so much. _Downtown_ White Center has recently gotten a huge infrastructure upgrade which makes it very walkable and easy to bike through (although the actual bike parking isn’t so great), but downtown is just where you go to go to bars and restaurants or shop at little boutiques. The actual day-to-day activity (such as grocery stores) is better handled down in my neck of the woods, “My neck of the woods” is only half a mile from downtown, _but_ that half a mile involves an incredibly steep hill that is not safe or fun to bike or walk up, and the main throughfare has shitty sidewalks and no bike lanes.
* Clean air: For the most part, yeah, it’s pretty good here.
* Good and affordable Internet: I get symmetric 500Mbps for $50/month, and that was a downgrade from symmetric gigabit, which was $70/month.
* Decent food culture: There’s some okay places to go here but they’re expensive. The food culture in Seattle proper is a lot better, but also a lot more expensive. And it still can’t hold a candle to Portland.
* Access to forests and large bodies of water: I have found nowhere better than Seattle for that. White Center has a fair amount as well. Burien also has an incredible nature park (Seahurst) but getting to it without a car is a nightmare.
* A local trans community: Seattle is basically the trans capital of the world, as far as I care, and I know several local trans and nonbinary folks in and near White Center. Although few of them are within walking distance. I’m sure there’s a bunch I don’t know though.
* A local furry community: The Venn diagram of the trans people I know near White Center and the furries I know near White Center is literally a circle.
* Good coffee shops: In White Center we have Moonshot, and Sound & Fog is currently my favorite coffee shop in the world and isn’t super far away from the BRT.
* Majority English speakers: Well, yeah
So I mean based on my rubric, White Center is pretty great. Looking at it that way, it’s a pretty high bar to clear.
I just wish it didn’t cost so much to live here, in terms of both finances and energy.
