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10 Good Reasons To Move To A Small Town
by Phil Soreide
Not troubling to lock your bike in front of the library is just one.
“Urban” and “rural” are relative terms. I grew up in Denver in the 60s, and thought it a huge metropolis until I moved to Los Angeles in the 70s and saw what a colossal collection of people could really be. When I moved back to Colorado in the 90s, I thought Loveland, where we settled, was a small town…until I moved to Holdrege, Nebraska – less than one-twelfth the size – a few months ago.
Holdrege is one of those “blue highways” towns, off the Interstate and situated in the middle of miles and miles of corn fields. It’s like many towns that dot the West and Midwest, where all the downtown intersections are paved with brick, the trees are old and big, and there’s a church on practically every corner. The downtown buildings are likewise mostly brick, many with arched windows and filigree that suggest an earlier, simpler time. You can ride a bike from one end of town to the other in a quarter of an hour and not break a sweat.
We chose to leave the shopping malls and restaurants and museums – and the congestion, pollution and traffic – of the Front Range to find a better, simpler life. Here are the reasons why.
A Slower Pace of Life
This was probably the most important reason for us. For all of our married life, we lived a hectic, frenetic lifestyle, working long hours at high-pressure jobs, making lengthy commutes in order to maintain the standard of living we thought we had to have. But after one of us had a heart attack and the other was popping anti-anxiety pills like candy mints, we began to question our judgment.
In our new small-town life, my wife commutes about a hundred yards down the block to the public library and I commute down the stairs to my office in the basement. We get up later and have a leisurely lunch together nearly every day. My 13-year-old daughter rides her bike to school in about 10 minutes, versus the hour-long bus ride she had last year. We walk to the bank, the post office and the movie theater. I’m reading more books and feel calmer and more at peace than I have in a long, long time.
A Lower Cost of Housing
The house we bought is a Craftsman-style bungalow, one of quite a number of fine old, well-kept houses lining the shady streets in our town and many small towns. We figure that to buy something comparable where we came from would have easily cost us between two and three times as much as we paid.
In Colorado as well as in many places in the country, the average cost of a single-family home has soared into the $250,000 range, and if you want something more than the standard suburban ticky-tacky, you can expect to spend a lot more. In rural towns, you can easily buy a real house (that is to say, one without wheels underneath it) with a yard and a garage, on a nice street, for under $100,000...and sometimes well under.
The rental market is a similar story. For what a one-bedroom apartment, crammed in with noisy neighbors might cost in the city, you can often rent a whole house in a small town.
Better Schools
To be fair, I can’t say all small-town schools are better than their urban counterparts, only that ours is. Objectively, we came from a pretty good school district in Colorado, but the middle school we have now is nicer and more modern, with significantly smaller classes and bright, well-educated teachers. The computer and applied science labs are state of the art, and the school district and the town share a recently-completed and very sophisticated performing arts center. Our daughter was easily accepted by her new classmates, and is happy and challenged in her new situation.
A Sense of Security
The first time we visited the middle school, I was flabbergasted to see rows of bicycles parked in the bike rack...and none with a lock. Where we came from, you couldn’t safely leave a bike unlocked and unattended for more than a few minutes and expect it to be there when you came back.
The pervasive sense of security is still a little odd for me. I don’t leave my keys in the car yet, but routinely leave the house unlocked for short trips away. The “police calls” column in the newspaper – rarely more than a handful of entries – tend toward fender-benders and loose dogs, with an occasional domestic spat or marijuana-smoker thrown in for interest. No rapes, murders, muggings or auto theft. I used to be sick and nervous if my daughters were out after dark. Not any more.
Cheaper Insurance
The actuarial tables of insurance companies must bear out the safer climate of small towns, because both my homeowners and car insurance rates dropped significantly, even though I didn’t change insurers.
Less Traffic
When I lived in Los Angeles, I always had a credible excuse for being late to a meeting. As I rushed in, frazzled and drained, I’d say, “I ran into traffic,” and everyone would nod, wearily, understanding.
In the city, traffic jams form unpredictably, like sudden storms. There you are, sailing along, when all of a sudden the river of traffic in front of you turns to red as brake lights flash, and then grinds to a painful, sluggish crawl that may go on for miles. Making a left turn at some intersections requires the patience of Job. Finding a parking space can require either 20 bucks or a 20 minute walk – take your pick.
For myself, I like the slower speeds and fewer opportunities for collision, although it does mean I have to leave on time for meetings.
A Better Environment
One of the added benefits of fewer cars and factories (not to mention the reduced density of people) is that when you step outside your front door and take a deep breath, it doesn’t send you into a spasm of coughing.
Being as we are just a few blocks from open country in all directions, we never see the “brown cloud” that hovers over urban areas. And even if big cities are cleaning up their air – which I’m told they are – one doesn’t see the other kinds of pollution such as graffiti and litter, because around here, that sort of thing just isn’t done. Score one more for Midwestern rural values.
High Employment
Again, I know this isn’t necessarily true of all rural districts, but in our corner of the world, the unemployment rate is 2.6 percent, well below the national average, and a fraction of what it is in some urban areas. There’s a myth – must be an urban myth – that says you can’t make a living in a small town. It’s wrong. Granted, you don’t see want ads for stockbrokers or neurosurgeons in the local paper, but because the general cost of living is lower, you don’t have to make the same kind of money to maintain essentially the same standard of living. So if you can bring your job along with you, as I did, or be a bit flexible in the kind of work you’re willing to do, you’ll be fine.
Easy Access to the Great Out-Of-Doors
When we lived in LA, we went boating or camping as often as we could, and often cursed the fact that we had to drive for two hours – more, if there was traffic – just to get out past the worst of the urban sprawl. Today we are just blocks away from open country and in easy driving distance from all the hiking, bird-watching, horseback riding, fishing, hunting, and whatever other outdoor activity we’d ever care to do.
A Sense of Community
Life in a small town is on a more human scale. Because it’s smaller, the likelihood that you’ll run into the same people over and over is greater. That’s a good thing, because it means the people you see at the grocery store or the football game are neighbors, not strangers. You get a sense of community that’s hard to come by in an urban setting.
More important than that is you feel grounded in a way that’s hard acquire to in a city. The emphasis is more on doing and being than on getting and having. It’s easier to see that relationships are what matter in this life, not the number of toys you can collect before you die.
Oh, sure, you give up some entertainment options and perhaps some career advantages when you move to a small town. There aren’t as many restaurants to choose from and you can’t just run over to the mall when you feel you need a shopping fix. But, on balance – and in the end, balance is what matters – a small town way of living has a lot to recommend it.
It’s cheaper, slower-paced and more rewarding in a whole host of ways. It may not work for everybody, but it works for me. And maybe it would work for you, too.
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