Reply to How are you able to afford the DC area

Forum Index » Real Estate

Reply to "How are you able to afford the DC area - from an out-of-towner?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am one of the PPs who has lived both in the Midwest and in this DC area.  And have family in both area.  The thing is:  of COURSE there are educated people (and cultured people, thoughtful people, etc.) in every region of the country.  Of course, this goes without saying!  But in my own PERSONAL experience, there are certain areas where there is a greater percentage of overall educated (and thoughtful and cultured) individuals, and you need to reach a certain tipping point, and I find that more in the DC-metro area than in other areas I have lived in the Midwest.  There may be exceptions:  Chicago is one that immediatley leaps to my mind.  OF course!  I am also thinking of Ann Arbor or, I have never been to Cincinatti, but what other friends have told me and what some of you have said here, yes, it sounds this way too.  But I have also lived in South Bend, and let me tell you:  you'd have to be smoking crack if you tried to tell me you get just as many educated (and cultured and thoughtful) individuals living there as in the DC area, and that's even with Notre Dame, St. Mary's, and other educational institutions taken into account.  Amongst the general South Bend populace, there is NOT the same amount of educated (creative, thoughtrful, etc.) individuals.  There just isn't.  I have other relatives who live near Valparaiso and I have been to neighborhood and community gatherings with other folks in their neighborhoods and towns:  it's not the same and the conversations are NOT the same as ones I have had with my neighbors around here.  There is NOT enough of them to have reached that "tipping point" for my own personal tastes.

One really interesting book to read about this topic is:  THE RISE OF THE CREATIVE CLASS by Richard Florida.

I like living in areas where is a large enough creative class to pass that threshhold where the community decisions are largely made by and affected by creative class individuals.  [/quote]

This is an important point.  You do need enough people who are invested in civic and cultural life.  DC has almost twice the number of people with advanced/professional degrees (I'm ONLY talking about the city, because I am 100% not putting the time in to break out stats for the region).  There are only about 30,000 people with advanced degrees in Cincinnati vs. 120,000 in DC (twice the population), so if that is your metric, yikes.  On the other hand, how many do you need to get what you want?  How many friends can you handle?  I don't need 50,000 political junkies in my life. I need and have maybe 50 with different perspectives.

One of the truly wonderful things I've learned here is that people do not have to have degrees to be credible and effective citizens and human beings.  We have more diverse and democratic community leadership, and the COL makes it possible for people to risk failure in ways they might not be able to elsewhere.  The result is more innovation than you might expect.  When I look at DC, I see that a lot of what's  different is about money/demographics.  When I look at Midwest cities, I see more people solving problems and making good lives in interesting ways.

Incidentallys... DC has significantly more Latinos and almost twice as many Asians (3.5% vs. 1.8%).  Those identifying as multiracial/other/Native/Pacific Islander are about the same percentage.  DC is more diverse, but not by an astonishing degree. 
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics