City vs Suburbia

There’s a discussion happening in Domain blog (http://blogs.domain.com.au/ ) about living in city vs suburbia…

I just read them and found some interesting things from the readers...

Which one do you prefer? :)

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i lived in clovelly 6km or 20mins to the city. beach 200m away. i loved it. then my partner got sick and lost his so called "job for life". we were going under on a monthly basis. i had a great career, great friends, ate well, ocean views the lot. six months ago we moved 1hr south of sydney on the coast just to try it. we live near the windy bridge north of wollongong. we pay $290 per week for a 2 brm fibro house a backyard overlooking the ocean, trees and the occasional wallabies grazing around dusk. we have a garage, a storeroom and a studio, a vegie patch, a laundry as big as my last bedroom with ocean views, 2 dining rooms, a sunroom and an old kitchen. its so cheap to live here I'm only working 3 days a week. its a 1 hr drive to work door to door. the other days i swim in the ocean, do some pilates or go to the gym, shop, read or sew. my partner looks healthier than when I first met him. our friends come down and visit and think we live in paradise. our friends stay with us and we stay at their place if there's a party in sydney we don't want to miss. the locals are friendly, and everything is cheaper. there are nice restaurants and we eat out once a week still. the loaf of sour dough bread I bought in clovelly for $5.50 is $3.50 here, same label. bananas were $3 a kilo when in sydney they stayed up over $10 a kilo. our first bacon and egg roll plus a coffee for 2 people cost only $12 not $40 at clovelly sea salt. i reckon i've had the best of both worlds and my experience is that city life just doesn't compare to being here.

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I live 20km out from Brisbane and hate it, yes I've got heaps of space on my 1600sqm block, but it takes forever to get anywhere, no public transport, no shops nearby.
I blame the council for not insisting on some retail land in the estate. Also the estate is all twisty cul de sacs, it takes me 5 minutes just to get out of the estate. Developers have got obsessed with creating quite dead-end cul de sacs with no through roads, and the whole estate exits at the one point.
The new stage actually backs on to a main road, but there is not access to it, not even a footpath! you have to drive right around for 15 minutes!

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I have lived in a shoebox in the centre of London, New York and Sydney. Now I live in a house in Canberra suburbia and love having the garden and the dog which I could not have in the city. I think much depends on your stage of life - once I would not have swapped the city for this either but now I would not go back.

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Late last year I moved to Lake Macquarie -south of Newcastle NSW after 10 years in Sydney & 5 years in Brisbane. In both cities, I lived in great inner city fringe suburbs - had a great life, easy public transport in Sydney and a short walk to shops, bars etc in both places - all very nice but to buy where I rented in Sydney was simply unaffordable on one income if I still wanted to have any sort of social life. I met the love of my life and within 12 months had moved up the F3 to be with him in a cute 3 bedroom house we bought and am loving it - and I'm still walking distance to everything - including our sail boat on a mooring at the end of our street....I've got the best of all the worlds-at about a 1/3 of the price - and that's for everything - from paying a mortgage to going out for dinner or breakfast - not to mention that everything is just easier - going to the beach doesn't involve paying for parking or sitting in traffic for hours on the way home..
Home is about who you're with & what you do in that home and in your community - it's not about keeping up with the Jones & driving the latest model SUV. Lifestyle is about how you choose to live - and it can be short sighted to think that is defined by the address you live at.