Who’s Your City: Deciding Where to Live – Poet’s Edition

I’ve been reading this interesting book called Who’s Your City, by the guy who wrote that “Rise of the Creative Class” book back in the nineties. Who’s Your City has a kind of anti-“the world is flat” thesis. It makes the argument that where you live is one of the most important decisions you can make, that it affects your life in myriad ways, and that most people don’t give where they live enough thought. It offers some ideas and information like: B types like small towns, A types like big cities. Agreeable and conscientious folks live in the Midwest and Southeast. Creative clusters bloom under the right conditions: good weather, good schools, a high number of motivated and ambitious people (who are neither agreeable nor conscientious, by the way. Apparently successful people are open to new experiences, but big jerks. I’ve never thought of agreeable-ness and conscientiousness as being liabilties, but this book makes that argument via graph.) Being close to friends and family can be worth over six figures to people. I’m the kind of person who does a lot of research before I move somewhere: air quality? crime rates? average rent? wait times at the local ER? But stats can only tell you so much of the story.

Once again we are considering a move at the end of our current lease. California is beautiful but very expensive, and Napa is far enough from San Fran to keep us from going there as often as I’d like. The Northwest’s constant rain raises some health challenges for me with allergies and asthma, but that’s where my friends live, and the poetry community there – and I’m talking about Seattle and Portland both – is warm and convivial. Husband G’s job is still in Seattle, which makes the West Coast preferable. The book makes the point that if you want to be the best in your field, you move to where the best in your field live. For instance, if you’re a musician, you move from a small town to Austin to Nashville. If you’re a poet…well, I’m not sure -would New York City/Boston be the equivalent kind of city? I love the energy of NYC and Boston, but they’re super expensive, out of our price range for sure, as is living any closer to San Fran proper than we already do. I’m not sure that kind of thinking even applies to writers anyway…

There are costs to moving as often as we have – economic and emotional stress for sure. But I am happy I’ve gotten to explore some of these wonderful places, and as a writer, it’s been fascinating to see the different writing communities, the bookstores (though Napa Valley’s independent bookstores have mostly closed, and San Diego was no great shakes for bookstores either,) the landscapes and cultures and people. Some places are going to have better job opportunties, better vistas, better education opportunities, or better weather; cheaper costs of living, better access to friends and family. How does where you live impact how we write? There are writers that I can’t imagine living outside the Northeast (like Louise Gluck) – or think about how Margaret Atwood’s threatening Canadian wildernesses feature in so many of her stories. I’ve been writing a series of poems about growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Where my neighbors were a combination of poor Appalachians and nuclear physics experts, the liquor store got held up by the teenagers who lived down the street, where we grew the most wonderful strawberries in soil that was laced with contaminated heavy metals and radioactive waste.

I don’t know if I agree with Who’s Your City’s author, Richard Florida, that where we live is the most important decision in our lives. But I think where we live does seep into our selves – into our writing, the way we walk and dress, who we marry and befriend, how we think and carry ourselves. As a bit of a rambler, who was moved four times before she turned ten, and continues in that tradition as an adult, maybe what I’m looking for is just a place that feels like home, that doesn’t bankrupt me to rent there, that has good doctors and good libraries, that provides a bit of the balance between cultural benefits and natural beauty. Maybe I’ll just keep wandering. Maybe I’ll take a vote.