Originally posted on 2011-06-25 15:46:59
I may change the name of this blog in the future, since I am thinking about moving to other states besides Texas.
I may spend three months in Seattle, Washington for work. I will know in about two weeks if I will be going. If I go, I will not be able to visit Texas until winter. But I should be open to the possibility of moving to Seattle instead of either going to Texas or staying in Chicago.
I read an article on the New York Times website about Seattle by Edward Glaeser. It had a lot of interesting points. He said that Seattle is growing because “Dense, smart cities like Seattle succeed by attracting smart people who educate and employ one another.”
The comments were pretty interesting. Several said that Seattle is kind of isolated; except for Portland, every other big city in the USA is pretty far away. A few pointed out that mass transit is not very good there. Another comment pointed out that while there are a lot of educated people in Seattle, the intelligensia is heavily skewed towards engineering and technology. You don’t get a lot of doctors, lawyers, social scientists to balance things out. There is also isolation within Seattle: People who work at the larger companies (Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft) tend to cluster together, and due to the lack of mass transit and the geography it can be difficult to get around within Seattle.
A few seemed to like the fact that Seattle is isolated and different. Some came there from more socially/intellectually/religiously conservative parts of the country and much prefer Seattle. (Granted, most of the country is more socially and religiously conservative than Seattle.)
Two friends of mine from college live in Seattle. When I was unemployed I looked at moving to another city. Seattle was one that I looked at. Not needing a car is part of Chicago’s appeal for me. One of my friends said that he gets by without a car. The other said that the first had injured himself mountain climbing and was unemployed for a year, so he did not really need a car. He said that Seattle is not quite as green as everybody thinks.
Who knows what will happen. I might go to Seattle and decide not to come back. I might hate it. If I go, I will drive instead of fly.
But if I can go a day without hearing any sirens, I think I might like Seattle.
Image from Wikipedia