Getting Around

City living cuts your commute, sometimes drastically. If you work in the city, you're already there. Even if you work in a more outlying location, you can get there in a reasonable amount of time because you're usually starting from a central location and have easy access to the freeway system.

Most cities evolve from a hub and spread outwards. Some cities are so large they have multiple urban neighborhoods, but still only one downtown. These neighborhoods were usually once suburbs that were at the end of a railroad or trolley line, making them easily accessible from the city proper. Now freeways continue that tradition. But it's still true that the closer in you are to the city center, the less traveling you will have to do.

I live in one of those urban neighborhoods. Technically, I don't live "downtown," but I'm still only a couple of miles away. I could walk to the center of the city in forty minutes (and I walk slowly!). I can take the bus and be there in ten minutes, tops. The area I live in is made up of single family dwellings, duplexes and apartment buildings that were built between the 1890s and the 1910s. At that time it was a suburb. The city gradually crept north up High Street, leaving behind neighborhoods and districts like the layers of an onion. My neighborhood is known as Weinland Park and is located between the Short North and the University District. I can walk to Ohio State in 15 minutes and be there by bus in five. (It's almost embarrassing to get on the bus for such a short ride.)

I used to live on the southeast edge of the Columbus metropolitan area and it took me forever--okay, close to an hour-- to travel to the northwest where my sister lives. Even with the freeway. Now I can be there in twenty minutes. I don't have the lot size that I used to have, but I do have two parking spots and enough yard to garden in (and a lot less grass to mow). Our house is as big as the one I used to own in the suburbs, if not nearly as new. (It was built in 1915 as opposed to 1995.) One thing I don't have is the high cost of transportation. With gas prices being what they are today, that's a tremendous plus. (I don't know if I could afford to live in the suburbs these days.) This makes city living a better choice economically, if nothing else.