Living near people or big separation

[shootingstar]

I should clarify (lest people have certain perceptions), I grew up for the first 20 years in life in a city that was at the time 30,000. (Now it's over 100,000, twinned with another city around the same size.)

But we lived downtown --15 min. walk to a shopping mall, + shops on its main street and less than a 10 min. walk to local transit bus which we did use too. I used it as a teenager occasionally ...and more often later.

What I like about the town was that it was an established town with a defined core that developed over the decades, not a fake kind of homogenous, boring centre.

I do have great memories of growing up in that area in those years. We lived on a street off the main street with older homes, large porches (but our house was the smallest and poorest), all different character. There was (and still is) a heritage house that is marked as a tourist attraction just 1/2 block away. Treed streets, etc.

So I definitely, even living in high rise buildings, want to see green space/mature trees close by + far away from window.

We were the poorest family on the street, yet some of our neighbours were professors, bank manager, ...even 1 block down was a local university president. There were some hard working immigrant families also (German, Austrian, etc.) Not a long street.

In retrospect, it was the best environment to raise "inner city" kids. Actually I resent the term, inner city ...it has all sorts of negative contations...that could have been applied to our family. Yet given the neighbourhood I grew up, it certainly was an atypical blend of socio-economic classes. Healthy environment for kids. We were extremely lucky.