Simple poll:
Did you ever move back to a city you used to live in? Was it a good experience or do you think you remembering the good and forgetting the bad? How long was the time between the move?
This poll is primarily for those who made voluntary moves. Of course, experiences from involuntary one are useful as well.
Yep, and it was all the same. (Seattle->Tokyo->Seattle->Tokyo->Seattle)
Cities don’t change much.
I always liked the small city I lived in for 7 years before I got married, but moved back ater the separation. My grown children still live here and it’s cloer to my parents. The city has grown in 6 years and I don’t miss anything about the larger city I left.
I’ve moved back to Fort Worth TWICE. When I was almost 15, my father was transferred to a Missouri town. I hated it, partly because I was a teen, and partly because of the culture. So I lived with my grandparents for a couple of years. Then I got married, and since my husband was in the Air Force we traveled around for a dozen years. When he didn’t re-enlist, we decided to move back to Fort Worth.
This city is home to me. There are other cities that I might enjoy living in, but I don’t think that I’d ever be as content elsewhere. I enjoy driving by the house I grew up in, I enjoy living in my grandparents’ house (which we bought), I love going to the same library branches that I frequented as a child. This is home.
I’ve done it twice - back to Boston and back to Austin. Boston was good, because the first time I moved there, I was absolutely clueless about the region. Knowing about the place, different communities (and that I didn’t need to live in Cambridge or at a Red Line station) saved time and money. I moved back in a close enough window (4 years) that things hadn’t changed that much either.
I did forget how much the winters suck. So I was bitter about that, especially the last two years when global warming decided to kick us square in the ass with blizzards and the like.
I returned to Austin after 12 years away. I went to high school and college here, and so now, living in a different part of town and working (albeit at the university) is quite different. The geography is generally the same, but traffic is much worse and the hotspots have changed. Probably most disturbing is the condo culture that’s sprung up over the city, especially downtown… I hate it. This is Texas, not Manhattan.
Having our families nearby is a plus, though we don’t see them anywhere as much as I thought we might. I also really haven’t had time to see my old college and HS friends as much as I thought I would. I guess we’ve all gotten older, have families, etc.
Austin has also become a real festival town, which means every couple of weeks a slew of tourists pour into town, wreaking havoc on the roadways. SXSW was a pretty low-key thing when I lived here before but it’s an international event now.
I suspect your life priorities will dictate how the place feels to a great extent. I’m married with a family, so things like parks and schools matter a whole lot more to me, whereas as a teenager/college kid they didn’t matter at all. I used to care a great deal about restaurants and shopping; I never eat out and I do most of that stuff online now. I also romanticized my hometown a lot, and coming back I’m reminded of some of the less-than-laudatory things about living here. But overall I’m very happy to have made the move here.
I came back to London twice. Once I’d lived here for three years then went home to Yorkshire for a year, then came back to work for five years. The second time I left to go travelling, then came back fourteen months later and have now been back for a year and a half. It’s about the same, really. Maybe more diverse ethnically, and more paranoid about security and terrorism than it was at the very start (erm… 1997, I think, when I first moved here), but by and large the good things I remembered and missed were worth the move back. I remembered the bad things too, and they also still exist!
Yes I have. It was fine. You would likely hate moving back if you hated the place before leaving the first time.
I grew up in Gainesville, Florida, home of the University of Florida. Also, a town completely consumed by all things Gator. I enjoyed growing up there and do believe it was a very fine town to grow up in/around.
However, after my daughter was born, I had occasion to drive through Gainesville. By the time I crossed town, I realized, I could never as an adult, willingly live in such a Gator-fide place. Not to mention, one of the downsides is that the G section of the yellowpages was about 100 pages longer than usual. Gator Printing, Gator Optometry, Gator Pharmacy, Gator Cafe, Gator Motors, Gator Hardware, Gator Grocery, Gator Furniture, Gator Insurance. shudder
I grew up in the Tampa Bay area, only moving away to Gainesville for college for a while (hey AuntBeast!). Then I moved to Cincinnati, was transferred to Baltimore, back to Cincinnati, then to Europe and Asia, then back to Cincinnati. Cincinnati’s not a bad town, especially if you have kids, but it’s not my first choice of towns. But moving back there was easy enough because I knew where everything was, still had friends there, could jump into social circles very easily, etc. So there is something to be said for it.
Eventually we chose to move back to the TB area to be closer to family. Again, we have some old friends in the area, know the area, etc. So it’s a pretty easy move.
Neither Tampa nor Cincinnati would be on my list of dream places to live, but both have their positive sides and moving back to a place you already know is a lot less stressful than moving to a new, exciting place.
I was born and raise in Cleveland, then went to college at Ohio State in Columbus. After college I moved to New York City, where I lived for 25 years (sometimes in the city, sometimes in the burbs). By then my parents were getting old, and my father developed Alzheimer’s. My mother was taking care of him single-handedly, and it was taking a toll on her own health. So I moved back to live with them and help take care of them. My partner moved back with me and bought the house next door (we are totally incompatible as housemates).
My father passed away, and I remained, taking care of my mother for the next 10 years. Now she is gone too. I had always intended to move back to NYC when I was no longer needed here, but it looks like I’ll be staying. My partner likes it here, and we like living next door to each other. Plus, New York is a great place to live if you’re young or rich; I am neither. I still miss many things about New York.
I just did this recently. Two weeks ago, to be exact.
I was born in Tucson and spent my first 22 years here. There was a lot I liked about the place, and I lot I didn’t like. It’s a big enough place that you almost never have to go more than 6 miles to get something, but small enough that it feels like a small town. It’s probably America’s largest small town (we have one freeway, for example).
But I needed a change. I needed to see if I could live away from my parents and to a place where I hardly knew anyone (though I had few close friends in Tucson). I moved to Las Vegas with my girlfriend, and we were there for very nearly three years.
Neither of us liked it much, for a lot of reasons. Unfortunately we were moving back to Tucson under not so ideal circumstances, so we weren’t exactly excited to come home, either. Now, two weeks in, the good parts of being home (familiarity, though many things have changed in even three years!) and the bad (living arrangement, etc.) are essentially a wash. What breaks the tie is the comfort and nostalgia of being home, that’s it.
Yes. Born and raised in Houston, lived here until I was 17. Went to Austin to attend college, wound up living there for 13 years. Moved back to Houston.
Damn, it had gotten bigger. The area that I live in now was cow pasture when I was a senior in high school.
Born & raised in Springfield, Illinois. I hated it growing up, and as a teenager I couldn’t wait to get out of here forever.
I wound up moving back at age 30 for reasons I won’t get into at the moment. While there are aspects of it I still very much dislike (the winters would be first on the list), I actually like it quite a bit more as an adult than I did as a kid. As an adult with transportation, money, free time, and no age restrictions on what I can do, I find that this town has a lot more to offer me than it did when I was a kid/teen. In particular, I enjoy two annual festivals that we have now that we didn’t have when I was a kid: the Old Capitol Art Fair and the Route 66 Mother Road Festival.
Other than my job and my family, the thing that I love most about living here is my church. Even if I won the lottery and could finally afford that oceanfront condo in Miami Beach, I’d have a hard time moving away simply because I love my church so much.
Iowa-Seattle-Iowa. It worked out fine. I had missed the weather (even winter), the peace and quiet, the slow pace. Seattle was getting too big, too much traffic, too expensive. The only downside was that I waited 25 years to move back to Iowa, and it was hard to reconnect with old friends. We talk, but we’re not close.
Three (?) weeks after my son was born I moved from the NW Suburbs of Chicago to Cape Girardeau, MO to be near my husband’s mother who was ailing. We moved back about a month or two later. I couldn’t get work to save my life, my husband was commuting back to here just to work, and when I got to the point that I received aid for my son and foodstamps, I took the first check, my book of foodstamps, and we packed it up and moved back here.
I was working here within 2 weeks or so - so it worked out for the best. It’s kind of amazing - the apartment we had in Cape was three times the size of the one we ended up in when we got back here and cost 1/3 as much and was in a good neighborhood (we ended up back here in Prospect Heights off of Piper Lane - the locals call it Sniper Lane to give you an idea of the neighborhood) but when you don’t have any work, it doesn’t matter what size place you’re in, know what I mean?
The strangest thing is: When I lived here previously I was just a kid and didn’t drive. When I returned I discovered that a lot of streets and landmarks, even a few major ones, weren’t where I thought they were.
I moved back to St. Louis after five years. Other than the fact the suburbs had stretched out a little more, it didn’t seem much different. Of course, I had been living in a much smaller city; if I had moved back from, say, New York or Chicago, I might have had a different perspective.
On the other hand, I’ve asked my wife several times over the years if she’d ever want to move back to her home (Cleveland) and she always says no. But that’s because she has something like 40 family members there, and she’s afraid she’d be overwhelmed, not because she has anything against Cleveland.