Somebody upthread implied they were different planets. I thought I had it right the first time.
Why?
Anywhere rural.
Totally with you there.
Because it’s absolutely the worst place I’ve ever visited - including Saudi Arabia. Just a pedestrian-hostile truck-centric dystopian hellhole.
All true.
I kinda like Jeddah.
Houston is too hot for my taste, but at least it has the cool space stuff nearby. For a nerd like me that was fun.
Up-island Hawaii? Bring $$$$, but it’s a pretty awesome environment.
Never along a highway or next to a busy road. Not in the middle of big ag industry or near an airport. No neighborhoods next to trucking depots or petrochemical plants or sports stadiums. Not a fan of suburban neighborhoods, with houses stacked up against each other shoulder to shoulder. Not oceanfront especially if it’s not a swimmable beach.
The netted pool decks are indeed for mosquitos. You’ll find the netting everywhere inland where a developer created a “water feature” by digging a hectare-sized pond 4 feet deep, flooding it, then building houses backed up to it. Yecch.
Conversely, 1/4 to 1 mile from the ocean beach, mosquitos are rare unless you’re in a swamp.
Our mosquitos are small and actually kind of cute-looking up close. But the bites are uncomfortable. Living as I do a couple blocks from the beach and far from swamps, I substantially never use bug spray of any kind and rarely get bitten. Neither do my neighbors, so it’s not merely that I taste bad to bugs.
For different reasons, I have crossed both Monaco and Tripoli off my list. The search for a decent Mediterranean location continues…
That is a necessity. The dug up mud is used to grade (level up the land for the house’s foundation). Pretty much the same reason, you will see canals on the side of main roads (the mud from digging the canals was used to grade (give them some height) the roads). This happens a lot in flood prone coastal cities.
A few months ago, I learned that the screened porches of Florida are an idea borrowed from Hawaii and are called Lanais. Roman Mars did a short thing on Lanais.
Dengue is not cute at all.
All it takes is one guy who is infected getting bit by a mosquito.
Try the Rockies or the Sierras. Lots of cold and lots of dry. High desert New Mexico and Colorado are also plenty cold and dry. All very beautiful as well. And even the hot is very different than east of the Rockies humid.
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Any place that gets too damned cold, which I define as below freezing, in the winter. I’d much rather sweat than shiver.
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Out in the country, any rural setting or small town really. I grew up way back in the boonies, always hated it, got away as soon as I could, and now I’m a city boy and proud of the label.
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Anywhere that I could be shot on sight, which covers Texas and most of the Southeast because I’m a longhaired weirdo with attitudes and opinions and a big mouth.
Far as I’m concerned anywhere east of the Rockies is off the list because that side of the continent has no mountains. It has what people CALL mountains, and they’re very cute and all, but if there’s no timberline it’s not a mountain and that’s just how it is. After that, I like rivers, lakes, trees and no neighbors aside from wildlife so no big surprise which quadrant of the continent I prefer.
I’m also team “most places”.
I don’t want to live anywhere where I’d need to learn another language. I don’t think i can, and I’d be cut off from my neighbors. I don’t want to live anywhere hot. I live in the northeast, and parts of the summers are already intolerable. I can’t imagine living someplace like Florida where it’s like that much of the year. And I don’t want to live someplace where there are many days when i can’t step outside briefly with unprotected skin, which happens at about 10F or maybe 15F. I don’t hate living near people with different political opinions, but i don’t want to live in a place where women are property, or where their legal status as baby incubators trumps their status as human beings. I don’t want to live somewhere where trans people need to hide. I’m honestly uncomfortable with the level of racism where i live now, and don’t want to live anywhere where it’s worse.
How about La Cinque Terre? The Italian Riviera is beautiful. Almost as beautiful as our Big Sur coastline.
Yeah, the politics in Antarctica are horrible. No progressive legislation at all. 
Parts of coastal walking paths in Cornwall are nearly identical to Big Sur. Almost made me homesick!