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Thinking about moving to Providence?


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Thanks to everyone for all the helpful info! I expect to be in Providence within the next month to scope things out for myself.

Here's another couple questions.

Of course it's impossible to tell from maps how hilly it is... how daunting is the walk up from the station?

What are the best parks in/near the East Side? From what I can tell from Google Maps, Blackstone Park is heavily wooded, but I've seen Prospect Terrace mentioned here and there. Which are the best for kids?

Many thanks!

I ride my bike to the train station every morning at 5AM (to catch the 5:25 train into Boston) and ride back up at 7PM. Steeple Street is horrible to ride up, especially at night or when there's traffic, so depending on where you live on the East Side, you could either go up North Main to Olney and then east up Olney OR you could ride along the river towards Wickenden Street, and go east up Wickendon or George Cohan drive. The ride up North Main is intense but relatively short; the ride up Wickendon isn't bad at all. It's just those middle streets like Steeple that are so daunting to navigate!

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This is hardly because of laziness, and more because of the gang shootings, sexual predators, and child abductions that you read/see every day in the news. Chalk it up to parents being more cautious. The days of roaming around until the streetlights turned on are over. It's a cultural shift and probably won't be changing until people feel safer.

I don't know, those things have always been around. Chalk it up to paranoia maybe?

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I don't know, those things have always been around. Chalk it up to paranoia maybe?

Those things have always been around, but we haven't always had hysterical 24-hour TV coverage every time a blonde goes missing somewhere in the world. I chalk it up to over-exposure to sh**ty media.

Edited by ruchele
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I grew up in the suburbs, on the Cape. When I was in 5th grade my parents let me ride my bike to school, it was a big deal because I had to cross Route 28 which is the Cape's major east/west road. No one would let their 5th grader do that today. In middle school and high school I also biked to school.

It was 2.7 miles to my high school and middle school. 2 miles to my elementary school.

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I grew up in the suburbs, on the Cape. When I was in 5th grade my parents let me ride my bike to school, it was a big deal because I had to cross Route 28 which is the Cape's major east/west road. No one would let their 5th grader do that today. In middle school and high school I also biked to school.

It was 2.7 miles to my high school and middle school. 2 miles to my elementary school.

I asked my mother (who is a teacher) this question when I visited home this past weekend. I used to walk about 1/3rd mile from my house to the local school bus stop from mid-elementary school until age 16 and started to drive to school (school was 25 minutes drive away in a rustic area of the Hudson Valley in NY).

My mother says that all of the parents there now drive their kids to the bus stop, if not all the way to school and just don't use the bus. She says she would probably do the same thing if she had young kids today due to all of the child abduction/molestation/etc fears.

So it's not just perception differences as we age, people are thinking/acting differently as well...

- Garris

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...due to all of the child abduction/molestation/etc fears.

A man tried to get a girl in my neighborhood into his car when I was in elementary school. I think I was in 3rd grade, and the girl was a kindergartner. The mothers took turns standing guard at the bus stop until this man was caught. People were obviously very upset that this girl was almost abducted (ps, she knew, in kindergarten, not to get into a stranger's car, and that is why she was not abducted), but no one broke out into insane panic. The girl had an older brother who usually walked her to the bus stop, but he was sick so she was alone, and only the equivilent of a block from the bus stop (being the suburbs, we didn't really have blocks). The parents just all got together to keep an eye on the kids until the threat passed. I don't know why it sounds so insane now, but people just chose not to live in fear when something happened. Everyone knew that this kind of thing didn't happen all the time, and it was no reason to revert to seige mentality.

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This definitely deserves its own topic, maybe in the Coffee House. I can't even beleive how much things have changed since I was in elementary school, and was what 10-15 years ago?

Sometimes I wonder if everything is really changing or if I am just becoming a fuddy-duddy.

the kids in my neighborhood seem to travel at will. Perhaps it is a class issue. Most of my neighbor with children are lower middle class of various ethnicity.

One big "problem," as it were, is that it is cheaper to bus kids than to open extra schools. I don't know that that was always the case, but with suburbanization, it was inevitable. I always took busses to school when I was a kid, but it was because of the program I was in where they integrated the highest ranking students and teachers into the worst schools. My middle schools were about 8 miles from home.

Edited by brick
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the kids in my neighborhood seem to travel at will. Perhaps it is a class issue. Most of my neighbor with children are lower middle class of various ethnicity.

Definitely a class and image issue. Everyone thinks that unless you have an automobile, you are not living the classy American Dream. This is why every 16 year old's dream is to finally get that license, it's like a badge of honor.

For all those who can't afford a car, or simply don't want to, you'll be better off in the end (and probably have much more money and be much thinner too).

Edited by Recchia
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A man tried to get a girl in my neighborhood into his car when I was in elementary school. I think I was in 3rd grade, and the girl was a kindergartner. The mothers took turns standing guard at the bus stop until this man was caught. People were obviously very upset that this girl was almost abducted (ps, she knew, in kindergarten, not to get into a stranger's car, and that is why she was not abducted), but no one broke out into insane panic. The girl had an older brother who usually walked her to the bus stop, but he was sick so she was alone, and only the equivilent of a block from the bus stop (being the suburbs, we didn't really have blocks). The parents just all got together to keep an eye on the kids until the threat passed. I don't know why it sounds so insane now, but people just chose not to live in fear when something happened. Everyone knew that this kind of thing didn't happen all the time, and it was no reason to revert to seige mentality.

I don't think it's that everyone is living in fear. Parents are just not willing to take what they see as an unneccesary risk. If there's means to get your child to school without putting them at risk, what parent wouldn't take it? Too many stories of people saying "I didn't think it could happen here" makes people realize that yes, it can.

Definitely a class and image issue. Everyone thinks that unless you have an automobile, you are not living the classy American Dream. This is why every 16 year old's dream is to finally get that license, it's like a badge of honor.

For all those who can't afford a car, or simply don't want to, you'll be better off in the end (and probably have much more money and be much thinner too).

16 year olds dream of getting their own car for freedom, not to look like they're living the dream. Freedom to drive home after practice without waiting for a ride, go to the movies or on a date without getting dropped off. I grew up in a rural area and I know that's why I wanted a car. If I had grown up in an urban setting, perhaps I would have felt different.

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Exactly.

The problem, as I see it, is with the suburbs limiting freedom, not with being carless limiting freedom.

Right. Unfortunately there's only so much urban area to go around, and most of the country is rural and suburban. Worse still is suburbanites like myself who end up in cities just cannot see themselves ever not having a vehicle. I travel often to Worcester and New Hampshire, and while I could probably get there via mass transit systems, greyhound, etc. I wouldn't consider that the same kind of freedom as being able to leave whenever I want.

I'd be careful with the notion that carless urban youths are better off than suburban youths with vehicles in regards to common sense. I've found it's much easier for a suburbanite to adjust to city life than the inverse. How many New Yorkers are even aware there is life outside the boroughs?

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Everyone knew that this kind of thing didn't happen all the time, and it was no reason to revert to seige mentality.

The desire for the perception of safety is a reoccuring theme in Behind the Gates by Setha Low. A bit dry in parts perhaps - doesn't make you laugh out loud like David Brooks' On Paradise Drive - but certainly worth reading, especially for this group.

I can honestly say that having read these two books shortly before we starting looking at where to live is part of the reason we're looking in Providence rather than out in Sciuate or Foster, in spite of it making my commute to Storrs that much longer. I truly fear becoming Brooks' 'Patio Man.'

I don't know if you've ever noticed the expression of a man who is about to buy a first-class barbecue grill. He walks into a Home Depot or Lowe's or one of the other mega hardware complexes and his eyes are glistening with a faraway visionary zeal, like one of those old prophets gazing into the promised land. His lips are parted and twitching slightly. Inside the megastore, the grills are just past the racks of affordable-house plan books, in the yard-machinery section. They are arrayed magnificently next to the vehicles that used to be known as rider mowers but are now known as lawn tractors, because to call them rider mowers doesn't really convey the steroid-enhanced M-1 tank power of the things.

The man approaches the barbecue grills and his face bears a trance-like expression, suggesting that he has cast aside all the pains and imperfections of this world and is approaching the gateway to a higher dimension. In front of him are a number of massive steel-coated reactors with names like Broilmaster P3, The Thermidor, and the Weber Genesis, because in America it seems perfectly normal to name a backyard barbecue grill after a book of the Bible.

The items in this cooking arsenal flaunt enough metal to suggest they have been hardened to survive a direct nuclear assault, and Patio Man goes from machine to machine comparing their features

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I don't think it's that everyone is living in fear. Parents are just not willing to take what they see as an unneccesary risk. If there's means to get your child to school without putting them at risk, what parent wouldn't take it? Too many stories of people saying "I didn't think it could happen here" makes people realize that yes, it can.

But where does it end? It doesn't happen often, but your house could burn down, people aren't sleeping in their yards on the off chance that their house might burn down. Kids become so sheltered they can't function.

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But where does it end? It doesn't happen often, but your house could burn down, people aren't sleeping in their yards on the off chance that their house might burn down. Kids become so sheltered they can't function.

I certainly see your point. I think it just comes down to what is a practical amount of safety. The best you can do is have smoke detectors and don't burn candles unattended, etc. The same goes for keeping your children safe.

Parents these days have a hard time finding that balance between overprotective and careless, and I can't really blame them. Everytime a kid messes up these days, the focus is "Where were the parents?", "Why weren't they watching their every move on the internet?", and on and on. In society's eyes kids are helpless and can't think for themselves. Maybe as a result of this mentality they have actually become such? Parents start feeling the pressure, and the kids suffer in the end.

I don't know... This is certainly an interesting topic though.

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What are the best parks in/near the East Side? From what I can tell from Google Maps, Blackstone Park is heavily wooded, but I've seen Prospect Terrace mentioned here and there. Which are the best for kids?

Following up on the parks discussion. I was in Prospect Park last week taking pictures and figured I might be the first person ever to take this shot:

2006-0326-prospectpark.jpg

I mean who turns around and takes a picture of the park when that view is there? Anyway, as you can see, it's grass and some benches, no playground or anything for kids.

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I've found it's much easier for a suburbanite to adjust to city life than the inverse. How many New Yorkers are even aware there is life outside the boroughs?

Absolutely true in my experience... And lets not talk about how the children of urban environments (like NYC or Chicago) tend to look down on everywhere else...

- Garris

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...doesn't make you laugh out loud like David Brooks' On Paradise Drive

...I truly fear becoming Brooks' 'Patio Man.'

Great, great book quote. I loved it. It's hard to believe that's the same David Brooks of the NY Times Editorial section, defender of all things traditional, Republican, and conservative.

Brooks really fascinates me. Some of his Times editorials absolutely infuriate me with their lack of insight and reason, and then I'll hear him on NPR and he'll sound erudite and reasoned, and he'll make many really level-headed, rational points, like he really does "get it." So I'm guessing he is merely playing the role of knee-jerk conservative for his NY Times columns?

And then I'll read a quote like that, when all this time I've pictured Brooks to be Patio Man, and be surprised again... Huh... Apparently, though, he's an equal opportunity critic... This is from the Washington Times (a pretty conservative paper's) review of the book (they didn't like it):

"That Brooks has not lost his penchant for bemused social taxonomy is amply demonstrated in the book's first chapter, which takes us on an imaginary drive that begins in a prototypical urban core. We travel from the downtown "urban hipster zone," characterized by "a stimulating mixture of low sexuality and high social concern," to the "crunchy" suburbs, where "all the sports teams are really bad, except those involving Frisbees." Then it's on to the pricier inner-ring suburbs, once inhabited by the Republican WASP elite but now taken over by the meritocratic elite, who babble at dinner parties about "the merits and demerits of Corian countertops." Farther on, we find the strip-mall-laden immigrant enclaves and, past these, the postwar suburbs that sometimes seem "shaped more by golf than by war or literature or philosophy." Finally, we reach our terminus at the "new exurbs" inhabited by Patio Man and Realtor Mom, who live in "a 3,200 square-foot middle-class home built to look like a 7,000 square-foot starter palace for the nouveaux riche." It's a beguiling trip, but where are we going?

Did you like the book?

- Garris

PS: I know it's really off topic, but are there any equally bisteringly good quotes of him about the "urban hipster zone?"

Edited by Garris
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Okay, this Patio Man thing. I wasn't feeling that quote until the last two paragraphs, where the criticisms of suburbia were thrown in. What is the connection between buying a grill and suburbia? You can't have a grill in the city too? Am I missing something here?

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Okay, this Patio Man thing. I wasn't feeling that quote until the last two paragraphs, where the criticisms of suburbia were thrown in. What is the connection between buying a grill and suburbia? You can't have a grill in the city too? Am I missing something here?

as soon as i have a backyard or deck or something, i'm getting a grill... and most likely, i'll be living in providence.

the patio man thing is the desire to own the biggest best grilling system your money can buy. of course, that can't be found at home depot or lowes (i used to work for a store that sold high end patio furniture and grills... mostly to suburbanites).

my grill will probably be the old weber charcoal grill that's sitting unused in my mother's backyard. :thumbsup:

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Within a month of moving to my first apartment in Providence I bought a brand new Charbroil grill. Used it constantly all summer and when I had to move this past month I insisted on finding a place with a yard that could accomodate it and ended up in a great house 4 blocks from Wayland Square. I may be living in the city, but coming from rural Maine (and being one of those people that will never give up their car) I insist on finding the right combination of yard space, garage parking, basement storage, free laundry and nearby amenities in any place that I live... and people always say I get the best deals on apartments because I find the places with that combination of things. And I got electric included this time :-)

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Within a month of moving to my first apartment in Providence I bought a brand new Charbroil grill. Used it constantly all summer and when I had to move this past month I insisted on finding a place with a yard that could accomodate it and ended up in a great house 4 blocks from Wayland Square. I may be living in the city, but coming from rural Maine (and being one of those people that will never give up their car) I insist on finding the right combination of yard space, garage parking, basement storage, free laundry and nearby amenities in any place that I live... and people always say I get the best deals on apartments because I find the places with that combination of things. And I got electric included this time :-)

next time i move, i'm gonna be looking for more amenities with my apartment... i'll have my fiancee living with me, so it should be easier because it won't be another 1br. but we'll need parking for 2 cars (although hopefully by then, overnight street parking by permit will be everywhere in the city) and we want a dishwasher, at least a small yard, laundry on site (i don't care if it's coin op, but having to go to the laundromat is a pain), and i'm going to insist to her that it's within walking distance of some stuff to do... my current place is in walking distance to work (although my schedule has been tooled around with and the weather isn't the best, so i've been driving, that and i'm still getting over a nasty cold). i don't need to be that close to work anymore, but i want to be in the city still (although that depends on where she ends up finding a job).

electric is included in my current apartment, but it's being split because the woman below me decided she didn't want to pay for her gas heat so she bought a couple of the big electric radiators and ran up huge electric bills for my landlady and then tried to blame it on me... i'm hoping she moves out soon.

Edited by runawayjim
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I always end up doing the "I have to be out of my place in two weeks panic." I don't think I've ever looked for an apartment, I've only ever signed leases in a panic. It's much more fun that way, gets the blood pumping. :)

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I always end up doing the "I have to be out of my place in two weeks panic." I don't think I've ever looked for an apartment, I've only ever signed leases in a panic. It's much more fun that way, gets the blood pumping. :)

that was going to be me when i got this place... the landlady gave me the first 2 weeks free after i signed my lease because it was part way through the month, so i had 2 weeks to take my time moving in. and i'm on a month-to-month basis now, so after the fiancee moves back permanently, we can take our time actually looking for a decent apartment.

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Great, great book quote. I loved it. It's hard to believe that's the same David Brooks of the NY Times Editorial section, defender of all things traditional, Republican, and conservative.

Brooks really fascinates me. Some of his Times editorials absolutely infuriate me with their lack of insight and reason, and then I'll hear him on NPR and he'll sound erudite and reasoned, and he'll make many really level-headed, rational points, like he really does "get it." So I'm guessing he is merely playing the role of knee-jerk conservative for his NY Times columns?

Did you like the book?

PS: I know it's really off topic, but are there any equally bisteringly good quotes of him about the "urban hipster zone?"

Full disclosure - I was already a Brooks fan before this book while my boss can't stand him, so keep that in mind. My wife and I saw him in person last year at a CT Forum event with Ralph Reed, Frank Rich and Margaret Carlsen. (Tonight, we're celebrating my birthday a month late and going to see Tom Friedman and Malcolm Gladwell.)

Regarding On Paradise Drive, it was much less even than Bobos in Paradise, his previous foray into social commentary. Bobos had a better unifying thesis and had better flow but the very best parts of Paradise Drive were so insightful and cutting and funny that I was repeatedly laughing loud out while reading it. And not little chuckles but full belly laughs. Here's a free copy of the rest of the original Patio Man essay. I stopped before Brooks described his wife Cindy - Realtor Mom- and their children Haley and Cody and their cul de sac friends Cory and Britney.

And yes, Chapter 1 opens in the urban core, with equally cutting commentary on the "urban hipster zone". So yes, read OPD.

With regard to his writing at the NYT, I don't think you give him enough credit. I don't think he's a token kneeejack conservative at all. Rather, he's been described as "a liberal's conservative." First of all, he is ideologically a conservative, but I think he wants the same things progressives want: social justice, educational and economic opportunity, etc, but he doesn't agree with big government approach as a means to that end. Second, he is actually a thinking conservative, meaning he doesn't only drink the company KoolAid. He'll call out both sides when appropriate and he'll reacch across the aisle and give credit when credit is due.

Consider his Sept 8 column on Katrina:

The first rule of the rebuilding effort should be: Nothing Like Before. Most of the ambitious and organized people abandoned the inner-city areas of New Orleans long ago, leaving neighborhoods where roughly three-quarters of the people were poor.

In those cultural zones, many people dropped out of high school, so it seemed normal to drop out of high school. Many teenage girls had babies, so it seemed normal to become a teenage mother. It was hard for men to get stable jobs, so it was not abnormal for them to commit crimes and hop from one relationship to another. Many people lacked marketable social skills, so it was hard for young people to learn these skills from parents, neighbors and peers.

...

That's why the second rule of rebuilding should be: Culturally Integrate. Culturally Integrate. Culturally Integrate. The only chance we have to break the cycle of poverty is to integrate people who lack middle-class skills into neighborhoods with people who possess these skills and who insist on certain standards of behavior.

The most famous example of cultural integration is the Gautreaux program, in which poor families from Chicago were given the chance to move into suburban middle-class areas. The adults in these families did only slightly better than the adults left behind, but the children in the relocated families did much better.

These kids suddenly found themselves surrounded by peers who expected to graduate from high school and go to college. After the shock of adapting to the more demanding suburban schools, they were more likely to go to college, too.

The Clinton administration built on Gautreaux by creating the Moving to Opportunity program, dispersing poor families to middle-class neighborhoods in five other metropolitan areas. This time the results weren't as striking, but were still generally positive. The relocated parents weren't more likely to have jobs or increase their earnings (being close to job opportunities is not enough -- you need the skills and habits to get the jobs and do the work), but their children did better, especially the girls.

The lesson is that you can't expect miracles, but if you break up zones of concentrated poverty, you can see progress over time.

Supporting mixed income integration and giving credit to a Clinton era program doesn't sound like a "defender of all things traditional, Republican, and conservative. " to me, but as I said, I was already a fan. Now as urbanists, we may not like the idea that only the suburbs can provide middle class values, but when I read that column, I think he's showing some rather progressive ideas filtered through language that conservatives can relate to. Ask yourself whether his message of high standards and achievement is very different from what Barack Obama is selling - I don't think it is.

Anywho, back to work.

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