After lockdown has opened up our eyes, do you still love where you live? Has lockdown made you want to move school/area?

[Chiccie]

I live in a commuter town and I’m used to driving everywhere. Lockdown has made me realise that I really want to live in a community where I can have neighbours as friends. Has lockdown changed your opinion about where you live?

I like where I live. I am close to the city centre but plenty of green space. I never need to drive for anything. My daily wak can be in the woods, a park, a canal, interesting old industry, or I can cycle on separated cycle paths out to the countryside and avoid main roads. I think it's very varied.

Why is this an AIBU?

I’ve used lockdown to explore the area I live in and have discovered that there is a lot more that’s within walking distance than I had realised. But I do fantasise about living somewhere else with nice views (and excellent broadband).

I live in a great place and have appreciated it deeply since lockdown. I live near Cheltenhamso have good amenities, family close by and beautiful countryside

I voted YABU because this is not an AIBU.

I want to move home. I love where I live, the walks the community etc but my family and close friends aren’t here.

Not really. Quite happy where we are, not delighted with it. We have lots of friends, a lovely house and the schools are good. Which all sounds great, but I still miss London.

I feel really lucky to live where we live. I knew it was a nice spot ( semi rural) but I’ve really reminded our dds how privileged we are after last year.

I love where I live and am lucky to have the sort of neighbours that you want. I can also walk miles from my front door along a rural stretch of canal path, in woodlands and fields.

I absolutely love our school, community and local area. But we are a long way from the sea and I miss it desperately.

We love where we are, a semi rural market town on the edge of the Peak District. We have amazing countryside and a local community with good local schools.
I don’t think humans were designed to be crammed into large cities, I believe you need some personal space.

@vickibee

We love where we are, a semi rural market town on the edge of the Peak District. We have amazing countryside and a local community with good local schools. I don’t think humans were designed to be crammed into large cities, I believe you need some personal space.

I think you might live near me.

Yes.

For various complicated family reasons, we spent lockdown 1 in an area much nicer than the one we live in, and it made us think we want to live in a nicer area!

Later lockdowns have exacerbated this feeling because we’re so close to home all the time, and can only go for walks, that the dogshit and griminess of the place is more apparent.

We’re in a slightly ‘trendy’, up and coming part of East London, and we are near a beautiful park. But I think we’re done and will probably move when I inherit.

I live off a busy pedestrian route and sometimes that has felt like running the gauntlet when trying to distance! But over all I think I have come to appreciate the area more. We have everything we need and our neighbours are alright which is a huge bonus for me.

Though it would mean leaving London altogether, which would be a big deal.

Lockdown hasn’t made the slightest difference to how I feel about where I live, I don’t even understand why it might.

We live in a very rural mountain community of about 8000 people. We have all felt lucky that for us, our pastimes have largely continued as normal - snowy walks, meanders round the town (even if shut), the odd coffee with local friends. We live in a place where we haven't been able to leave our local town for many many months so I'm thankful that we felt like we had all we needed right there. I know what you mean OP about commuter towns, they are generally all houses and no parks, shops or facilities. Cultural vacuums with no town planning. It shouldn't be allowed.

We've really appreciated how close we live to so many green spaces and how although we live in a city, we're 10-15 mins' drive from lots of nice country walks. But the city itself is a bit of a depressing dump. At the moment, all the local countryside is flooded. We do want to move in the next few years, definitely.

I didn’t love where I live before but I do now. It’s a fairly deprived area, though we live in a not deprived part. The community just pulled everything out of the bag during this year. Within days of the first lockdown a local food bank had opened, there was socially distanced mental health support when it was allowed - trained people waiting at certain points where those who were struggling could go and talk to them, initiatives to give Easter eggs to all the primary children, a Christmas toy appeal that went nuts, a helpline number for help with shopping/prescription pick up for those who couldn’t get out, on line groups for kids/teens. The community spirit has been amazing and I never want to leave now!

I can't stand where we live but pre-Covid, I would be out most days somewhere fun with my DS but now we only go for walks around our town so we don't have to drive anywhere. It's so dull and depressing. We cannot wait to move and lockdown has highlighted that even more.

We moved just before this all happened and I’m so glad we did. We’re lucky enough to have everything within walking distance. We’ve got a couple of woods and two parks within walking distance, supermarket, greengrocer, butcher and hardware shop. When it was scary to go anywhere in the first lockdown it was great to have everything on our doorstep.

The parents we’ve met at school have been checking in online with each other, and one dad started up a sports team just before lockdown which provided the only way my son was able to actually play with his friends when restrictions were eased.

Where we lived before there wasn’t anything but a corner shop in walking distance, and the neighbours were awful. I don’t know how we’d have coped.

I do still love where we live. While partner and I have both had covid, Deliveroo has become our new best friend. But I do crave a bigger garden. Having 2 kids in isolation with just a tiny garden has really deprived them of fresh air and exercise.

When things open up again I'll go back to loving where I live. We are in a small city with lots of restaurants, pubs, theatres and independent shops, and we live within walking distance of all it.

Right now, though, it just feels like we're paying over the odds to be trapped in a tiny house with not much outdoor space, and I'm yearning to live more rurally or by the coast.

We already have. Our house was getting scruffier and needed a lot spending on it and we hadn’t realised how run down our area had become until we started walking the streets daily and smelling the weed coming out of so many houses and people openly on the streets.

I didn't like it before but after months of lockdown I'm dying to leave. It's physically beautiful. People always go "wow" when they drive in and see the view and that's all well and good for a weekend but it's utterly dull full time. I too want to move home to where I grew up and where my family and oldest friends live. Or even just a busier place closer to a major city. Country living absolutely isn't for me. I've been scouring property websites all year. Planning to move before my eldest starts school in December - with or without DH!