A Good Place to Live: America's Last Migration

by Terry Prindell and Terry Pindell

Book Overview

After living for twenty years in a picture-book New England town, Terry Pindell sensed something missing in his community and set out to find it. What he soon discovered was that he was participating... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805023526
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Length: 413 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.5" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Cities that Work

This book is an exploration into the factors behind successful American cities. Pindell began with the question "Where is a good place to live?" In his travels across the country, this question was often the topic of conversations that he struck up with fellow travelers. Surprisingly, despite the thousands of possible answers, many of the people he asked came up with answers from the same short list of cities. With this list in hand, Pindell set off across the country again to visit each city. He wanted to see if the cities' reputations as great places to live were justified, and he also wanted to see if he could identify some common factors that these liveable cities all shared. In this book, Pindell describes his visits to cities as diverse as Santa Fe, Seattle, Kelowna (British Columbia), Portland, New Hampshire, and Wilmington, North Carolina. In virtually every city he visits, Pindell starts off in a bar in search of what Ray Oldenburg terms a "third place" (after home and work) where people congregate to socialize with others. He strikes up conversations with locals and tourists alike, meets with local politicians and frequently talks with street people. He makes a point of trying to identify unofficial leaders in the community. He questions each of these people about the quality of life in the city, the problems and threats to continued success, and asks them to list what factors have made the city so liveable. To facilitate comparison between cities, he establishes something he calls the 10,000 Waves Scale: the Cheers Factor (ease of sociability), the Foot Factor (how well one can get around without a car), the Cake factor (proximity to cultural amenities), the Comfort factor (pleasantness of the climate), and the Fudge Factor (a purely subjective feeling about the place). Along the way, Pindell makes some interesting observations. He notes that in order for a place to be a great place to live, it needs to have a continual infusion of new blood. That is, the newcomers have to outnumber the natives. He also notes that even while he was writing this book, the number of good places swelled "not because people are discovering good places, but because they are making them." At the end of the book, Pindell summarizes some common factors that good places share, which include: pedestrian friendliness, thriving residential neighborhoods adjacent to downtown, and ownership of downtown properties by merchants. The book includes a short bibliography and an index. Overall, I found the book thought-provoking as well as informative. The beginning chapters of the book can be rather heavy and repetitive with their simple descriptions of Western cities. In the East, however, Pindell takes a different approach, exploring cities that may not be entirely great places to live, but have certain aspects of particular interest, such as the historical development of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, or the campaign against drug dealers in Charlotte

A Good Read

Well written, an interesting exploration of Americans constant quest for "a good place to live". The author takes the reader from West Coast to East with stops in the middle. Recommended

Weighing Priorities

Terry deals with the important category of opportunities for community beyond the boundaries of home and work. The book is a treasure of thought on the value of "third places". Using several towns and cities as a way to consider how human connection needs can be met, he encourages thinking about one's own priorities for the place called home.

What Makes a Place a Good Place

The theme of this book is an exploration of what makes a place "good". The particular towns and cities Pindell chooses to visit are not so important. I suspect that some readers may not get this, which is a shame because A Good Place to Live : America's Last Migration is insightfull, well written, and one of the best books on the subject of place. By exploring the govermental, social, economic, and enviornmental factors of a number of "good" towns and cities. Pindell allows us to understand what we're looking for in our very own Good Place.

Interesting

Full of interesting off beat information about a group of towns the author visits and rates according to his unique scale. Fun to read especially if you have visited any of the areas.