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Ouch! I've been in the Philadelphia area for nearly 30 years, and I've always liked it. Its charms are sometimes subtle, however, and it can be a bit provincial. It's the only place I've lived where people have been genuinely puzzled at why I live here when I grew up somewhere else. The concept of travel, let alone moving to a new locale, is novel to a surprising number of local residents. That said, the historical roots are fascinating, and it has some very livable suburbs.

One of the things we really enjoy is that it's located within easy distance of the beach, mountains, forests, farmland and city, and is generally out of the path of catastrophic events. Tornadoes are infrequent and small, hurricanes are generally very downgraded (though still somewhat damaging), and earthquakes so small as to be overlooked. Ice storms are perhaps the worst of our natural hazards. For those advantages, I can put up with some provincial attitude and lack of fashion consciousness.

I used to live in Old City and really enjoyed it. I wouldn't choose to raise kids in the city, and the high taxes and insurance costs would probably discourage me from living there now in any case. However,the suburbs are very nice. (Now if we could just do something about the guilt-ridden liberal voters . . . )