Does Everyone Hate Your City?

Melody WarnickMoving, Place love

Here’s a startling truth: No matter how much you adore your city, there are people who hate it. Like, really can’t stand it. It’s strange, isn’t it, how two people who live in the same place can experience it in such vastly different ways? And yet 99% of the time, the city into whose soil you’ve dropped deep and happy … Read More

Doing These 3 Things After a Vacation Will Make You Happier

Melody WarnickLove Where You Live experiment, Place love

Why does everyone hate tourists? Because we gawk. We rhapsodize about boring stuff like buildings (“Oh my gosh, the architecture!”). We snap pictures of subway entrances and sandwiches. In short, we pay attention in a way we usually don’t in our owns hometowns, and that focus and excitement reawakens us to the thrilling power of place. In fact, a really … Read More

What Your Dream Vacation Says About You

Melody WarnickPlace love

Where you go on vacation is usually curtailed by annoying practicalities like bank accounts and work obligations—two reasons why my spring break trip took me on a three-hour road trip to Richmond instead of, say, the UK or a Hawaiian island (check out here the list of the best tours on Maui). But if money and time were no object, … Read More

Can friends make you love where you live?

Melody WarnickMoving, Place love, Placemaking, Uncategorized

In 2005, my sister Heather was basically living inside her own real-life version of Friends. She and my brother-in-law were renting a two-bedroom apartment in a complex in Tustin, California, where no fewer than eight of their best friends and relatives had also taken up residence. A band of super-social newlyweds, they were hanging out all the time. Squeezing into … Read More

How much do you love your city?

Melody WarnickPlace love

Tell your friends in Iowa that you’re moving to Austin, Texas, and they squee with a weird combo of joy and jealousy. They maybe get misty-eyed, or tell you how lucky you are. “Austin is a great city,” they say solemnly. “You’ll love it.” Hear this enough times and eventually you become a believer. Moving to Austin makes us the … Read More