CITY LIVING: Why You Pay Extra to Live in the City

Is it more affordable to live in a city, where you can often walk to stores, work, and public transportation but pay more for housing, or outside the city, where you might need to rely more on cars? For many people, city living often seems to be the pricier choice.

Patricia Bolgiano, who's in her early fifties and a production coordinator near Baltimore, says she has saved money--and improved her quality of life--since moving outside the city itself. She says her city tax rates were higher, food cost more, and homeowners and car insurance payments cost more.
Since she moved outside the city, she feels safer and farther away from violence, as well. She also says she pays less for gas--along with insurance, taxes, and food. "Yes, living in the city is fun and convenient, but there are costs and trade-offs," she says. She presumably pays less for her Internet connection, too, since she now uses a dial-up connection.

Research by the Urban Land Institute's Terwilliger Center for Housing finds that in many urban areas, including Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Boston, working families often struggle to find affordable housing. Indeed, the price of housing often gets the most attention when it comes to measuring the cost of city living. Rent and housing prices tend to be significantly higher in urban locations. But city dwellers face other extra costs, too. Here are seven less-obvious costs of city living:

Entertainment: When you live close to the movie theaters and live entertainment such as plays and concerts, it's more tempting to pay to see them. In some cases, you can access the performing arts for free, but many city events require paid tickets.

Clothes: People who live in cities often feel more pressure to stay stylish. That means spending more on clothes, as well as shoes, which can get worn down more quickly with all of the city walking and public transportation use.

Schools and daycare: This one only applies to families with children, but paying for child care is often much more expensive in urban areas than suburban and rural ones. Families who choose to send their children to private school because they don't like their urban school districts also face expensive tuitions.

Food: In addition to the fact that produce and other fresh food can cost more at urban grocery stores, there are also more temptations for lots of daily food expenditures, from coffee to take-out to midday snacks. When you pass five cafes on your way to work, in can be hard to keep walking without stopping in for a treat.

Exercise: This cost can go both ways, because suburban and rural dwellers might spend so

LIVING IN BOSTON: Commute to Work: What’s it to you?

Whether moving homes or moving jobs, we are all faced with the same question: How am I going to get to work? Depending on where you live, there is a variety of ways people get to work each day. While some of us are lucky enough to live just walking distance from our office, the majority of us spend each morning suffering through a mini-episode of Survivor. Despite Boston’s reputation as one of the easiest cities to commute through, we too endure the stress and anxiety of morning madness.

Here at BlockAvenue, two of us commute to work locally from within Boston and two of us commute into the city each day from the suburbs. You would think that the difference here would be between the Boston commuters and the suburb commuters, right? Well… wrong! While Tony and Melki both live in Boston, only Melki takes Boston’s greatest MBTA. This is the same case between Sara and Alex. While Alex takes the commuter rail everyday, Sara chooses to drive in. So we started to wonder, have we really chosen the most effective way to get to work each day?

There are two major questions we normally ask ourselves when planning our commute: what are my options and which is the best option? This is where things get tricky. What does the “best option” even mean? Does it mean the most convenient or cost effective?

After a long discussion amongst the BlockAvenue team members, it was concluded that there are two major reasons why people choose to commute the way they do: cost and experience. In this example, Tony and Sara favor the importance of the “experience” where Melki and Alex value the “cost” of the experience.

The table below gives you an inside look on how the BlockAvenue team gets to work each day and the time and cost of our commutes.

BlockAvenue’s Commute to Work (DogPatch Labs in Cambridge)

(Click to Enlarge)

According to the data, Melki spends about 12 hours more commuting to work than Tony does,