We Are Urbanites :: Introducing A New Blog!

A few of you have heard our big news, but we want to formally introduce our new site, We Are Urbanites. This site will different from Traveling Mama and, while at times it will have great travel tips and finds, it will be primarily focused on the great cities of the world, the amazing people who live in them, and unpacking some of the ins and outs of great urban design. We hope it will inspire those who live in cities to embrace their cities with a deeper love, encouraging them to grow and reach their greatest potential, while also drawing those living outside the city to experience them in a fresh way.

Here is a little from me as to how we stumbled upon this new Urbanite adventure::

Sixteen years ago I married this handsome fellow and was absolutely torn between my desire to sell what little we had accumulated and travel the world or to simply buy a house in a nice suburban neighborhood and live happily ever after. I grew up in the suburbs so the appeal of the world was insatiable and yet I was SCARED TO DEATH of pretty much EVERYTHING. The suburbs of Atlanta were familiar , and yet as you might have guessed, we ultimately traded comfort for foreign. Our first few weeks in Barcelona, Spain were tough. There were lots of big obstacles, especially with a ten month old along for the ride, but it wasn’t the language or culture that caused us the greatest amount of stress, but rather our thrust into an urban lifestyle.

We spent two years pretty much hating apartments and being forced to use public transportation rather than having the freedom to drive our own car, so in a state of resigned disappointment, we returned to the US, bought a house, a car, and almost immediately regretted it. It wasn’t until we were thrust back into suburbia that we suddenly missed our local bakery, the florist, the ease of public transportation, and the access to all the things that city life had to offer.

Of course, at that time we were a bit clueless and thought we were just missing the adventure of life abroad, which is why we moved to a small town in Morocco rather than a big city. We spent almost three years feeling really guilty about not enjoying the rural aspects of our lifestyle until one of our American friends told us one day of how much he LOVED the countryside and HATED going to the city. It was at that moment that we realized that it was ok to prefer city life over rural or suburban lifestyles and to use the words that my Dad has said to me many, many times, “It takes all different kinds of people to make the world go round, baby.”

So, we decided to test our theory, and chose our new Urban life in Copenhagen. Has every day been perfect? Of course not! Life is life no matter where you sleep at night, but from the moment we hit the ground in Copenhagen, we have felt more alive, more at home, more excited, and more free to explore the deeper parts of who we are. And that is pretty awesome stuff.

So, We Are Urbanites, will be a site for unpacking the pros and cons of city life, the exploration of cool stuff happening, while also digging deep and looking for solutions for ways to improve the obstacles facing Urbanites today. We hope you will join us at We are Urbanites and let us know what you think, and, we hope, share your own stories with us of what the cities all across the globe mean to you!

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