Oops I’m already living this life in western Washington
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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Bay area matches all this
- ocean: Pacific
- forests: coastal redwoods just south of the city and a bit further up in muir woods
- countryside: North Bay with open hiking areas and wine country
- mountains: Santa cruz range and diablo range
- big city: San Francisco, Oakland, San jose
It's just that the place is very desirable with not a lot of developable land because it fits all those things so rent/housing is going to be outrageous.
The north bay is not countryside. All you need to do is head less than an hour east into the central valley. Merced/Methdesdo/Fresno/Sacramento could be anywhere between Kansas and Texas.
If you REALLY want to push it, you could try saying the coast between half moon bay and Santa Cruz. Thats pretty rough and country. But definitely not North Bay Area. That's about as gentrified as you can get around these parts. Tiburon is so rich I'm pretty sure you get in trouble for talking about it on the internet.
Come to Oregon
I used to live in Pacifica, CA and it fits all those requirements.
Tokyo, Vancouver, Bilbao, probably any town in Chile, If you think they are cities probably Bergen and Cairns
Toronto is not far from any of that
Vancouver not far from better versions of all that (except maybe countryside?)
So the suburbs of a small island like the cannary islands?
I grew up on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Skip the city and the sea. By a big lake or river in the forest in the mountains is as good as it gets.
California
Oregon
Volcano too close.
Just make sure you're east of the lake.
The front's gonna fall off any minute now, just you watch (it won't happen until I move there)
The day before your volcano insurance kicks in.
Minecraft biomes be like
Victoria?
Penn island ≠ peninsula
In the legendary sci-fi book called Hyperion, one of the characters has a house where each room is on a different planet. That's one of the things I remember most vividly from reading that book. I thought it was so cool.
I‘d be glad to have this for one Planet. Earth is diverse enough. You just have to be careful not to move invasive animals around.
Also heating and cooling would take almost no energy, just open the right window.
Nanning is a city of 9 million, with mountains, countryside, forest, and ocean within 1 hour train ride.
An hour is a pretty long way by train, surely almost everyone has at least most of those things within an hour by train? If you drop mountain to hills then it's even more accessible.
If you drop sea to puddle you’d make it even even more accessible
The big Island of Hawai’i. Everything from the desert to rainforest to volcano to the beaches.
Also some Mediterranean areas have this. Like Barcelona or Marseille are wedged right between ocean and foresty mountains, for example. This is actually a common thing.
Drop the city.
Calm down, Ultron
seattle? anchorage?
West coast in general, no wonder so many people live in the bay area for example
I was going to throw in Sacramento. Your a 2 hour drive from everything, but you can drive to every major biome in the lower 48.
That would be Nice.
It sure would be, but which city?
So... A coastal mountain forest city 🤔 with... Treescrapers? I feel like that name could use work...
(Also I find its really nice to romanticise where I already am not just the other places. My neighbor is lovely and gifted me a pepper for helping carry out recycling to the recycling dumpster in my complex, and I have a little ledge where I put my plants ☺️☺️☺️)
You're not gonna get permits to build in the redwood forest.
Just gotta start with no trees, build in a way that will be okay with root growth disrupting foundations, and then plant the redwoods and wait 500-1000 years!
Easy peasy, I see no way this can go wrong
You want to live in Lebanon.
Damn, now I feel special. I don't want all of it, just in a broadleaf forrest (with a little bit colder climate) at the foot of a hill next to a lake. Which is very mucb achievable, even though I'd have to either learn Swedish, Norwegian… or move to Canada.
In my experience basically everybody in Scandinavia speaks English, you'll be fine
Northern Queensland may fit depending on your definition of big city.
Too many Queenslanders there
The place that gave the world Pauline Hanson...
Nah you can drop the big city part of that for me. I just wish the sea was cleaner and a few more trees and fewer houses would be nice.