I returned to my home country and home town for the first time after 7 years and the place is barely recognizable.
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It is more crowded than ever. I hardly saw a traffic jam in the past, but now the main streets are consistently clogged between 4 and 5 pm, and every single car park is full during the day.
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There is no free parking anymore anywhere. Everywhere I used to park previously there are now parking meters.
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Many of the shops I used to frequent are either gone or relocated far outside the city, and they are replaced by yet another Chanel boutique or some cookie cutter tourist trap.
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The all-inclusive unlimited public transport ticket I used to have is being discontinued, and the city’s public transport monopoly now charges based on distance travelled, meaning that cost of public transport doubles for most regular commuters.
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We also had a chocolate factory nearby that used to do public tours, to which I was looking forward to, but turns out they don’t do that anymore because of “public health concerns”.
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There used to be exactly one homeless guy in our city, whom everybody knew by name, now there is one at every corner, and there are organized groups of beggars from a different country
I’ve been in North America, Europe and South Asia this year and I can’t shake the feeling that quality of life is gradually deteriorating everywhere.
Please tell me I am wrong. Where have you been lately where things overall are actually getting better rather than worse?
Scroll through the feed of this sub, and subs like r/IWantOut or even r/AmerExit and see how many of the posters are looking for better QoL. Even more so people who post looking for higher QoL along with lower CoL.
All the people across the globe who wanted higher QoL tried to move to the places that were then currently seen as having the highest QoL. That’s highly educated people who felt they wanted something new and what they percieved as better and could get hired abroad, there’s people who went to study and remained, people who migrated as partner of someone studying or working, people with lower or no education but who found citizenship by descent or managed to find some loophole where they could move and work in one of these supposed high QoL places.
In short, loads of people saw “Ohh, high QoL! I want that!” and did whatever they could to move. More moved than there was housing and the infrastructure was not adapted for a suddenly increase in population and so the roads that previously saw 1000 cars per day would now see 3000 or even 5000 cars per day! Subways where hundreds of people commuted now somehow have to find a way to fit in more carts per train or more frequent departures to be able to move the increase in commuters!
If a town is built for 100k-120k people and within a few years it goes up to 200k there will obviously be issues and things will not be as calm and quiet as it used to.
I’ve been seeing posts on Subreddits of people who are very mobile (either work remotely and doing the Digital Nomad thing, or even just people with high education and desirable work experience who can find work in new countries).
So people moved to where there was high QoL because that sounded great, infrastructure and services got strained, housing prices increased and now suddenly it is no longer the place with the best QoL and might be as bad (or worse) as where people moved from. So now people hear about another place with great QoL compared to where they are now and want to move there instead. Or people move back home when things did not turn out as great as they had planned. Rinse and repeat.
I think this is exactly what happened. You’re right. No such thing as a forever comfortable place.
The key must be to find a small livable town before everybody else does and things go downhill, stay for a few years, then look for your next home.