alexist

I really hate the area where my parents live. It was all built in the past 15 years, and there's nothing but housing developments (plus big box stores and office parks along the 110 corridor). When I was little, this area was farms, the Long Island Developmental Center (where they stuck retarded kids) and I think part of Fairchild Republic.

All the developments are gated or pseudo-gated (no barrier but only a single entrance). I hate gated developments in general, but they're extra-pointless here. Long Island is super safe (safest large place in the US) and we pay high taxes for the police and parks. We don't need the security, we don't need to pay stupid HOA fees because we actually have public services, and I hate the "keep out" aspect. They have their own pools, playgrounds, etc--so the town hasn't built any to serve this area. (And, I might add, our town parks website stinks--parks are missing from the facilities list, even though they're on the map.) Not that it matters, because the layout of single-entry subdivisions off main roads means that no one would walk to a neighborhood park anyway.

You can't walk anywhere. You can do a circuit of your subdivision, and that's it. Everything's a shlep, and I hate it. There are plenty of parts of Long Island (Nassau County, anyway) where you can walk to the park, get a quart of milk, not be in your little closed off subdivision with no way to get out. If I wanted to live that way, I'd move down South, pay half the price and not pay high taxes either.

I actually really like Nassau County now--it's hardly the city, but it's a lot livelier and more multiucultural than it used to be (Plainview has a gurdwara and 2 Asian churches to go along with its 8 synagogues), and a lot of the 1950s-60s developments have aged pretty well. (Aside from the fake-stucco epidemic spreading across the South Shore.) But I will be very happy when we leave here.