The (Non-Mythical) Forbidden City

Among the many things we seek in this walkabout is a sense of balance that we can impart to our children. We have begun to feel that our home town increasingly resembles the Forbidden City, Zijin Cheng. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City) in the sense that commoners are not allowed inside: housing is too expensive. Lacking balance, you might say. IF you've lived in our little FC long enough, or have deep enough pockets, you might own the house that you call home. Otherwise, rent or continue knocking at the gate. Because of wise planning in an earlier age, the FC purchased land and created a greenbelt to buffer against encroaching sprawl. Brilliant. Unexpectedly, the resulting shiny disposition combined with limited housing have driven housing prices through the roof. Now commuters drive into the FC to work--lots of traffic. Not brilliant. Many dwellers from an earlier, funkier era have exited, replaced by high tech wizards. Due in part to the influx of wealth we felt ourselves being drawn into a rat race--lots of people in the FC have big shiny things.

So a primary reason for our NZ walkabout is to experience freedom from Boulder's wealth, have-it-allness, and weary acceptance of congestion. Weekend trips to the mountains need to be planned around traffic avoidance, an insanity. We have now discovered a place where there is no significant automobile traffic. Employers prioritize families in a real way, not in a lip-service way. And so far, there seems to be but a single Forbidden City (Queenstown) in this island nation. On the whole, Kiwis take pride in being a more egalitarian society, so that there is less distance between CEO and plumber. We thought it would be nice to live somewhere where, as some local friends who also hail from the Rocky Mountains said so aptly, not everyone feels compelled to remodel their kitchen. And we remind ourselves that nobody lives in Zijin Cheng these days: it is a museum, a mere statement on a bygone past.