Designing toward the center (of America)
How it took a new mindset — and six months of being a nomad — to finally figure out which city to live in next
In mid-February, my wife Megan and I loaded up our possessions from our storage unit in California, said goodbye to my family and headed east. After visiting a friend in Tucson, we rerouted our itinerary to dodge a late winter ice storm, cutting through the heart of the prairie to arrive in Kansas City, our new home.
Mind you, we don’t have jobs lined up — yet. We chose Kansas City because it was the right destination from an adventure that began for us during our honeymoon in Colombia in September 2016.
Along the way, we left our comfortable lives in Washington, D.C., lived abroad in Medellín, Colombia, then city-shopped to prototype which place was the right fit for us.
Full disclosure: I assure you that Kansas City was not the top pick for us starting out. Nor was living in Medellín. Both places were jokes Megan and I would tell each other, not really to make each other laugh but rather to make each other uncomfortable with its plausibility.
So, how did this all happen? It’s a matter of design.
