The general area in which I live in can be described as your typical cookie cutter suburbia. For my neighborhood in particular, the presence of a homeowner's association is very apparent. Upon entering, you'll see nothing but well-maintained single family homes, which we can thank the homeowner's association for. The front yards are all very similar. There's a small patch of landscaped grass, some decorative pebbles, and rather short driveways. Every so often you'll see small trees as well. Everyone has a two car garage. As you continue to drive along throughout the neighborhood you'll see newly paved concrete. Despite many different families living here, the roads are in excellent condition. You won't find any potholes or anything like that here. Most of the houses are single story, but sometimes you'll see two stories as well. We don't have a typical mailbox set-up that you would expect for single family homes. There are no individual mailboxes in front of each house. Instead, it's more like apartments where there are a large grouping of mailboxes at the end of the street. Everyone uses a key to gain access their specific mailbox. And there's two larger lockers for packages. Again, you can thank the HOA and their obsession with uniformity for this. The location of my house is on the extreme edge of the nearby city, so my neighborhood can be described as part rural, part suburbs. As a result, we have a lot of land for, well, everything. There's multiple community pools to which anyone living here can access. It's well maintained and gated. And then there are various walking trails where you can walk your dog, or just go for an evening stroll by yourself. You don't have to visit a park to get your exercise in. The neighborhood is large enough that you can simply run around it and get more than enough exercise. Most of the community is made up of retired people. It's a very safe area, and everyone looks out for one another. Mixed in with that, we have a small amount of middle aged and young professionals too. In regards to the city, it's surprisingly large - at least by population - but also has a small time town feel. We have the vast majority of amenities that you come to expect and rely on. For example, we have a exactly one mall. It's not huge, but it gets the job done. For me, it takes around 15 minutes of driving to get anywhere significant, but once I do that, I am greeted with many different stores to choose from. We have everything from high end grocery stores where you can get organic food, to bargain outlets that only stock a small selection of items and has bare minimum staff to keep costs down. All in all, my neighborhood is safe, well-maintained, and pretty typical. We have a lot of nice things, like pools and walking trails. And although we aren't right next door to any sort of shopping, you can just hop in a car and go to any major chain that you'd like.
