You don't have to choose between city life ad pastoral suburbs. Move to one of the towns on the edge of DC-- Takoma Park and East (or downtown) Silver Spring and you'll find the best of both worlds. We have good schools, are 1/2 mile from the metro, have an incredible multi-ethnic community filled with artists, musicians, writers, and non-profit workers, bookstores old and new, backyards, movie theaters (including AFI) responsive local government, coffeehouses, great little restaurants, art and popular films, parks, tiny rep. theaters, exhibits, concerts, and places to walk. Our houses are often snug little brick bungalows, but my neighbors have figured out ingenious ways of adding on to them over time. Once they were thought of as "starter homes"-- but the community is so strong, no one wanted to leave. We are interconnected through a network of house meetings, neighborhood listservs, local papers, libraries, allies, and backfences. My nieghbors just stay on and add on-- all for far less than the price of houses in your own neighborhood. Everything i want is at hand, and I'm lucky if I use a tank of gas every two months. There are "edge cities" (to quote Joel Garreau) like this everywhere, but my area is among the most civilized of them all.