Hello, everyone! I just joined Relocalize.net and the APPLE group. My husband and I are planning to relocate - possibly to Indiana, possibly even to Bloomington, and I'm hoping someone in this group can answer some questions for me. (See below.)

In April, we happened to watch “The End of Suburbia,” and we came to understand peak oil for the first time. Since then, we have read J. H. Kunstler's “The Long Emergency” and “World Made By Hand.” We have also watched “A Crude Awakening” and “Escape From Suburbia.”

All of this has caused us to re-think our lifestyle here. We live in a lovely small town in northern Arkansas, where we moved from New York City after I retired a few years ago. Unfortunately, we are just now realizing that life here won't be sustainable in the post-peak years ahead. First, we are very dependent on our car. For example, it's 10 miles to the nearest Wal-Mart, which currently offers the best one-stop shopping for produce and other groceries. Another problem is that our small house doesn't have great insulation, so we use lots of fuel to heat it. In addition, vegetable gardening here is a challenge. Since the ground is very rocky, we would have to build a raised-bed garden or rent a plot in the community garden, a few miles away.

Since watching the video in April, we put our house up for sale and started looking for a place to relocate. Since reading “The Long Emergency,” we think it makes sense to move back up north. I grew up in Indiana, so we started looking there, but we are still pretty confused about what kind of area is best for us – city, country, or small town? Old house or new? Buy or build? And so on. There are probably other questions that haven't occurred to us yet.

My husband, who grew up in the city by the way, leans toward moving outside the city, because houses are more affordable, we could get more space for gardening, and be free of restrictions against things like gardens, clothes lines, solar panels. We might even buy a lot and be free to use unorthodox building styles like straw-bale, etc. I, who grew up on a farm on the other hand, would prefer to live within a town or city, for walkability and to be part of a community. We are already senior citizens, and I don't think it's a good idea to isolate ourselves as we grow older.

Both my husband and I are doing lots of Internet browsing these days, looking for some answers, and I seem to be adding at least one new word to my vocabulary every day. My newest words are “sustainability,” “new urbanism” and “relocalization,” and just this weekend, while searching on these words, Bloomington, Indiana, popped up several times.

Anyway, I was impressed to read that Bloomington even has a Commission on Sustainability, and I'm wondering - is life in Bloomington more sustainable than other cities? What is the status of the South Dunn St. development? Is there access to locally produced food within the city? What about water quality? Are residents allowed/encouraged to plant vegetable gardens?

Can anyone suggest where in or near the city we might look for a small, affordable house? (On the Internet, we found one house for sale in Evergreen Village, but we make a little too much to qualify, with our Social Security and payout from my 401K.) We would also like to investigate the option of building an energy-efficient, passive-solar house, if we can afford it. Can anyone suggest how to find an architect who might guide the process?

Martha