By Judith Chi
In 2024 our family visited Birmingham, never having set foot in Alabama before.
It was love at first sight – lush trees, charming neighborhoods, spectacular food, and a culture of collective care. Truly a dream come true.
It’s now 2026 and nothing could have prepared us for our lived reality. For any professional and family thinking about moving here, I want to share with you the real story of what life is like here, beyond the happily ever after.
- Birmingham-Shuttlesworth (BHM) warps your sense of reality
Before BHM, my home airports were in “top tier” cities, where I was accustomed to delayed flights and million-miler road warrior wanna-bes nearly trampling small children—often their own—just to disembark thirty-five seconds faster than the rest of us. Meanwhile in Birmingham every landing at BHM feels like a gentle exhale – passengers wait patiently and help each other retrieve bags. From gate agents to TSA to the rental car counter, every moment feels like a brief visit from a helpful friend. You get used to it fast, making traveling through busier airports somewhat jarring.
- Birmingham bends time
Everything you need is within a 15 minute drive —school, work, groceries, restaurants, cafes, malls (yes the malls are open and thriving!), state parks, golf courses, lakes, and state parks with golf courses and lakes in them. With everything so close you start wondering is it worth it to change out of my afternoon pajamas to make the 20 minute excursion to Costco? My youngest enjoyed a party where thoughtful hosts organized carpools so no one else had to bear the 25-minute trek to the venue. With so little time trapped behind the steering wheel, you might not get through as many podcasts or audiobooks. You may be compelled into activities that in your past life were a profligate use of your precious time – activities like golf, fishing, mah jong, pickleball, poker, pottery, painting or long walks at sunset.
- Everybody knows your name
If you avoid eye contact and still social distance, this city will challenge you. How will you cope when a new friend shows up with a gift basket filled with local favorites (pimento cheese, where have you been all my life?), or when an elegant lemon rosemary cake or the best granola of your life appears at your door? Here acquaintances coordinate gatherings just to welcome you and your family. Here there are no strangers; only friends.
- Your children will succumb to peer pressure
Are you ready for your daughter to get peer-pressured into giving a TED Talk? What will you do when your son, who declared he’d never play the clarinet again so you left it behind in San Francisco, falls in with the band crowd and now runs to school before 7am to practice with his new friends? (yes he can walk to school – you can live near and walk to amazing public schools!). Who will you have left to nag when a different neighbor kid shows up at your door every day to get your kids off their screens and play outside?
The adults are in on it too – setting high expectations for kids to exceed. I’ve witnessed junior high kids gliding through the air in a school production of Peter Pan; and kids who just met form a band, compose a rock ballad and perform it for a packed house in less than a week. You’ll hear “yes, ma’ams” and “yes, sirs” coming from the child who previously only answered you in grunts and shrugs. Before you know it, your screenager will be transformed by the village around you into a curious and engaged citizen.
- You too will succumb to peer pressure
If you love sitting on the sidelines, complaining, this town will test you. Business leaders and philanthropists here don’t just write checks and give speeches; they roll up their sleeves to get the job done. There is a profound culture of stewardship. UAB recruits world-class minds compelled to build excellence for the good of the state. The Chalker Group connects leaders to fuel economic growth. Rotary Clubs and other homegrown organizations like Kulture City champion genuine empowerment. Here business and civic duty go hand-in-hand, and doing tangible good is a contagious habit.
- Can you meet the city’s ultimate demand?
The writing is on the wall. Literally. On the downtown Birmingham police headquarters, written on the wall for all passersby, is a call to action to seek change within ourselves. It was only after moving here that I realized how accustomed I’d grown to environments where everyone was busy keeping score and policing one another was encouraged. Here in Birmingham, I came face to face with a city that instead encourages me to look inward, take responsibility for my own energy, and offer grace to others. That kind of inner shift in perspective transforms everything.
The real story of Birmingham is that it changes you. It draws you in, then permanently elevates your expectations for yourself and your community.
Consider yourself warned. Once you get used to the kinship, the collaboration, and the relentless pursuit of excellence, you won’t just want to stay—you’ll want to build. You’ll find yourself eager to roll up your sleeves, show up more, to help your new hometown evolve. And anytime you leave, you’ll wish you were back, feeling deeply—maybe for the first time ever—that there is truly no place like home.
Having called dynamic cities from New York to San Francisco home, Judith Chi and her family are proud to put down permanent roots in Birmingham. Alongside her husband and three children, she is deeply invested in the Magic City, championing the people and ideas shaping its vibrant future.
David Sher is the founder and publisher of ComebackTown. He’s past Chairman of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce (BBA), Operation New Birmingham (REV Birmingham), and the City Action Partnership (CAP).
Care about Birmingham, sign up for ComebackTown newsletter
Invite David to speak for free to your group about how we can have a more prosperous metro Birmingham. dsher@comebacktown.com
Good grief. The author is saying what a fantastic city Birmingham is, but she chose to live in Mountain Brook.
The OTM crowd crowing about how great Birmingham is to us, and how Birmingham is a hidden gem, while steadfastly refusing to live within city limits, will never cease to boggle my mind.
Let me know when the Birmingham Boosters from Vestavia, Mountain Brook, Homewood and Hoover are willing to put their money where their mouth is, and actually live within Birmingham city limits.
Pat, I live in Vestavia Hills, but I also live in Birmingham. That’s true of folks who live in Hoover, Trussville, and Homewood. When I’m out of state and someone asks me where I live, I say ‘Birmingham.’ We don’t have to live in the city limits of Birmingham to be proud we live in Birmingham. The author and her family moved to ‘Birmingham.’
David, that’s just it – you don’t live in Birmingham. You live in Vestavia.
You don’t pay property taxes to the city of Birmingham, you pay property taxes to the city of Vestavia Hills.
Vestavia Hills and Birmingham are 2 distinctly different cities, with different city councils, mayors, and municipal staff. It’s dishonest to claim that there’s really no difference between the two cities just because they’re in the same county. There is a vast difference in the two cities that encompasses everything from school systems, community safety, and demographics.
Regardless of how you refer to the area colloquially when you’re out of state, I’m assuming you chose to buy in Vestavia instead of the City of Birmingham because of the school system, property values, and safe neighborhoods. Others choose to locate over the mountain because they want safe neighborhoods and good schools. Your own father chose to raise you in Mountain Brook. Yet, you and several others relentlessly chide people who are down on the city proper of Birmingham, because of earnest concerns about safety, property value, a long history of corruption in government, education for their children and viability of their business.
And, if there’s really no difference between the over the mountain suburbs and the city of Birmingham, what’s preventing you and others from moving back?
This is silly. People in Marietta or Sandy Springs will regularly and quite acceptably say they “Live in Atlanta”. Why? Because although they reside in the burbs they partake of all of the services and activities and attractions of the entire area, including things within the city limits. This writer surely enjoys concerts and restaurants and plays and the healthcare available in the city limits as well as her home and schools and neighbors in Mountain Brook. I have no problem with suburbanites claiming Birmingham because they SHOULD. In fact, more should acknowledge the centrality of the city of Birmingham in their identity and the existence of their lives and livelihoods in the suburbs. This is one step, a unity of a “Birmingham identity”, in more of a consolidated approach to other things like economic development and regional transportation. You can still live in the suburbs and have a unified identity as a city and proper together. It has certainly worked for Atlanta. This comment really reflects the division that keeps holding the entire area back. So yes, Birmingham is awesome, and that includes downtown, Ensley, Mountain Brook, and Hoover and all the rest!
I grew up in Tuscaloosa, but my wife grew up in Birmingham. Specifically Forest Park— i.e. the city proper. In fact her family has been in the city since the 1880s, when her great-grandfather and his wife (my wife’s namesake) moved from Louisiana. He was recruited by TCI to serve as a company physician in the new Magic City. (Ironically, his physician office in 1901 was located in a building just across the street from 16th Street Baptist Church. The building was heavily damaged by the bomb blast that took the lives of four young girls in the church 63 years ago yesterday. The family had no association with the building by then, and it was demolished years ago. A church parking lot now occupies the space.)
Despite the tragic events of the 1950s-60s in Birmingham, my wife’s family never left. Even as property values declined as a result of white flight, and many families decamped over Red Mountain, they steadfastly remained. My wife’s older sister even served as the director of the city’s first racially integrated youth program in the late 60s, located in North Birmingham. For her efforts she was harassed by the Klan.
While some may decry the city’s continued focus on the events of the Civil Rights Movement (get over it, right?), the stories are embedded in history books. So when newcomers such as Ms. Chi settle in Birmingham’s lovely OTM communities, they could at least take a peek in those books or other sources. They don’t need to live in the city proper, but they should know who Bull Connor was. Who Fred Shuttlesworth was and why the airport she admires is named for him, as well as something about the foot soldiers of the Movement. Lastly, they might learn a little about the choices made by white residents at the time, and how those choices helped shape the communities on both sides of the Mountain today.
Brief history essays by the newcomers here on Comeback Town afterward might be an interesting read.
Great article!
This article and the thoughtful replies together make a call for metropolitan consolidation if ever there was one.
Love this conversation… and want to say thank you to Judith. My wife and I live in the city limits, as do our son and daughter in law. But we -all of us living in this region – we are ALL Birmingham and have to start thinking like that. And we need to ALL keep spreading the word that greater Birmingham is an amazing place to live and work and raise a family. That message obviously includes all that the “city” brings to that equation, but also what the suburbs – north, south, east, west – offer; the amazing natural beauty that you can find and enjoy in town and across our region; … the food, the culture, the history … It doesn’t mean we can ignore our challenges, and that we can’t find ways to work better as a region. We can’t and we must. But the most important point in my mind that Judith makes: there are so many people beyond our borders who still don’t know and understand what a great place this is. Judith is yet another example of, if you can just get ‘em here for a visit – they WILL be pleasantly surprised… and they might just decide to stay!