This is NHPR’s The Big Question. We ask you a question about life in New Hampshire, you submit an answer, and we feature your voices on air and online.
Many of us love the places where we live. But maybe there’s just one or two things that if added, you think could make your city or town that much better.
So, for September’s Big Question, we asked: What’s something you wish your community had?
Here’s what some of you said.
Alexandria - Hopkinton, NH: What I would love to see in my community is a couple of wonderful restaurants that serve world cuisine, particularly if they had some really great vegetarian options. I think world cuisine is a really great way to understand other people that you don't know about. And everybody likes to eat! I'm a vegetarian, so I'm always interested in vegetarian food. My favorite cuisine is Ethiopian food. I would really enjoy seeing an Ethiopian restaurant in Hopkinton.
Greg - Concord, NH: I think Concord could benefit from a fully developed system of trails. A lot of the focus of these trails is on former rail corridors, but there are also snowmobile corridors that were never rail trails or rails that should also be part of a trail network. If you go to Bow, they've got the snowmobile trails set up as four-season hiking [and] walking trails. That's probably something we should do.
Catherine - Portsmouth, NH: I would love to see public bathrooms. Having traveled many places, but also as a woman who has birthed children, bathrooms really are essential when you're visiting a town. Whether you are a tourist or you live here, which I do, walking downtown oftentimes, in the off-season or even during the season, you only have access to public bathrooms at Prescott Park or out on something called Four Tree Island, which is a picnic area. Both are out of town. And they are seasonal because they are not heated. So they shut down in early October. So the rest of the time there simply are no public bathrooms. If you are walking around town, you're stuck.
Michelle - Keene, NH: I wish my community had more affordable housing. I'm going to have to, at some point, move out of Keene away from my daughter and grandchildren, with whom I spend a lot of time, because my rent went up $195 this year, $150 the year before, skipped a year, and then the year before that they took heat being included off of the rent. So that's a lot of increase. And I love Keene. It is genuine affection for a community and a group of people, and a way of life here that I will sorely miss if I have to leave.
Peter - Hollis, NH: One of the things that I would dearly love to see my community have would be an extension of the Boston commuter rail. Right now it goes to Lowell. It would be magnificent if they could extend it into New Hampshire, ideally all the way to Concord. I used to work and I would commute up and down Route 3 every day, and oftentimes it was a complete nightmare. Having a commuter rail that would bypass all that would be fantastic.
