Whenever they drove past downtown apartment buildings, the husband would gaze wistfully at the upper-floor units. For more than 15 years he had fantasised about skyline views and urban living, while his wife, who grew up in the woods of northern Minnesota, remained deeply sceptical. As a compromise, the childless couple in their late 30s rented a 19th-floor condo in Minneapolis for one year, part-time. On move-in day, they lugged furniture up a freight elevator; the husband was thrilled, the wife braced for asphalt and noise. Instead of a shady patio, they had a small balcony perched above a busy street, the constant traffic punctuated by sirens from a nearby fire station and hospital.

Yet within months, the wife began to see the perks. Three grocery stores lay within a 10-minute walk, a year-round farmers’ market was five minutes away, and evenings out centred on walking to the orchestra hall, ballpark or theatres. The building’s social scene – book groups, a holiday party, even a “prom for grownups” – connected them with fellow childfree couples in a way their suburban neighbourhood never had. A few months into the lease, both realised one year would not be enough; they wanted to make downtown life permanent.

That impulse to test a different way of living, and then to extend the experiment, surfaces in other first-person accounts. One woman left Ottawa, where she had lived her entire life, and moved to Japan on a one-year visa with her husband. Rather than sign a long lease, they spent seven months in short-term rentals across Tokyo, Osaka and Kumamoto, paying less for housing than they did in Canada – a two-bedroom Airbnb in Osaka cost a little over CA$1,600 a month, all-inclusive, compared with more than CA$1,900 for her Ottawa apartment before utilities. Unpacking packing cubes in each new city, she found she could settle into a routine quickly, and the flexibility to move when ready became, she said, “one of the best parts”.

Age does not appear to dim the appetite for a mobile life. A 90-year-old mother, Margie, who bought a motorhome on a whim after being widowed at 82, spent three months last summer travelling in an RV with her daughter and son-in-law. Despite arthritis and heart disease, she assigned herself chores – setting up the coffee machine, gathering sticks for the campfire, crocheting gifts – and each morning carried her oatmeal to the picnic table, calling her sister to brag about the cooler temperatures. Her daughter observed that staying active, physically and mentally, “can add years to your life”. Margie, recovering from recent surgery, already has her magazines, crocheting and harp packed for the next road trip.

A broader longing for a different backdrop is not confined to those who actually move. A survey by a Russian developer found that 88 per cent of urban Russians dream of living beside a river or lake, with 81 per cent citing the view and 65 per cent the walks along an embankment. For some, the search is less about geography than about the texture of belonging itself. A woman who has lived in 10 cities and seven states, never anywhere longer than five years, describes having “wide roots” that spread laterally under state lines, making her unafraid to walk into any room but leaving her nobody’s oldest friend. Every friendship, she notes, started in the middle of her story. As Margie’s harp waits by the door, the question these experiments pose is not whether a place is permanent, but whether it is alive enough to be worth the next morning’s coffee.