Is Your Local Job Market as Tough as Mine?

[Evo]

Correction. Yours is the 6th best small town to live in.

The category is Best Places to live, it just turns out that the top ranked are small towns. The 10 best Large cities don't make the top overall Best Places to live category.

You can click a link to compare Colorado Springs with the Top Ten Best Places. Overland Park is the 6th overall Best Place to live. I would rather have mountains and forests, sure the architecture here is incredible and the fountains are awesome, but the area is artificially pretty.

FINALIST
Colorado Springs, CO
Best big cities rank: 1
Population: 369,800
Compare Colorado Springs to Top 10 Best Places

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2006/snapshots/PL0816000.html"

 

[Gokul43201]

Wow, Colorado has a flat tax?!

Columbus came in 8th in Best Big Cities! Woo!

 

[Moonbear]

Ahem...I live three blocks from the university with the highest total enrollment in the country.

I meant here, not university towns in general. I don't know if the insurance rates in this town are the same as one where there's nothing but cows to hit.

Also, since WVU started the "party transit" (or whatever official name it has) system, I'd imagine incidents of DUI have fallen off a bit.

Party transit? I think that IS DUI! I don't know of any transportation around here that is available on weekends or nights other than getting taxis or driving yourself. By someone's idiotic reasoning, the PRT stops running BEFORE the parties start. I wish they'd keep it running, because then it might actually be possible to go out to dinner downtown on a Friday night and still find a parking space somewhere (or I could just leave my car at the lab and take the PRT downtown and still be able to get back).

 

[Moonbear]

CNN just announced the best places to live in the US and I live in the 6th best city.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2006/

It's got to be the well educated, high income cows.

Who's opinion do they use for those rankings? I looked at that list, and wouldn't want to live any of those top-ranked places. Ann Arbor was in the top 25, and I absolutely HATED that place. Whenever anyone asked me how I liked it there, I always had to clarify..."the lab I work in, or the town?" I worked with great people there and really learned a lot, but except for two months of summer when they held all the festivals and stuff, it was the most dreary, boring, homogenous town I've ever lived in. Some random weirdo struck up a conversation while I was walking around in town one day, and commented, "I love this town...it's got so much culture!" He sounded serious, and I just answered, "Really? Where do you come from? This place has NO culture, it's too full of racists and bigots for that." At least that ended his attempts at conversation.

 

[JasonRox]

Who's opinion do they use for those rankings? I looked at that list, and wouldn't want to live any of those top-ranked places. Ann Arbor was in the top 25, and I absolutely HATED that place. Whenever anyone asked me how I liked it there, I always had to clarify..."the lab I work in, or the town?" I worked with great people there and really learned a lot, but except for two months of summer when they held all the festivals and stuff, it was the most dreary, boring, homogenous town I've ever lived in. Some random weirdo struck up a conversation while I was walking around in town one day, and commented, "I love this town...it's got so much culture!" He sounded serious, and I just answered, "Really? Where do you come from? This place has NO culture, it's too full of racists and bigots for that." At least that ended his attempts at conversation.

Maybe he's racists and fits in well. His culture.

 

[chroot]

Yeah, really, Moonie... They listed Raleigh, NC as the 4th best large city to live in, even though it has more crime than the national average, fewer cultural assets than the national average, and worse weather than the national average. Raleigh is, IMO, a disgusting hell hole of a city. I could name dozens of cities I'd rather live in.

I guess it's a pretty subjective list, or it's based on some pretty useless statistics.

- Warren

 

[BobG]

The category is Best Places to live, it just turns out that the top ranked are small towns. The 10 best Large cities don't make the top overall Best Places to live category.

You can click a link to compare Colorado Springs with the Top Ten Best Places. Overland Park is the 6th overall Best Place to live. I would rather have mountains and forests, sure the architecture here is incredible and the fountains are awesome, but the area is artificially pretty.

FINALIST
Colorado Springs, CO
Best big cities rank: 1
Population: 369,800
Compare Colorado Springs to Top 10 Best Places

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2006/snapshots/PL0816000.html"

Well, dog gone it.

I claim bias! I've lived in four of the top ten big cities (Wichita, Columbus, Omaha, and Colorado Springs), plus Akron, OH, which compares pretty poorly. It smells so much better there than when the tire companies were there and they still only rate 51% in air quality? Mmm, I still remember rainy Monday mornings whenever I smell burning rubber.

 

[Gokul43201]

Party transit? I think that IS DUI! I don't know of any transportation around here that is available on weekends or nights other than getting taxis or driving yourself. By someone's idiotic reasoning, the PRT stops running BEFORE the parties start.

Is the PRT the monorail thingy? Maybe that's not the thing I'm remembering.

Sometime back - about 4 years ago - I'd heard from friends that went to WVU about some new "Party Hall" kind of place that was (being) set up with some kind of a shuttle service. There were all kinds of stories about highly subsidized booze and free food - provided by the University to keep drunks kids out of cars! Maybe it was a promise that never came to be?

 

[Gokul43201]

Ann Arbor was in the top 25, and I absolutely HATED that place.

Ahem. At least you've got the honor to admit that! It's a miracle that place didn't just turn you into a brainless, slogan shouting banshee. And that's just my unbiased opinion.

 

[Moonbear]

Is the PRT the monorail thingy? Maybe that's not the thing I'm remembering.

Yeah, the PRT is the monorail thing. I thought maybe that's what you were thinking of, but it's certainly not new, and from talking with older alumni, it sounds like they've actually cut back the hours on the PRT rather than increased them.

Sometime back - about 4 years ago - I'd heard from friends that went to WVU about some new "Party Hall" kind of place that was (being) set up with some kind of a shuttle service. There were all kinds of stories about highly subsidized booze and free food - provided by the University to keep drunks kids out of cars! Maybe it was a promise that never came to be?

Nope, nothing like that. Sounds like more of an urban legend or wishful thinking. Like most other campuses, there's no alcohol permitted here, and especially not with university funds. They really just need to run the PRT at night so the kids can get from the downtown bars (there's a downtown PRT stop) back to their dorms. I think they're worried about vandalism though, so close all the stations at night. They also might have less drunk students if they just had other activities for them to do at night. I've heard things got really bad a few years back, so they've really cracked down more than they used to. The worst of it is that the kids around here don't just have cheap beer and wine coolers like the rest of us had in college that take a long time to get you drunk, but they'll have moonshine at the parties! I just shake my head in dismay that anyone would touch that stuff. Might do a great job washing the windows, but why anyone would consume it is beyond me.

Ahem. At least you've got the honor to admit that! It's a miracle that place didn't just turn you into a brainless, slogan shouting banshee. And that's just my unbiased opinion.

Yep, totally unbiased. But now I know there's a reason they try to interview everyone in July and August there if they can. I really don't know how anyone can consider a place cultured when the chalk messages on the sidewalks aren't for band performances or parties, but for KKK rallies!

 

[chroot]

You guys make Virginia Tech, in "backwoods" southwestern Virginia, seem almost civilized.

- Warren

 

[Evo]

Well, dog gone it.

I claim bias! I've lived in four of the top ten big cities (Wichita, Columbus, Omaha, and Colorado Springs), plus Akron, OH, which compares pretty poorly. It smells so much better there than when the tire companies were there and they still only rate 51% in air quality? Mmm, I still remember rainy Monday mornings whenever I smell burning rubber.

Yeah, I don't agree with the rankings either. And Austin ranked as a big city? Although, it's a great place to live, my little sister graduated from UT in Austin and stayed there.