Charlottesville or Short Pump?

[TN Lily]

I would recommend Richmond based on what you have posted about yourself.

The Whole Foods in Short Pump is in a planned type of community where in theory you could walk to everything. But that could possibly mean crossing Broad Street on foot which could be a death defying act. It is a busy road. Drivers everywhere seem to run red lights.

You need a car in either place. Perhaps you can use a service like Zip Cars, but you cannot get everywhere by public transit in central Virginia. The other option is to spend lots of money on cabs and spend time waiting for a cab to show up.

The city of Charlottesville itself may have lots of liberals, but the region is conservative. The freshman Democrat representative lost to a conservative Republican. There are plenty of conservatives in Charlottesville and Albemarle county.

The other posters can bring up the bad sections of Richmond, but there are bad sections of Charlottesville. The panhandling homeless on the downtown mall is an issue. Assaults at night on the downtown mall have happened. One summer, it seemed like a fairly regular occurrence. The shopping center mall up on rt. 29 has been closed to the fighting of youth who roam the mall. For a relatively small town, there seems to be a lot of crime -- and it does not all make the news. There is another thread going on right now about crime in Charlottesville.

Richmond has lots to offer. Richmond proper has many bad neighborhoods. But anywhere you move, you've got to be aware of your surroundings.

Come visit and tour both places. They both have their good points and their bad points.

[ShadowBat]

Originally Posted by frank90

I doubt the conservative town of Charlottesville is liberal. UVA practically made it's name off of the founding father of Thomas Jefferson. Charlottesville may sway from blue to red but labeling it liberal is a bit of a stretch. Statistics do not lie. UVA is a reasonable liberal choice within Virginia Universities, however I highly think that most graduates stay within VA after receiving education. Few liberals like Katie Couric manages to escape and make it to bigger cities.

If Charlottesville were liberal than so is Richmond.

This doesn't make much sense to me. You have to decide exactly what aspect you're talking about. Politically, Cville is moderate. Socially, very liberal. Fiscally, conservative.

From recent elections, I recall Richmond city always votes dem. Henrico can swing, and Chesterfield I believe usually votes republican. I think it's safe to say that Richmond is politically moderate, Socially liberal, certain local neighborhoods and communities maybe not, and fiscally, I guess conservative since everyone complains nothing ever gets done to fix roads and etc.

I don't know what you're compring VA to. In recent elections, many typical strong democratic/liberal areas voted republican. I believe NJ and Mass did, and other areas too. Just because a candidate won, doesn't mean no one voted for the other guy. Some races were very close, and to me that means moderate. You can't have two representatives in office, even if one guy won by only one vote. In Cville, the dem candidate won the city, but not the county and the rural parts of the district, so to me that means Cville is politically moderate leaning liberal.

[Green Irish Eyes]

For anyone answering the OP, please note that this thread was started in March of 2008 -- almost three years ago. Hopefully s/he has long ago made the decision about where to live.

[TN Lily]

I had not noticed the age of the original post.

I wonder if the OP wound up in either place.