Batavia / Aurora / Geneva / St Charles / Elgin / Naperville

[Vasily]

For comparison, the 2012 crime rate for these communities according to City-Data was:

Batavia 131.2
Aurora 179.3
Geneva 57.7
St Charles 87.7
Naperville 92.1
Elgin 185.9
South Elgin 105.4
Chicago 562.0 [from 2011, 2012 not available]

The thing to keep in mind is, once you get to know the community you'll know which areas if any aren't safe ... and crime tends to cluster in certain neighborhoods and streets. Safe as Naperville is, there are apartment complexes I wouldn't walk through late at night.

[doodlemagic]

Originally Posted by Vasily

For comparison, the 2012 crime rate for these communities according to City-Data was:

Batavia 131.2
Aurora 179.3
Geneva 57.7
St Charles 87.7
Naperville 92.1
Elgin 185.9
South Elgin 105.4
Chicago 562.0 [from 2011, 2012 not available]

The thing to keep in mind is, once you get to know the community you'll know which areas if any aren't safe ... and crime tends to cluster in certain neighborhoods and streets. Safe as Naperville is, there are apartment complexes I wouldn't walk through late at night.

I agree I hear people bad mouthing Aurora and Aurora does have some sketchier parts but the Aurora that feeds into district 204 is a comletely different city almost than the part that feeds into say east aurora hs. heck even west aurora area out by orchard is very nice. You could live in a nice part of aurora and never even know about the sketchier side. That said Aurora is no Naperville at least in perception

[usagisan]

Naperville, St Charles, Geneva, Batavia and North Aurora are decent communities overall If you are physically active and like biking or jogging North Aurora. Batavia, Geneva and St Charles are paradises due to the bike trial running through the center of each along the river and each one has excellent quaint dining options.

If I had to choose I would go with Geneva as my first choice. Basically it has all the good points of Naperville and none of the bad. Then St Charles and then Batavia or Oswego then North Aurora and finally Naperville. Naperville is a fine community but once you jettison its crowded downtown you have essentially run out of charm.

The only areas of Aurora worth considering are on the cities edges, so from Edgelawn west and from Farnsworth East. There are small pockets between Edgelawn and Farnsworth that are nice, but overall it is not worth the hassle, also the quality of life in Aurora is much lower than the surrounding communities. The few decent restaurants are essentially chains, and Aurora's so called landmark restaurants are really just also rans that have trouble surpassing national chains like Chili's AppleBees, TGIF. The simple truth is Aurora is infected with low lifes, abundant hard working poor, and a huge population of illegal aliens.

The median income in Aurora is paltry compared to every surrounding community but Montgomery. Example, Aurora’s median income is 58K, Oswego’s is 89K, Naperville’s >100K, North Aurora 78K etc. The property taxes in Aurora are outrageous and the median household income vs median homeprice ratio is unfavorable compared to surrounding communities. Additionally the community is on a crisis list for its pension systems. Simply put the citizens of Aurora earn less, pay more in taxes, housing consumes more of their budget than surrounding communities which translates to the fact the city as a whole has a much lower amount of discretionary income. Taken together this means Aurora is a very poor place to start a business concept that does not cater to the indigent (i.e. social service agencies). This is reflected throughout the city by the types of businesses it has and how long startups stay in business and what types of enterprises thrive. Also Aurora has a larger Hispanic population than White and that effects its ability to attract certain types of restaurants etc