City of Orlando has a much, much higher quality of life in my opinion. The city of Orlando is far nicer then the city of Phoenix.
The suburbs I would say are about equal quality of life as Metro Phoenix certainly has some great suburbs.
Orlando has lush parks and lakes all over the core of the city. It is an extremely, extremely clean city also. The people are far friendlier and polite also. They have dense tree canopies also which is really enjoyable. The city was not polluted at all as for some reason Florida cities tend to have good air quality.
The city of Phoenix just in general could do so much better. There is a huge homeless population and the city just ignores helping the homeless and they also ignore the unsanitary conditions in many of the parks.
Except for some extremely expensive areas where people pay three times the price just for some good tree coverage, many of the homes have gravel yards because of the cost of watering them constantly. The city of Phoenix also has horrific air quality at times, except near downtown Phoenix. Occasionally, some of the worst air quality in the entire country if it hasn't rained in months and no wind for a long time.
There is no premium to live in a lush neighborhood of Orlando because they are tropical and lush. Phoenix the sky is the limit on housing costs to live in an area with some good tree coverage.
The smell of Orlando is a smell of lushness. The city of Phoenix has many areas that have an industrial smell mixed with dirt. Some of the suburbs of Phoenix though have lush suburbs because of the home owners associations doing all they can to keep in green with fake lakes, lots of flood irrigation and large budgets so flowers and foilage.
People in Phoenix pay three times the cost per square foot just to live in an area with more trees called Arcadia and even that is not impressive at all except for the larger lot sizes. People in Orlando pay no real estate premium for a lush yard or neighborhood.
A book could written on how much better Orlando's neighborhoods are than Phoenix's. Orlando has a huge tax base with all the tourism in the city itself which means excellent public services and a well-run city. Phoenix has huge pension liabilities and huge budget issues and extremely low quality services.
Orlando proper just seems so much better managed than Phoenix. Orlando also likely has a huge general fund budget per-capita because of the amount of tourism. Very few tourists come to Metro Phoenix for Phoenix, they come mainly for the eastern suburbs.
Phoenix does have great suburbs. I only went to a few suburbs of Orlando in Osceola County but they seemed less appealing then Phoenix suburbs.
Orlando: Great city proper and middle-of the road suburbs.
Phoenix: Most of the city itself is high-undesirable with extremely low quality management and lots of social problems like widespread homelessness. Great suburbs though with extremely high quality of life and lots of amenities for all like Gilbert, Scottsdale, Tempe, Chandler, Glendale and Peoria.
Phoenix has higher home prices in general but rents are much lower in Phoenix.
I would say economically they are similar. Phoenix likely has a slightly higher household incomes than Orlando, but Phoenix residents tend to have large families so on a per-capita basis Orlando has a higher per-capita income.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fa...rida/PST040217
Seems like Orlando has had a large influx of renters so the rents have skyrocketed. A majority of people who move to metro Phoenix are likely looking for a home to purchase so there seems to be more pressure on single-family home prices rather than rents.
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