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TL;DR: Tell me which region you prefer for the best quality of life, and why that one over the other(s), assuming that you've been to at least two of them!
This thread is meant to lean toward a focus on subjective quality-of-life over a tally of amenities and other county resources.
It is my impression that sometimes we can get lost in the accounting (here) over whether or not a place is truly a joy to live in (for you).
These counties are pre-selected as places that are generally held to be relatively exemplary in the nation, and so a certain level of county resources is assumed.
With that being said, please feel free to start crunching the numbers if that helps you to compare and make your point.
Being that I am primarily interested in quality of life impressions, its going to help if you've been to or lived in these places. If you've only been to two of them, then compare those if you wish.
Why I am choosing Johnson County KS, Hamilton County IN, and the Research Triangle NC for comparison:
Johnson and Hamilton Counties have received little attention on the city vs city sub-forum, yet they are consistently held to be nice places to live by various ranking websites. I believe that the Triangle might favorably compare to both for quality of life (but certainly not for certain quantitative measures that derive from the Triangle's education offerings), possibly making this three-way comparison interesting and useful.
In NC, I am personally most interested in Wake County, but please compare whichever part of the Triangle that you think warrants comparison or wish to comment on. I thought that it would be difficult if not pointless to separate Wake County, and Raleigh-Cary specifically, from the rest of the Triangle.
Also, one county can include several differing yet similarly well-rated living centers. Hamilton County is a good example.
With that in mind, I reasoned that leaving the comparison open to the county level (or regional level in the case of the Triangle) is a good way to go.
Please feel free to be more specific in your comparisons. For example, If you've only lived in Fishers, Raleigh, or Overland Park, but don't have an impression of the rest of the County, then be as specific as you'd like (or not).
I am trying to make the comparison as flexible as possible.
I merely added sub-county level place names in the thread title to make this thread discoverable with more common search terms.
Last, I added a poll: because I find city vs. city threads with polls infinitely more useful. Check it out!
Not familiar with Hamilton Co, IN, but am very familiar with both Johnson Co KS and Wake County.
For starters, I'm not sure you can really compare Johnson County to *all* of Wake County (even though, population-wise and such, they might be similar). Probably 2/3 of Johnson County (not counting the farms and rural areas) is more specifically like Cary. When you drive through huge areas of Overland Park, Leawood, Olathe and some other towns, it's really just like Cary writ large.
There are some older areas of Johnson County in the northern parts of the county that I suppose are like some of the older parts of Raleigh. But the overall vibe of Johnson County tends to be like a giant Cary.
Not familiar with Hamilton Co, IN, but am very familiar with both Johnson Co KS and Wake County.
For starters, I'm not sure you can really compare Johnson County to *all* of Wake County (even though, population-wise and such, they might be similar). Probably 2/3 of Johnson County (not counting the farms and rural areas) is more specifically like Cary. When you drive through huge areas of Overland Park, Leawood, Olathe and some other towns, it's really just like Cary writ large.
There are some older areas of Johnson County in the northern parts of the county that I suppose are like some of the older parts of Raleigh. But the overall vibe of Johnson County tends to be like a giant Cary.
The part of the Research Triangle I've been to is Durham, specifically the area around Duke University, which may skew my perceptions a bit. I will say that Durham has the nicest Martin Luther King Drive of any of the cities I know of that has one (well, save for Philadelphia, where it's one of the two River Drives in Fairmount Park).
I guess I need to Google Cary, for it seems to me that it developed more recently than most of Johnson County - which (as I think you know) I'm quite familiar with, having attended secondary school with a bunch of Johnson Countians.
I voted for JoCo but actually think the Triangle has more physical beauty. Unless the trees have matured in Prairie Village and the older parts of Overland Park. (They're quite well along in the more northerly communities: Mission Hills, Mission Woods, Fairway, Westwood, Westwood Hills.)
If Johnson County is like Cary writ-large, as Mr. Bond noted, then one might suppose that if they enjoys Cary living over the rest of the Triangle then they might feel that Johnson County has a better quality of life
because it offers both more quantity and scale of the type of lifestyle that they enjoy. I appreciate the Cary analogy.
I agree that Raleigh sets Wake County apart from the other two counties in terms of apples-to-apples comparability.
In terms of a pure quality of life assessment, if someone appreciates Raleigh living or having very fast access to a small walkable city like Raleigh, I could see them preferring Wake County over Johnson and Hamilton Counties.
Johnson Co. looks like it has fairly easy access to a somewhat larger walkable town center on the southern outskirts of KC and in addition to its smaller town centers throughout the county, but it doesn't compare with Raleigh in scale.
As an aside, I just discovered Lee's Summit on the Missouri side. It seems to compare well in this exercise.
So, to expand this comparison further, please feel free to comment on any other area in the KC and Indy suburbs or Triangle region that I may be missing but would also compare well here in terms of a place with a good quality of life that you have experienced (via visiting or living).
MarketStEl, I think that's accurate in regard to Cary's development timeline in comparison with JC.
My personal QOL standard does take into account natural aesthetics to a point. Its why I might have a difficult time living in Denton, Texas, for example (that and the increased UV). I appreciate you mentioning your take on it. Though, like me, it seems that you don't make aesthetics a primary consideration. That note helps me because I think a certain percentage of people do over-value aesthetics at the cost of day-to-day quality of life.
Hamilton County's largest city of Carmel features one of the largest concentrations of roundabout road intersections in the nation. On my visits there, it has seemed like they have a positive impact on managing the traffic. There is also an impressive cultural/concert center with classical architecture in the city, so it appears to have a lot of amenities for residents. I'm not as familiar with Johnson County's offerings, but would imagine it is pretty comparable as both are middle class to affluent Midwest suburban areas.
Wake County is much larger with over 1 million residents, and Raleigh itself is approaching 500,000. I don't think it should be characterized as a "small city" environment these days, although it was more of one a few decades ago. The metro area as a whole is much more dominated by modern suburban development than almost anywhere else in the nation, including greater Indianapolis or Kansas City. I would say the Triangle has a significant natural aesthetic and climate advantage, as well as a booming economy and educational assets, over the other metro areas but it isn't necessarily the ideal place for everyone. Durham/Chapel Hill and Raleigh/Cary are separate metros for statistical purposes due to commute patterns, but functionally they operate as one polycentric area.
Yes, Lee's Summit (and also Blue Springs and Grain Valley) are also somewhat Johnson County-esque, not nearly as large, however.
One other thing Johnson County has going for it is that it's part of the KC metro. The Triangle area is nice, but in terms of overall amenities it can't really compare to Kansas City. KC has museums, sports teams and other cultural amenities which Raleigh-Durham can't begin to match. I'm not as familiar with Indianapolis as the other two, but I would guess it's in-between RDU and KC in those terms.
KC north of the river is sort-of an emerging Johnson County or Cary-esque area. But it still has a ways to go before it gets anywhere near the scale of Johnson County.
Quote:
Johnson Co. looks like it has fairly easy access to a somewhat larger walkable town center on the southern outskirts of KC and in addition to its smaller town centers throughout the county, but it doesn't compare with Raleigh in scale.
Not really sure you could put it that way. Johnson County is quite big. It has a population of 591,178 in 480 mi². While Wake County does have a population over 1 million, that's in almost twice the area (857 mi²). The new-ish suburban areas I'm thinking of in JoCo are almost more like Plano/Frisco (with hills). It's mile after mile of stuff that looks just like this. Again, probably 2/3 of the county is like that. RDU tends to have stuff like that more in clusters and more spread out, with Cary sort-of being the exception.
Best long-term outlook, Research Triangle because of the economic growth multiplier effect. People want to live there, people are moving there in large numbers, and the area has a large number of highly regarded educational institutions. These more strictly suburban counties of Hamilton and Johnson will need to evolve their housing stock and options at a faster rate as the housing stock is generally too expensive for those that aren't high earners. Mixed-use development will need to become more prominent in all of these areas now and in the future. Long gone are the days when most people prefer to live in a McMansion and commute longer distances to work.
They are all the same monontanous suburban crap. I would not choose to live in any of them. But if you had to choose, I would base it off the core city of the metro they are a part of. KC,Mo is better than Indy and both of them are way better than Raleigh.
Kind of an unfair comparison considering Wake County contains the principal city in its metro area. Lorain County OH would have been a better comparison.
Last edited by Turnerbro; 11-04-2018 at 02:57 PM..
Hamilton County's largest city of Carmel features one of the largest concentrations of roundabout road intersections in the nation. On my visits there, it has seemed like they have a positive impact on managing the traffic. There is also an impressive cultural/concert center with classical architecture in the city, so it appears to have a lot of amenities for residents. I'm not as familiar with Johnson County's offerings, but would imagine it is pretty comparable as both are middle class to affluent Midwest suburban areas.
Wake County is much larger with over 1 million residents, and Raleigh itself is approaching 500,000. I don't think it should be characterized as a "small city" environment these days, although it was more of one a few decades ago. The metro area as a whole is much more dominated by modern suburban development than almost anywhere else in the nation, including greater Indianapolis or Kansas City. I would say the Triangle has a significant natural aesthetic and climate advantage, as well as a booming economy and educational assets, over the other metro areas but it isn't necessarily the ideal place for everyone. Durham/Chapel Hill and Raleigh/Cary are separate metros for statistical purposes due to commute patterns, but functionally they operate as one polycentric area.
Do they actually know how to navigate roundabouts? Many people don't understand how to use them.
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