Hartford's Renaissance

[jjbradleynyc]

I think first and foremost, the locals who live in the bad neighborhoods of Hartford must begin to really care and work towards improving their neighborhoods. They must form crime watchs, watch kids and neighbors' kids, watch the streets, help tutor kids, create safe after school programs for kids, improve churches, improve parks, create drug treatment programs, and start wanting the communities to improve. After this nurturing effect of many, over a few years, change begins to happen. Then, the residents have to work with zoning officials and developers to improve their districts with development and showing developers that the area is safer and doing better with school scores. Granted, this is hard work, but cities do not improve overnight. Work gets them to the point where they are ready and ripe for change.

[EHGuy05]

I think that we need professionals to move into Hartford, especially young professionals. If you look at this forum, whenever someone asks for a good place to live, everyone reccomends the suburbs. What is the stigma with living in Hartford? The city and developes have done a good job getting nice housing built in the downtown area. If people live in Hartford, it builds the restaurants, bars, shops, etc. where people will spend there money. If you go into Hartford on a weekend midday, it is a ghost town. That is what needs to change.

[Uconn97]

Originally Posted by EHGuy05

I think that we need professionals to move into Hartford, especially young professionals. If you look at this forum, whenever someone asks for a good place to live, everyone reccomends the suburbs. What is the stigma with living in Hartford? The city and developes have done a good job getting nice housing built in the downtown area. If people live in Hartford, it builds the restaurants, bars, shops, etc. where people will spend there money. If you go into Hartford on a weekend midday, it is a ghost town. That is what needs to change.

While I agree that hartford has some great housing opportunitys now and has come a long way, I rarely recommend that people look for a home in hartford unless they are looking in the west end or within downtown proper. Bottom line, hartford has a lot to offer, but unless you are interested in homes in the west end or looking at condos or apartments in downtown itself, the city just isn't safe enough yet as far as I'm concerned and the lackluster school performance leaves a lot to be desired for families relocating. On a side note, we (my family and I) went into hartford on Sunday to attend a jazz mass at the episcopal church. We go into hartford quite a bit, but usually we drive in and drive out, this time we walked around a bit after mass and I was quite impressed by how nice that whole area around pratt street is looking. They were clearly still doing a bunch of construction, but walking into bushnell park and around the general area, the sidewalks were clean and there were tons of small shops and restaurants - not many open, but we were still able to get a cup of coffee at one that was open. Kids had a blast riding the carousel....So, there is some positives, but I think Hartford has a ways to go in cleaning up the mess that exists in the city and working on its reputation.