Ann Arbor vs. Washington DC or Tucson (Wayne: rent, buying a house)

[nomad74]

My wife and I need to make a quick decision about whether to move to Washington DC or Tucson, AZ. We currently live in Ann Arbor and she will be attending graduate school in one of these two cities. We must decide by next week and neither of us has ever been to Tucson and we just visited DC last weekend. Does anyone have experience living in two or more of these cities? If so, how would you compare the quality of life in each?

My wife is from Spain so the heat is not a problem. We love Ann Arbor (except the cold) and prefer living in a walkable city/town. The cost of living is our major concern in DC. Urban sprawl and car dependency are our major concerns with Tucson.

Any thought would be greatly appreciated.

[Cato the Elder]

Originally Posted by nomad74

My wife and I need to make a quick decision about whether to move to Washington DC or Tucson, AZ. We currently live in Ann Arbor and she will be attending graduate school in one of these two cities. We must decide by next week and neither of us has ever been to Tucson and we just visited DC last weekend. Does anyone have experience living in two or more of these cities? If so, how would you compare the quality of life in each?

My wife is from Spain so the heat is not a problem. We love Ann Arbor (except the cold) and prefer living in a walkable city/town. The cost of living is our major concern in DC. Urban sprawl and car dependency are our major concerns with Tucson.

Any thought would be greatly appreciated.

Hmm, you can't really get two more different cities in the lower 48. As you know, DC will be much more similar to A2, but on a larger scale - culture, short ride to amenities, good schools, etc. Tucson is like a poor man's San Diego - warm to hot weather, good scenery, quiet, strong Latino influence. You'll continue to have snow in DC and it gets a bit hectic. Tucson generally has terrible schools and you're a bit isolated. There is/was talk of a light rail but I wouldn't bank on it any time soon. I assume you'll be near U of A? The campus area itself is walkable but there's not much outside of it - i.e. you won't be walking off campus unless you live nearby like in Sam Hughes. There are some areas near the campus that aren't so great. It's not USC/Wayne State, but it's definitely not UCLA/U of M. Unless she's doing something like anthropology or engineering, I would choose most schools in DC over U of A. If you tell us what discipline she is studying and what school in DC, this will help.

[ocean2026]

See which schools she gets accepted into first. Cal-Berkeley would be idea-its the best public university in the world -especially at the grad level and the weather is decent. U of Michigan is right behind it but cold weather- nice summers. U of Arizona is a good school but not in the league of Berkeley or Michigan.

[nomad74]

Thanks Cato and Ocean. She has been accepted to the PhD program in Spanish Linguistics at Georgetown and the Second Language Acquisition & Teaching program at UA. Both are good programs in her field.

Berkeley would be nice but she didn't apply to that program. We're looking at either DC or Tucson.

[Cato the Elder]

If they're fairly equal programs...Georgetown all the way. As I'm sure your wife knows, Georgetown has an international rep. Europeans might know of Arizona as a state, but they'll likely know little to nothing about the university. You'll want options in the future - Georgetown will give you more. DC is expensive, but you'll be there for 5-6 years. In fact, you can probably leave after she passes her Ph.D. qualifying exams - 3 years or so - if you don't like it. You don't have to worry about buying a house or anything like that. The 5+ years you have in grad school are a precious time - I'm still spinning out articles from ideas that took root while I was in the northeast for grad school. There is an academic critical mass. There are conferences, lectures, etc in DC and throughout the Northeast. You just don't get that out west - the Bay area is the closest thing and it's not the same b/c the three nodes are inconvenient to get between (Berkeley, SF, Palo Alto). At U of A, you won't even have that option as the closest academic neighbor of note is ASU, and neither are academic heavy weights. Even if you weren't sold on DC as a city, I would tell you to go there for the academic opportunities. Based on your backgrounds and affinity for a cosmo area, I think this is a no-brainer. Go to Arizona when a job is waiting for her there, not when she's preparing for a job.

[Cato the Elder]

On a side note, it's important to know that the Arizona economy is in the dumps. People rip on the MI economy more than Arizona, but it's largely because the auto industry was such a major player for so long that there was a long way to fall. Arizona's economy is largely based on the construction boom and retirees. People aren't doing much of either in the present climate. It's affecting the U of A and ASU severely. I know of one department at U of A getting downsized, and it was one of the first departments at the school with a great rep. I would not want to be teaching at a Arizona or Florida university right now. Private schools such as Georgetown are affected also, but not nearly as much, especially when they have healthy endowments like Georgetown - something to keep in mind.

[nomad74]

Excellent advice Cato. Everything you say makes a lot of sense. I suppose that I need to overcome my romantic notions of living in the southwest for the time being. We are actually leaving this Saturday (4/13) to visit Tucson and the UofA. Regardless of our ultimate decision, I'm curious to experience Tucson for myself. It sounds like such a nice place to visit...not so sure about living there at this stage of our lives. I'll let you know our impressions and ultimate decision once we return.

Thanks again for the great advice.

[nomad74]

We were able to visit DC for a couple of days and we really liked what we saw. I was not initially attracted to moving back to the east coast (spent some time in NYC and Philadelphia). I've really come to enjoy the less hectic life of a college-town like Ann Arbor. That said, DC seemed like a very livable city with lots of trees and green areas to escape to. The metro was great...the only US metro that even comes close to those of European or Asian cities. Georgetown was very nice although we obviously couldn’t afford to live there. The cost of living is the biggest negative for relocating to DC. In Tucson we could rent a nice three-bedroom house for $800-1200. In DC this amount might get us a studio in the Dupont/Adams-Morgan area!

Another major plus for DC is that I would have much better career opportunities. Overall, we were very impressed with DC.

[nomad74]

We just returned from out trip to Tucson. In summary, we loved the southwest vibe and beautiful desert environment surrounding Tucson. The university campus is very nice. We also like the fact that the cost of living is lower and the pace of life more relaxed. The city itself was less attractive to us in large part because of the sprawling nature and general lack of walkable areas where people congregate to shop, dine, play or relax. This lack of common areas and population density, combined with car dependency, made us feel a bit too isolated for our tastes. This is obviously very different from Washington DC. However, the high cost of living and more hectic pace of DC are less appealing to us. Oh well, I will have to make a decision very soon.

[Jwo85]

My personal opinion, Washington D.C.
You got all sorts of options for transportation and you got a short trip via train to NYC for dinning, shopping or entertainment.

I would had said A2 if it had the same options for transportation as D.C. since you can go to Chicago for a overnight stay and get that dinning, shopping and entertainment value.