Champaign vs. Urbana? (Harvard, Mahomet, Nashville: appointed, apartment complexes, rentals)

[sendmorecops]

Thanks, I will pass that info along to him. He is pretty sick of computers after setting up email and fixing printers for the last five years, so to him it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to get into the CS program. Illinois has special benefits for veterans going to school, so out of the state universities, it's obviously our first choice!

I don't find Springfield too crime-ridden when we visit (depressing, though), so if they're comparable I think we'll be okay.

[EyesInTheSky]

Originally Posted by sendmorecops

Thanks, I will pass that info along to him. He is pretty sick of computers after setting up email and fixing printers for the last five years, so to him it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to get into the CS program. Illinois has special benefits for veterans going to school, so out of the state universities, it's obviously our first choice!

There are some solid options at UIUC for your husband to get an information technology education without going through the pressure cooker of the Computer Science (CS) department. One common pathway is to get a BS in Business Administration (BBA degree) in their IS/IT track. There are a large number of former CS students who do this at the undergrad level.

The IS/IT track in the BBA degree program is much less theoretical and taught in the context of organizational technology needs and applications; the BBA program is much less intense and the academics run closer to 110 volts, instead of the 220 volt pressure cooker in the CS department. You can get some information on this option at: Requirements » IS & IT » Undergraduate Programs » Department of Business Administration

Good luck and feel free to DM me if I can help!

[JasmineFlower]

Originally Posted by sendmorecops

If you guys are trying to freak me out about moving there, it's working! I'm already pretty agoraphobic. But I do appreciate the honesty and input.

Reading this thread is making me laugh. Champaign-Urbana is dangerous?!?! I think you ought to go to a real city and see some crime. Unless you are from an extremely small town where news of stolen bubble gum is considered crime, I see no reason for you to view C-U as a dangerous or violence prone community. Seriously. I lived there, single woman, on my own for a few years with zero problems and no friends had any problems either, almost all of us are mid-to-late 20s and lived off campus with no roommates. I think if you want to find crime you can and there are some not so great parts of town, but you wont be living in them. Its not something you see daily and its not something to become preoccupied about. No reason to stay indoors all the time and be afraid of the community. Use common sense and you should be fine.

I've lived a lot of places, big cities, mid size cities, suburbs of big cities, C-U is probably the safest. I can easily recall, them opening nightly news broadcasts with the corn festival on one night and fire hydrants being emptied by kids playing on another night. Seriously. Does that sound like a dangerous community to you? I'm not trying to say there are no problems in the area, that there isn't a low income section to both, but lets be realistic here, there is not big city crime going on in C-U in some major way.

[asearchforreason]

I was not trying to suggest CU is dangerous in anyway. I think Eyesinthesky is getting a little overzealous in describing the cities as having "a lot" of crime. The statistics speak clearly here. If you currently find Clarksville "dangerous" then you will find C-U "dangerous". If you think Clarksville is "safe", then CU will be "safe" since they have about the same ratio of crimes to population. In fact, CU is slightly safer than Clarksville. Now I've never been there so I have no idea what it is like, but that should give you some perspective.

[EyesInTheSky]

Originally Posted by asearchforreason

I was not trying to suggest CU is dangerous in anyway. I think Eyesinthesky is getting a little overzealous in describing the cities as having "a lot" of crime. The statistics speak clearly here. If you currently find Clarksville "dangerous" then you will find C-U "dangerous". If you think Clarksville is "safe", then CU will be "safe" since they have about the same ratio of crimes to population. In fact, CU is slightly safer than Clarksville. Now I've never been there so I have no idea what it is like, but that should give you some perspective.

I'm a little torn on this thread because, on the one hand, C-U is sort of my adopted hometown and I really like it here but, on the other hand, it cannot be ignored that we have a fairly high violent crime rate, regardless of what others may perceive.

As you suggest, the statistics really do speak clearly on this issue. Let's take a look. The Sperling almanac rates violent and property crime on a scale of 1 to 10, based on the annual FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Using their scale, a value of 1 means a city has a very low crime rate and a value of 10 means an extremely high crime rate.

Here's a cross-section of how some cities rate, which might give readers a more quantitative sense of how crime in C-U compares to other cities:

Naperville, IL: Violent crime = 1, Property crime = 1
National Average: Violent crime = 3, Property crime = 3
Champaign, IL: Violent crime = 6, Property crime = 6
Springfield, IL: Violent crime = 6, Property crime = 7
Clarksville, TN: Violent crime = 7, Property crime = 6
St. Louis, MO: Violent crime = 8, Property crime = 8
Detroit, MI: Violent crime = 8, Property crime = 8

It is worth noting that both St. Louis and Detroit have had the dubious distinction of being the murder capitals of the United States in recent years. The crime rates of C-U and similar-sized communities are much more similar to that of the most violent American cities than they are to either the national average or Naperville (a nice Chicago suburb which I cite for comparison purposes).

In my view, I suspect some people become almost numb to the amount of crime that's really occurring in their cities and just learn to accept it (some of the responses I've read on this thread seem to reinforce this view). Indeed, I've done this myself to a large extent, and now live my life in C-U sort of accepting and learning to tolerate all the violence and theft.

[IlWesleyanGuy]

Originally Posted by EyesInTheSky

I'm a little torn on this thread because, on the one hand, C-U is sort of my adopted hometown and I really like it here but, on the other hand, it cannot be ignored that we have a fairly high violent crime rate, regardless of what others may perceive.

As you suggest, the statistics really do speak clearly on this issue. Let's take a look. The Sperling almanac rates violent and property crime on a scale of 1 to 10, based on the annual FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Using their scale, a value of 1 means a city has a very low crime rate and a value of 10 means an extremely high crime rate.

Here's a cross-section of how some cities rate, which might give readers a more quantitative sense of how crime in C-U compares to other cities:

Naperville, IL: Violent crime = 1, Property crime = 1
National Average: Violent crime = 3, Property crime = 3
Champaign, IL: Violent crime = 6, Property crime = 6
Springfield, IL: Violent crime = 6, Property crime = 7
Clarksville, TN: Violent crime = 7, Property crime = 6
St. Louis, MO: Violent crime = 8, Property crime = 8
Detroit, MI: Violent crime = 8, Property crime = 8

We know that Sperling rates cities based on the Uniform Crime Reports but we don't necessarily know the logistics of Sperling's ratings system. Simply giving a 1 to 10 score is incredibly simplistic. I think that if we are going to rate crime based on Uniform Crime Reports, which I support because it reports a city's most violent crimes, then we should analyze each of the eight categories of crime from the report. Different services will conflict with their ratings. For instance, this site will present a rating based on UCR that will show one town having a lower crime rate than another but if you seek Sperling's input its ratings will suggest the opposite. I don't know which rating systems are the most legitimate. People may suggest that one service such as city-data or Sperling's is more reputable than the other but even the most trusted will have different ratings. I suggest that when evaluating crime from an objective/statistical stand point, use the Uniform Crime Report's categorical 'per 100,000' numbers. It presents the actual number of crimes in one box and right below adjusts it for a standard population of 100,000 people. This way a town of 20,000 can be accurately compared (i'm referring exclusively to crime numbers, i understand that there are differences in affluence of towns, cultures ect.) to a city of 2 million.

Also if you look at the most recent Uniform Crime Report, you can even find it on this site, you'll see that Champaign has higher crime rates than Urbana. I thought some of you would appreciate hearing that since previous posts seemed to imply one town having more crime than the other.

[EyesInTheSky]

I am not familiar with the methodology used by Sperling to derive their crime ratings. However the Sperling index, like the City-Data index, is a rough surrogate for summarizing the FBI index crimes used in the Uniform Crime Report, thus providing users a rough approximation of relative crime rates. The Sperling values are population adjusted, as are the City-Data crime indexes, allowing a reasonable comparison of crime rates between cities of different populations.

If users want to "look under the hood" of these summary index values, then the original population-adjusted FBI data sorted by specific crimes are obviously much better.

Your comments, IlWesleyanGuy, did get me curious about how the Sperling crime index values would compare to the City-Data crime index values, so here's the 2007 crime indexes for both methods and for all the cities under discussion:

Naperville, IL
Sperling values: Violent crime = 1, Property crime = 1
City-Data crime index: 98.5

National Average
Sperling values: Violent crime = 3, Property crime = 3
City-Data crime index: 320.9

Urbana, IL
Sperling values: Violent crime = 6, Property crime = 5
City-Data crime index: 400.5

Champaign, IL
Sperling values: Violent crime = 6, Property crime = 6
City-Data crime index: 455.9

Springfield, IL
Sperling values: Violent crime = 6, Property crime = 7
City-Data crime index: 735.9

Clarksville, TN
Sperling values: Violent crime = 7, Property crime = 6
City-Data crime index: 452.2

Detroit, MI
Sperling values: Violent crime = 8, Property crime = 8
City-Data crime index: 1064.2

St. Louis, MO
Sperling values: Violent crime = 8, Property crime = 8
City-Data crime index: 1158.6

One thing that really stands out in these numbers is City-Data classifies Springfield, IL as a much more crime-prone city than Clarksville, TN. Yet even though Clarksville has a lower property crime rate then Springfield, Clarksville has the higher violent crime rate of these two. This seems to suggest City-Data weights property crime much heavier than violent crime when deriving their crime index. Personally I do not agree with this; I suspect most people that are assessing the crime rate of a city are more concerned with violent crime than property crime.

One other thing: It was already acknowledged on this thread that Champaign has a slightly higher crime rate than Urbana. As I wrote earlier, the important distinction is crime in Urbana--especially violent crime--tends to be more pervasive, while violent crime in Champaign tends to be more concentrated. There are numerous large neighborhoods in Champaign, especially in the southern part of the city, that have very little violent crime. It would be difficult to make the same claim for Urbana.

[IlWesleyanGuy]

Originally Posted by EyesInTheSky

I am not familiar with the methodology used by Sperling to derive their crime ratings. However the Sperling index, like the City-Data index, is a rough surrogate for summarizing the FBI index crimes used in the Uniform Crime Report, thus providing users a rough approximation of relative crime rates. The Sperling values are population adjusted, as are the City-Data crime indexes, allowing a reasonable comparison of crime rates between cities of different populations.

If users want to "look under the hood" of these summary index values, then the original population-adjusted FBI data sorted by specific crimes are obviously much better.

Your comments, IlWesleyanGuy, did get me curious about how the Sperling crime index values would compare to the City-Data crime index values, so here's the 2007 crime indexes for both methods and for all the cities under discussion:

Naperville, IL
Sperling values: Violent crime = 1, Property crime = 1
City-Data crime index: 98.5

National Average
Sperling values: Violent crime = 3, Property crime = 3
City-Data crime index: 320.9

Urbana, IL
Sperling values: Violent crime = 6, Property crime = 5
City-Data crime index: 400.5

Champaign, IL
Sperling values: Violent crime = 6, Property crime = 6
City-Data crime index: 455.9

Springfield, IL
Sperling values: Violent crime = 6, Property crime = 7
City-Data crime index: 735.9

Clarksville, TN
Sperling values: Violent crime = 7, Property crime = 6
City-Data crime index: 452.2

Detroit, MI
Sperling values: Violent crime = 8, Property crime = 8
City-Data crime index: 1064.2

St. Louis, MO
Sperling values: Violent crime = 8, Property crime = 8
City-Data crime index: 1158.6

One thing that really stands out in these numbers is City-Data classifies Springfield, IL as a much more crime-prone city than Clarksville, TN. Yet even though Clarksville has a lower property crime rate then Springfield, Clarksville has the higher violent crime rate of these two. This seems to suggest City-Data weights property crime much heavier than violent crime when deriving their crime index. Personally I do not agree with this; I suspect most people that are assessing the crime rate of a city are more concerned with violent crime than property crime.

One other thing: It was already acknowledged on this thread that Champaign has a slightly higher crime rate than Urbana. As I wrote earlier, the important distinction is crime in Urbana--especially violent crime--tends to be more pervasive, while violent crime in Champaign tends to be more concentrated. There are numerous large neighborhoods in Champaign, especially in the southern part of the city, that have very little violent crime. It would be difficult to make the same claim for Urbana.

I pretty much agree with you but I think the Uniform Crime Reports makes it easy enough by listing the total number of crimes and then the crime rate for each particular crime. When you get these different rating systems people can be misled. As you said, one may put more weight on property crime and another violent and so forth and so on. I guess taking a minute to look at the numbers for the eight or so different crimes is too inconvient.

[JasmineFlower]

Originally Posted by EyesInTheSky

I'm a little torn on this thread because, on the one hand, C-U is sort of my adopted hometown and I really like it here but, on the other hand, it cannot be ignored that we have a fairly high violent crime rate, regardless of what others may perceive.
.

You don't seem too torn to me, you seem to be trashing the area, scaring people away from the place. Not sure where you have lived, but if you are from a bigger city and know what's it like to be aware of guns or drugs around and holding your purse when you're walking down the street, watching the news and having all of it be about violent crime. C-U is the opposite of this. If you think for one moment that C-U is somehow even remotely close to being as comparatively dangerous as St. Louis and Detroit, you're being completely unfair and unrealistic to the area, plain and simple. Its night and day. Not sure why you are trying to paint the area in this manner, but think you should keep it to yourself.

[sendmorecops]

I was joking about being scared away! I am a little agoraphobic, but crime has nothing to do with it. If the crime rate is about the same here as it is there, and i'm getting all of the things I don't have here (culture, health food store, more pedestrian friendly, etc.), then i'm definitely trading up!