Moving from Florida (Boston, Cambridge, Somerville: apartments, rent, car insurance)

[lucara]

My fiance and I have lived in Florida just about our whole lives and we HATE it! We are looking for a new place to live in Massachusetts seems to fit almost everything we are looking for.
Right now we are looking at Cambridge. We would like to move to a place that fairly small and quite but is within 15-20min of Boston.

What is everyone's opinion on the cities that I mentioned and what cities would you all suggest?

I prefer the quite, country type living where as my fiance prefers the large cities and people so we are hoping to find the best of both worlds.
We both love the outdoors and look forward to FINALLY having a snowy Christmas and other regular season changes for once.
We are also looking for a VERY LOW crime area.

The job problem is a bit of a worry. What do you think of the job availability in Boston and surrounding areas?

Also, what is the price of living compaired to Orlando, FL?

We are hoping to take a trip in June to visit Boston and the surrounding areas to kind of get a feel for it ourselves.

Thank you all in advance!

[brightdoglover]

I only see Cambridge mentioned, and it serves none of your interests. It's a real city of about 100,000 people, a low crime rate for a comparable city, but hardly a small town. It's 15-20 minutes from Boston by train, true. There is nothing country about Cambridge, and it's very expensive housing and usually parking costs, and car insurance. It's a great urbane environment.
Jobs? Depends on what you do for work, if you have or need a car to get to work (a lot of tech work is in the suburbs).
The cost of living is very high in all areas of life here, especially housing, whether you rent or buy.
Cambridge is not remotely quiet.
I suspect you might do better in a small city say, in Pennsylvania or such. New England is a very tough place to start out or to make it.

[lrfox]

One big difference that you may notice between New England cities and Florida cities is Population Density.

Floridian cities really lack dense neighborhoods like New England cities do. Sure, some of the Coastal Florida cities have towering condos on the water, but next block over you have single family homes with small yards, trees, parks, etc. New England is very different. Most of our cities, even the really small ones (under 100,000 people) have dense neighborhoods with wall-to-wall multi-family houses. These cities are usually puncuated by a dense downtown.

Floridian (and many southern and western cities) are specifically designed for the automobile commuter. What this means is that even the BIGGEST cities in FL are suburban in setup. There may be some apartment buildings, condos, high-rises, etc but there is an ample amount of grass, parking lots, and open space right around those condos/high-rises, apartments, etc which make even the biggest cities in Florida feel suburban and open.

It's EASY to live in Orlando hand have your own 1/2 acre lot with backyard, driveway, garage, etc. Not so in comparably sized New England cities. Cambridge, like most cities in New England is VERY densely settled (neighboring Somerville is the most densely settled city in the U.S.). You will need to go MUCH further from Boston to find a country feel.

If I had to recommend a city in New England for you based on the info provided, it would be Portland, Maine. It's very small (pop 63,000) but it's the economic and cultural center of Maine and therefore has most of the amenities you would need. It has a nice downtown which would please your husband, and you're in Maine... so it doesn't get much better for the outdoors. The city itself has VERY little crime, and the majority of it is suburban (read: single family homes with little yards) in nature.

It may be more of a compromise on your fiance's part as Portland feels a BIT isolated away from bigger cities (2 hour drive from Boston- the nearest big city), but it doesn't feel completely like the boonies. I can honestly say as a city boy (I've lived in Providence RI and Washington DC) I can safely say that while Portland is great, I can't wait to move back to a bigger place again.

Portland is beautiful, safe, and there's enough to keep most people occupied. The schools aren't wonderful, but they're not terrible either. It's a good place to bring up a family if you're considering doing that. While you'll certainly have white a "white Christmas" in Portland, the weather is milder than most of Maine as it's on the coast.

I would suggest that if you come up to Boston to look around, take some time out to drive down to Providence and look around and maybe upto Portland to get a good grasp on New England cities. Boston is big... it's bigger than anything in Florida (yes, even bigger than Miami). Providence is more of a medium size city and Portland is much smaller. If you visit those places, you will get a good grasp on what variety there is in New England.