Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I LOVE Columbia. It's an absolutely incredible little city with amazing dining, tons of very cool local retail, a beautiful setting (almost like a Shangri-La for people who enjoy biking, hiking, and other outside sports). *sigh* I lived there for ten years (in the downtown area) and miss it like you wouldn't believe. Anyway, back to reality (the shockingly gritty suburbs of DC).. lemme know if you have any specific downtown area/Ward 1 questions.
As far as "dangerous" (I had difficulty not giggling when I read your question), I suppose it's all relative, but I used to ride my bike home (to my apartment in downtown Columbia) at 3 am and never had a crime committed against me and never really felt that I was in danger, so.. *shrug*
What are the negative changes over the last few years?
well to name a few:
property values have dropped at least 10%......meaning if you bought a house and now need to sell it you will be losing thousands, like $10-50 thousand to sell and that does not count the real estate commission.
the town is anti growth.........therefore, stopping new business and recruitment of new people moving into town. (maybe the new leadership, council can make a difference, but actions will only tell.)
they just passed the regulation you can now have chickens in your neighborhoods yes their is a limit of three, but if every few houses decides to have three chickens this will add up quickly to a mess. Who wants to move into a subdivision and next week your neighbors get chickens.
yes, this is absolutely a "college town" that revolves around the Univeristy of Missouri. 60,000 + people show up to the football games (if that tells you anything).
and this is not great news! Mizzou has had major scandals with their coaches (i.e. Quin Snyder and now the current basketball coach)---in the last 5 years.
They just ridded a mayor of many years (he retired) that tried his hardest to turn the town into a retirement community. He put bicycle trails everywhere, near the interstate, major streets and through neighborhoods as well.
Columbia is very anti- youth/children. We cannot even get a YMCA here, although the smaller communities have one.
Yes the Wal-mart heirs are here, but you would never know it. They use their money elsewhere or in the University. (nothing against them, it's their money so they can do as they see fit.) If it's used here, the normal community member would not or does not know it.
I could name the positive things as well, but these things are reality. Every town and it's positive and negatives, but I have been here for near 20 years and yes, the last five years (longer than five) have been very hard on this town.
Too many conflicting opinions about what the town "should be" and no common goals for a plan of where to take this community.
It appears as most everyone is very self centered and very little sense of community; like everyone is out for their own and no one has a common goal. It's sad!
If you would like to hear the positive's I can post in a different post. Columbia has it's positive's; it really just depends on what you are looking for in a town.
Last edited by Sunshine11; 04-25-2010 at 08:48 AM..
I LOVE Columbia. It's an absolutely incredible little city with amazing dining, tons of very cool local retail, a beautiful setting (almost like a Shangri-La for people who enjoy biking, hiking, and other outside sports). *sigh* I lived there for ten years (in the downtown area) and miss it like you wouldn't believe. Anyway, back to reality (the shockingly gritty suburbs of DC).. lemme know if you have any specific downtown area/Ward 1 questions.
As far as "dangerous" (I had difficulty not giggling when I read your question), I suppose it's all relative, but I used to ride my bike home (to my apartment in downtown Columbia) at 3 am and never had a crime committed against me and never really felt that I was in danger, so.. *shrug*
I'm just curious how long it's been since you lived in Columbia? I won't even let my son, age 15 walk alone from home to a friends house.....(at anytime of the day)....and yes, we live on the south side of Columbia (for those who don't know, south is considered the better side to live by many).
Yes you can bike because Mayor Hindman put bicycle trails everywhere, but I would not do it alone....especially not a 3am. If you were to try that these days you would likely be attacked, robbed, mugged or shot.
Crime has risen like crazy. I know there are crazys everywhere in the world, but Columbia now has it's fair share. It's no Mayberry, that's for sure.
Sunshine11, I was last in Columbia (happily riding my bike in the middle of the night ) in late '06.
"I won't even let my son, age 15 walk alone from home to a friends house.....(at anytime of the day)....and yes, we live on the south side of Columbia (for those who don't know, south is considered the better side to live by many)."
This is honestly one of the most bizarre things I've ever read on C-D. And that's all I have to say about it. In fact, I need to spend less time on C-D, I think... correcting the ridiculously copious misinformation found here (about communities throughout the US - not just Columbia) is like trying to remove all the sand from the Sahara with tweezers.
Whatever you do, Sunshine11, do NOT move to the suburbs of a city larger than Columbia (for instance, the suburbs of DC, where I live). I think it would be quite harmful to your general state of mind.
Sunshine11, I was last in Columbia (happily riding my bike in the middle of the night ) in late '06.
"I won't even let my son, age 15 walk alone from home to a friends house.....(at anytime of the day)....and yes, we live on the south side of Columbia (for those who don't know, south is considered the better side to live by many)."
This is honestly one of the most bizarre things I've ever read on C-D. And that's all I have to say about it. In fact, I need to spend less time on C-D, I think... correcting the ridiculously copious misinformation found here (about communities throughout the US - not just Columbia) is like trying to remove all the sand from the Sahara with tweezers.
Whatever you do, Sunshine11, do NOT move to the suburbs of a city larger than Columbia (for instance, the suburbs of DC, where I live). I think it would be quite harmful to your general state of mind.
Well I must say that calling my post "ridiculous copious misinformation" (unless I am taking it wrong) and "bizarre" in another part of your post is sad. The things I posted are absolutely true.
Anyone can pull up the Columbia Daily Tribune and read the criminal activity almost daily. They are placing camera's in the parking garages on campus due to the fact someone got attacked walking to their car. They attackers were kids and teens (not even Mizzou students).
Not to mention the professor who was found burned to death and stuck in his car on campus in a garage. That perpatrator was never found.
We have had three emails in the last three months from people getting robbed or attacked walking alone late night on or near campus.
We have had teens shooting teens. Needless to say, my son can tell me all kinds of stories about the gangs kids are joining within his schools.
This year alone, four rockbridge high school students have died. Not from being shot, just misfortune. But it is still reality.
I have a daughter in high school and we get automated calls everytime something has happened at the school. My phone rings monthly with those informational calls.
When my kids were in elementary school I would get letters two to three times a year about a van or a car driving around trying to pick kids up walking home from school.
So, yes it's sad, but it's reality and true.
I am not degrading Columbia, Mo. by any means. Columbia, Mo. has it's positive's, but the past 5 years have been very hard on Columbia.
Shall you choose to move here and ignore the true information, than that's on you. But, trust me, I have not posted untrue information.
Columbia Missouri has three colleges and the university of Missouri as well. Yes you need to watch your back. This is a city full of con artists and people looking for something for nothing. I live in Mexico and will not drive the 37 miles to columbia to even shop. I go to St. louis instead which is 140 miles.
I also understand that Columbia has recently been seeing more than it;s share of gangs.
Columbia has its share of crime. But, relatively speaking, Columbia is low on crime. The key word is "relatively." If you are used to being in a small town, some areas of Columbia can probably seem terrifying. On the other hand, if you've been in large cities, the worst areas of Columbia aren't even in the same universe. The fact is that there aren't many cities of 100000 people that don't have "bad" areas.
Crime is not rising particularly quickly in Columbia...there are weeks/months when there's an uptick, which gets media coverage. And there are weeks/months when it recedes...which, sadly, gets a lot less notice. (Police and law enforcement, like all other public resources, are scrambling for civic $$, and do what they can to maintain their budget...sadly, this isn't conducive to saying "Everything is good!") At any rate, the MO SAC - Data and Statistics - Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Statistical Query (http://www.mshp.dps.mo.gov/MSHPWeb/SAC/data_and_statistics_ucr_query%20-%20backup.html - broken link) shows the amount and types of crime over periods of time in Columbia. You find that crime in Columbia is about 10-15% greater than it was about a decade ago. Of course, the population is about 15-20% higher too. To be more specific:
The crime index total for 2009 was 4419; violent crime index was 501
The crime index total for 2008 was 4357; violent crime index was 392
The crime index total for 2007 was 3948; violent crime index was 617
The crime index total for 2006 was 3577; violent crime index was 460
The crime index total for 2005 was 3572; violent crime index was 478
The crime index total for 2004 was 3454; violent crime index was 429
The crime index total for 2003 was 3708; violent crime index was 422
The crime index total for 2002 was 3851; violent crime index was 410
The crime index total for 2001 was 3936; violent crime index was 439
I think there was a clerical error in the violent crime index, and a couple of months from 2007 (which, by the numbers, had the lowest number in years) were added to 2008. Together, the two years average about 500--which is what the total was in 2009.
Anyway, what this shows is that overall crime has definitely risen in the past five years--faster than the population growth. But in the previous five years, overall crime actually dropped. And violent crime (other than the error year of 2007) has more or less gone up on a path that mimics the population. On the whole, you see this. The population of Columbia in 2000 was 84,531. The estimated population in 2008 was 100,733. Let's just say 86,000 in 2001 and 101,000 in 2009. We see this:
Population increase from 2001-2009: 17.44%
Crime index total rise from 2001-2009: 12.27%
Violent crime index rise from 2001-2009: 14.12%
So crime in Columbia, over the past decade or so, is rising more slowly than the population.
When it comes to something like crime, we shouldn't allow sometimes irrational fears and misperceptions to get confused with reality. Like I said, I am sure that some people from smaller towns are more leery of Columbia than they should be, in the same way that people from bigger areas think it's a safer place than it is. But let's not let individual experiences color the facts--and the facts are quite clear. Columbia, MO is a safe city, and crime is not on some sort of wild upswing on the whole.
Columbia Missouri has three colleges and the university of Missouri as well. Yes you need to watch your back. This is a city full of con artists and people looking for something for nothing. I live in Mexico and will not drive the 37 miles to columbia to even shop. I go to St. louis instead which is 140 miles.
I also understand that Columbia has recently been seeing more than it;s share of gangs.
So let me get this straight...you're avoiding columbia because it's unsafe to go to one of five most dangerous cities in the country? Look it up.
IMO, Columbia acts more like a suburb of St Louis than a transitional isolated college town. It has so much St Louis influence. I would even guess that you probably will see more Cards paraphernalia there than Mizzou, or at least it's close.
I have never thought of it as dangerous at all though.
Well, those of you who think that the police aren't sufficiently active enough in Columbia should be heartened to see this. Most people, however, including people around the world who've seen it today, are disgusted.
For the poster immediately above-- I used to call Columbia the last, existential suburb of St. Louis, which I thought was weird, considering that it's equidistant to both StL and KC. There are a lot of Cardinal fans here, but then there's a lot of Cardinal fans in a lot of places throughout the midwest. And there aren't many Royals fans anywhere outside of KC, although I think there's kind of a following in the rural areas around KC. I also think a lot more MU students come from StL than from KC, because KU is a lot closer to Kansas City than MU is.
And there are a couple of Imo's pizza places here, which is disgusting. Sorry, but it is.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
) in late '06. 
