Quote:
|
Originally Posted by gregsbabe1
where is everybody from? I am trying to find out who hate Phoenix the most, seems like alot of people from the east hate it. I am from the west and we loved it enough to move there. We moved from Oregon to the east coast and hated it, I wonder if that is a pattern, to many differences.
|
I'm from all over, really; but originally, Detroit. I think that your perspective changes based on your experience and the things that are important to you. I'm a relatively young, single guy, and an educated professional. Weather is a priority for me, but not as much as having an educated, centralized population of professionals in an urban environment, commercial districts, culture, and nightlife, young people, great schools & universities nearby are a definite plus- all those things, to me, make a city great. And Phoenix just does not have them. "Downtown" Phoenix, if you can call it that, frankly, is an abomination. And that's notwithstanding the significant crime & corruption issues in and around the core of the city.
I also like having an abundance of options as far as outdoor activities nearby, like skiing, biking, hiking, etc. While Phoenix does have some excellent parks & rec areas near the core of the city, any more it's gotten so crowded during peak season that it's almost impossible to find a parking spot, let alone enjoy the experience of being outdoors in the desert's unaltered state. They've built so much and paved over the desert and expanded the megalopolis so far out that I feel trapped in the city; it takes so long to get out of the urban jungle now and escape to Flagstaff on weekends during the summer, with the traffic, that it's not worth it to me. And of course, there's the summers. 6 months of weather when it's just too hot to do anything outside. There's nothing I hate worse than being confined to an air-conditioned cave, for any part of the year. There are so many other cities out west where that isn't ever an issue.
I've lived a fair number of places, in different regions of the country, both east and west. And my fairly obvious overall negative opinion of Phoenix is based on comparison to those places. I just find that everywhere I've lived, and everywhere I continue to go, it always occurs to me just how much NICER those places seem than Phoenix, for so many reasons. Just got back from San Diego not long ago, for instance. Good lord, how much nicer a city that is than Phoenix... I can't even begin to describe the difference. It's like night and day.
Anyway, to each their own- personally, I'm not sure that I've noticed a pattern here of people from east vs. west tending to like or dislike this city more. The things that make a community great are the same anywhere you go, and Phoenix, to me, is just so sorely lacking in them that it might be comical if I weren't actually living in it. I'm not complaining b/c I'm just a "big-city" person. Ann Arbor, for instance, had much more to offer in terms of those types of things than Phoenix, and its population is probably a hundredth the size. I loved Ann Arbor. You don't have to be a huge city to have a centralized, nice downtown, safe and interesting neighborhoods, a cultural, urban vibe, commercial districts, etc; just a real one. Phoenix isn't. But it thinks it is, which is pretty sad.
Welcome to City-Data.com forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with 400,000 other registered members. User profiles and some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your free account you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 14,000 posts/day about local topics and you will see fewer ads. Within the last few months our forum was cited in an article in 15 newspaper and in a story on AOL's homepage.
08-14-2006, 04:50 PM
Linear Mode
