Best and Worst Medium Sized TN Towns (Franklin, Bristol: apartment complex, mortgage)

[jetjockey75]

I enjoyed the post, but after living near Tullahoma for several years, and making frequent trips through Franklin and Brentwood, I have a hard time believing that the cost of living in Tullahoma is higher than the other two. What was the definition of "cost of living" anyway?

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by JMT

Where did you find your stats on registered Democrats vs. Republicans? I ask because Cookeville has been overwhelmingly Democrat, even though Bush won both times there. I think in all of Putnam County there are only 2-3 elected Republicans, the rest are all Democrats, albeit very conservative Democrats. Traditionally, the Putnam County - Cumberland County line has been the line of demarkation between Democrat Middle Tennessee and Republican East Tennessee.

All of the information comes from Neighboroo. It is based on registered voters. I checked on Cookeville with a different website (Sperlings) after seeing your post. That site's data on voting was updated January 2006 and sorry, but it too says Cookeville is decidedly Republican. If those registered voters switch parties at the polling place, can't do anything about that. But data gathering places on voting always go with registered voter party affiliation info. Cookeville is 59% Republican, 40% Democrat and the rest are registered Independent. Both sites have the same numbers.

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by CAtoGA

LauraC, I love the way you write! You pulled up some great information that made me want to move even more.

I decided to do a little comparison from Johnson City, where I want to be, to Sebastopol, CA, which is where I am. Here's what I found.

Sebastopol population density - over 4,000 people per square mile! Talk about crowded! Air quality rated a whopping 18, and water quality only hit 30. The cost of living here, based on the US average being 100, is 211.4, with housing rating a 363.

Any questions about why I want to get out?

You did a good thing. You compared where you live now to a potential destination. This is good because you know, for example, what the population density feels like where you live now. I always say that before you compare two potential places to each other, you should compare them to where you live now.

The population density where I live now in MD is 3,945 people per square mile. It doesn't feel crowded to me but when I first saw that number and was comparing it to Oak Ridge, I thought someone forgot a decimal point on the MD location density number. But City Data says my Maryland town is only 5 square miles of land yet the population of Oak Ridge (which sits on 85.5 square miles of land) is very, very close to my MD town's population. That's why population numbers alone don't give you a feel for how crowded a place is. You need to see how much land that population is on. And after that, you need to visit because in the case of Oak Ridge, for example, a huge chunk of that 85.5 square miles is owned by the government and no one lives on it. I would assume that if you live in a place where there is a state park, for example, the population density numbers would be equally deceiving when you want to know how crowded a place is because no one lives in the park yet that land is being used to calculate the population density. And, if you plan to live in a tourist town, population density numbers don't mean a thing when you are trying to grasp crowded/congestion because tourists aren't counted in the population number. If you were looking at paper, Gatlinburg looks good but we all know the reality of how crowded it gets there because of tourism. You need to visit.

[JMT]

Originally Posted by LauraC

All of the information comes from Neighboroo. It is based on registered voters. I checked on Cookeville with a different website (Sperlings) after seeing your post. That site's data on voting was updated January 2006 and sorry, but it too says Cookeville is decidedly Republican. If those registered voters switch parties at the polling place, can't do anything about that. But data gathering places on voting always go with registered voter party affiliation info. Cookeville is 59% Republican, 40% Democrat and the rest are registered Independent. Both sites have the same numbers.

That is definitely interesting. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's definitely been skewing Republican lately. But Putnam County didn't even have its first Republican primary until a few elections ago even though it's been having Democrat primaries forever. Al Gore had his office in Cookeville back when he was senator, but as soon as he left things started looking better for the local Republicans. Putnam County didn't even elect its first Republican elected official until 1996 in the entire history of Putnam County, and even then it was a guy who had previously been a Democrat and only became Republican when he could never win as a Democrat. (He's now in jail, by the way, for killing his wildly popular Democrat opponent in 1998.)

I do remember that in the first county Republican primary, whenever that was (1994? 1996?) there were something like only 300 votes cast. But at the next one four years later, there were something like 3,000 votes cast in the local Republican primary.

Still, thanks for looking up those stats!

[ML10950]

You might also want to look at an area using the satalite image from google earth. It will give you a good idea on how densely populated an area is, and what type of road network is around the area. Just like zooming around in an airplane.

[MomsTn]

Originally Posted by ML10950

You might also want to look at an area using the satalite image from google earth.

I was really surprised when I opened up my Google Earth to look at an area just outside of Nashville. Everything that I had read said that this was a small town, but, when looking at it by Satellite, it showed the area extremely close to a very heavily populated area outside of Nashville.
This changed my mind really fast about looking into moving there.

[bbkaren]

I have a similar comparison (as a data matrix in excel format) of about 20 different cities in TN that we've looked into. It compiles all the Sperling data for each into a worksheet, in rows, which you can sort according to any parameter you're interested in.

It was very useful to us and if any of you would be interested in it, pm me and I'll get it to you. When I get home, I'll edit this post to list the cities that I included on the sheet.

(Well, it was very useful to us I say, but we still haven't decided for sure where we want to move lol. Maryville area is looking very good for us, and we've ordered the Blount County relocation package.)

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by jetjockey75

I enjoyed the post, but after living near Tullahoma for several years, and making frequent trips through Franklin and Brentwood, I have a hard time believing that the cost of living in Tullahoma is higher than the other two. What was the definition of "cost of living" anyway?

Okay my other post got cut for mentioning competing sites so I will tell you that in computing cost of living, one site only includes goods and services and the other site, in addition to goods and services, includes housing prices. When housing prices are included in the Cost of Living calculation , Brentwood becomes very expensive and Tullahoma becomes more affordable.

The original info I gave did not include housing prices in the Cost of Living calculation primarily because that site that will not be named has separate data on housing prices.

[bbkaren]

I couldn't seem to edit my original post, so:

Here are the towns I've got compared on my workbook:

Bluff City
Oliver Springs
Clinton
Eagleton Village
Friendsville
Fall Branch
Watauga
Hunter
Crab Orchard
Greenback
Allardt
Jamestown
Erwin
Maryville
Walland, TN
United States

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by TNBound

I was really surprised when I opened up my Google Earth to look at an area just outside of Nashville. Everything that I had read said that this was a small town, but, when looking at it by Satellite, it showed the area extremely close to a very heavily populated area outside of Nashville.
This changed my mind really fast about looking into moving there.

I do that, too, but the satellite shots aren't timely because I thought I could watch my apartment complex being built via satellite. I actually eyeballed the buildings when I was physically there but the satellite photo still showed the location as a grassy lot. The office building behind it has a big pond with a fountain that spews water so I was sure I was looking in the right place. Haven't checked it recently. One complex I checked via satellite shot, in another town, had a huge mall across the street. That came off my list pretty quickly.