Platteville or Dubuque?? (apartments, renting, houses)

[geekduo]

Ok, I need your help folks. After a long time of job hunting and some false calls, my husband finally landed a new job in downtown Dubuque, Iowa. We are in the house hunting phase of relocating and we're debating whether to live in Dubuque or Platteville. We need a three bedroom that allows a dog and is in a good school district. I'm making the trip down there to go see some places this week. Can you please help me make a list of pros and cons to living in each location? Consider things like schools, shopping, commute time, taxes, quality of life and anything else you can think of.
Also, we are renting, so the property taxes don't really matter.

[philogirl]

I live in Dubuque and have family that live in Platteville.
Dubuque is a college town with 3 decent size colleges but so is Platteville. Platteville is much smaller so the college can over run the town sometimes. Its only about a 20 minute drive from platteville to dubuque. Its all highway from platteville to dubuque but do consider the comute during the winter and snow. In dubuque you can get from one end of town to another in about 15minutes or so.
Dubuque is a great town . its a nice size. there are alot of good schools (bryant, irving, kenedy, eisenhower, rosevelt, washington, senior, hempstead) It is constantly expanding.
Finding a place that allows pets can be hard BUT i generally look for one bedroom apartments not houses. I would recomed checking out thonline.com for places if you havent already.