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I've only been to Boulder, Morgantown, and Norman.
Morgantown seemed dumpy to me, West Virginia is probably a top 5 contiguous state in terms of natural beauty but the human development there is very run down.
Norman is very nondescript. It's similar to College Station, TX, which probably also could have been on the list. It's very flat and generic, but fairly nice and well-kept from my experience. The climate in this part of the country is rough.
Boulder is beautiful and would be an outstanding place to live outside of the price tag, which is a bit absurd to be honest (I'd pick California at that level of cost of living, personally).
Last edited by whereiend; 03-23-2022 at 03:06 PM..
I've only been to Boulder, Morgantown, and Norman.
Morgantown seemed dumpy to me, West Virginia is probably a top 5 continental state in terms of natural beauty but the human development there is very run down.
Norman is very nondescript. It's similar to College Station, TX, which probably also could have been on the list. It's very flat and generic, but fairly nice and well-kept from my experience. The climate in this part of the country is rough.
Boulder is beautiful and would be an outstanding place to live outside of the price tag, which is a bit absurd to be honest (I'd pick California at that level of cost of living, personally).
I wouldn't be surprised, if certain parts of Morgantown's outer neighborhoods were a little dumpy and depressing. That said overall, Morgantown(as far as WV cities and towns go) was surprisingly nice, and one of the few places in that state I'd consider living in, IF a job opportunity came up for me in WV. In comparison I've been to some other places in WV such as Huntington, and just my opinion but Huntington didn't look as nice as Morgantown did. I mean I did like Marshall University's campus, but honestly Huntington(hate to say it) wasn't too special outside of that college's campus. And also in my opinion, WVU's campus was nicer too, vs. the one for Marshall University.
Yes I do agree with you about the human development standards in WV not being as good as other states, but let's remember WV has always struggled with poverty issues. I wish that state could find a way to transition a lot of places in that state, for a post-coal economy that is starting to be obvious they'll have to deal with. Instead of politicians there, pretending they always can rely on coal production for their economy.
I am obviously bias since I live there, but College Park is great. It is inexpensive compared to the rest of the DC area, has a great university, close to DC, has tons of transit and bike lanes, and it is changing for the better with all the new development.
I'm going to hazard a guess:
The title of this thread refers to "college town satellites."
While some of the cities on this list are part of the MSAs (Ann Arbor, Boulder, Chapel Hill, Norman) or CSAs (Lawrence, KS) of the nearby large city, they are all far enough away from those cities to have developed their own identities and have fallen into the metropolitan orbit only due to the growth of the nearby metropolis (or, in the cases of Boulder, Lawrence and Ann Arbor, both cities growing towards each other).. Thus they're better classed as "satellite cities," like Wilmington, DE, is to Philadelphia or Newark, NJ, is to New York.
With one exception that I'll address below, Boulder, 27 miles from downtown Denver, is the closest college-town satellite city in this group. Chapel Hill is a little more than 30 miles from Raleigh, and all the others are 40 or more miles away from the nearby metropolis.
College Park, MD, OTOH, is a suburb of Washington, a mere 11 miles and a 25-minute Metro ride (plus walking at either end) from the Capitol. The University of Maryland aside, it doesn't have an identity distinct enough from that of the District (which it almost borders) for people to think of it as a place in its own right the way they think of every one of the places on the poll.
Norman is almost as close to OKC as College Park is to DC: not quite 20 miles. But OKC hasn't been as big as it is now for as long as many of the other cities in this discussion have been large metropolises. Norman, I'd say, also has an identity distinct from OKC thanks to it being just far enough away to not have been a suburb until more recently.
I will add this coda, however: Chapel Hill is actually a core city of a metropolitan area with three of them (Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill). Raleigh being the state capital, I could see why the OP picked it as the center and Chapel Hill the satellite.
The title of this thread refers to "college town satellites."
While some of the cities on this list are part of the MSAs (Ann Arbor, Boulder, Chapel Hill, Norman) or CSAs (Lawrence, KS) of the nearby large city, they are all far enough away from those cities to have developed their own identities and have fallen into the metropolitan orbit only due to the growth of the nearby metropolis (or, in the cases of Boulder, Lawrence and Ann Arbor, both cities growing towards each other).. Thus they're better classed as "satellite cities," like Wilmington, DE, is to Philadelphia or Newark, NJ, is to New York.
With one exception that I'll address below, Boulder, 27 miles from downtown Denver, is the closest college-town satellite city in this group. Chapel Hill is a little more than 30 miles from Raleigh, and all the others are 40 or more miles away from the nearby metropolis.
College Park, MD, OTOH, is a suburb of Washington, a mere 11 miles and a 25-minute Metro ride (plus walking at either end) from the Capitol. The University of Maryland aside, it doesn't have an identity distinct enough from that of the District (which it almost borders) for people to think of it as a place in its own right the way they think of every one of the places on the poll.
Norman is almost as close to OKC as College Park is to DC: not quite 20 miles. But OKC hasn't been as big as it is now for as long as many of the other cities in this discussion have been large metropolises. Norman, I'd say, also has an identity distinct from OKC thanks to it being just far enough away to not have been a suburb until more recently.
I will add this coda, however: Chapel Hill is actually a core city of a metropolitan area with three of them (Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill). Raleigh being the state capital, I could see why the OP picked it as the center and Chapel Hill the satellite.
I'm sure this is true of some of the other cities on this list but 50 years ago there was probably four to five miles of mostly open country between the southern edge of the OKC metro (Moore, OK) and Norman, OK.
Even though it wasn't much... you distinctly felt that you were going to a different community. Now that area is pretty much all developed. You never leave town on your way to Norman. The southern edge of Norman is now the southern edge of the OKC metro.
Oxford (Miami of Ohio) to Cincinatti or Dayton
Kent (Kent State) to Cleveland or Akron
Bowling Green (Bowling Green State) to Toledo
Ypsilanti (Eastern Michigan) to Detroit or Ann Arbor
For more, Stillwater is a double satellite college town from being an hour's drive away from both downtown Oklahoma City and downtown Tulsa.
Despite the fact that their metropolitan areas touch each other, I don't think anyone in the Greater Philadelphia region considers any city in the Lehigh Valley a "satellite" the way they do Wilmington, DE, which does have its own suburbs, too.
Same goes for Lancaster (Franklin & Marshall College), which also borders Greater Philly. Reading, OTOH, is regarded as a satellite of sorts.
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