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Central in Nob Hill feels like a wider street and in my experience doesn’t have the same concentration of foot traffic or quite the same hippie, funky vibe as 4th Ave. That said, I know Tucson a lot better than I do Albequerque, and I haven’t been to Nob Hill in years, so I could be wrong.
Central Avenue is indeed wider than 4th Avenue but I don't know that that alone makes the 4th Avenue area so much more dense than Nob Hill. As I said, the two areas are built up in pretty much the same way over the same area in terms of actual structural density.
Nob Hill in Albuquerque is perhaps more upscale and refined overall than 4th Avenue in Tuscon, but it still has plenty of funky shops and establishments. It has everything one would expect in a cool urban business district. I mean, it has a food co-op, coffee and tea joints, craft breweries, hip and innovative restaurants and bars, board game library, comics store, book stores, record stores, furniture and antique stores, vintage and second hand stores, upscale men's and women's boutiques, salons, barber shops, bike shops, smoke shops, tattoo parlors, herbal remedy store, indie movie theater, murals and funky public art pieces everywhere, etc. I don't see how it lacks in any hippie or funky way. In fact, it has an actual hippie store called Birdland and a sexual learning center. I don't know how much more hippie or funky you can get.
Central in Nob Hill feels like a wider street and in my experience doesn’t have the same concentration of foot traffic or quite the same hippie, funky vibe as 4th Ave. That said, I know Tucson a lot better than I do Albequerque, and I haven’t been to Nob Hill in years, so I could be wrong.
Based on my personal experience, Nob Hill can get plenty of foot traffic, especially on the weekends when a bunch of UNM students flock to the bars, restaurants, and what not. Popular venues in that area include Monte Vista Fire Station, Starbucks, the Imbibe nightclub, Chocolate Dude, Il Vicino, etc. Nob Hill has been one of my favorite parts of Albuquerque, as well as the historic old town.
That said I did go to 4th avenue in Tucson but that was November of two years ago. And I can now recall it being similar to Nob Hill (bars, restaurants, nightclubs which are frequented by university students on the weekends).
As for university areas, I'd even contend the university area in Tucson isn't better than Albuquerque's area around UNM. The U of A is of course much bigger than UNM, and also attracts much larger numbers of students who aren't local. That's why all the student housing has been built in Tucson, which Albuquerque has no answer for. Those students depend much more on walking, bikes and transit to get around.
As a matter of fact, only three student housing complexes were built in recent years, two of which are off campus. Lobo Village opened around 2011 and is located near the CNM main campus and Isotopes Park. And another complex was built in downtown this year in time for the fall semester. Casas Del Rio was completed on campus in 2012, replacing Santa Ana Hall, a couple SRC buildings, and the parking lot behind Santa Ana and the La Posada dining hall (called LaPo by many students). The other residence halls on campus are still standing: Hokona (renovated in 2010), Santa Clara, Laguna, Devargas, most of the SRC, Redondo Village, Coronado, and Alvarado.
Tucson is my number 1 favorite out of the 3 medium sized desert cities. It's very appealing and really gorgeous. I don't like Albuquerque or El Paso much. I felt both Albuquerque and El Paso were exact duplicates. Many people say Tucson and El Paso are exactly alike and that Tucson and Albuquerque are exactly alike.
However, in my book, Tucson is the best. El Paso and Albuquerque are a tie. If you really think about it, looking west of Albuquerque looks exactly like looking west in El Paso. It has that valley. The shopping and the entertainment is about the same and both are in the absolute middle of nowhere. Santa Fe is more like the Las Cruces of Albuquerque. Tucson is also really clean, far cleaner than El Paso from what I've seen.
I dunno!
I lived in ABQ 21 years, El Paso 3, and now 4 years in Las Cruces. (don't laugh!) I spend time in Tucson, enroute to doctor follow-ups in PHX. The overlap and differences in the 3 sister towns of Tucson-ABQ-EP are real and interesting. Your comment on the view west from the ABQ and El Paso being similar really struck a chord in its truth: an escarpment or rise into vast, sunny uplands of sandy hills or extinct volcanoes.
Land ethic and water use really separates each, different than what many see on the surface. Crime, civility, and climate are easier to see. Though overlap and differences there, too
Central Avenue is indeed wider than 4th Avenue but I don't know that that alone makes the 4th Avenue area so much more dense than Nob Hill. As I said, the two areas are built up in pretty much the same way over the same area in terms of actual structural density.
Nob Hill in Albuquerque is perhaps more upscale and refined overall than 4th Avenue in Tuscon, but it still has plenty of funky shops and establishments. It has everything one would expect in a cool urban business district. I mean, it has a food co-op, coffee and tea joints, craft breweries, hip and innovative restaurants and bars, board game library, comics store, book stores, record stores, furniture and antique stores, vintage and second hand stores, upscale men's and women's boutiques, salons, barber shops, bike shops, smoke shops, tattoo parlors, herbal remedy store, indie movie theater, murals and funky public art pieces everywhere, etc. I don't see how it lacks in any hippie or funky way. In fact, it has an actual hippie store called Birdland and a sexual learning center. I don't know how much more hippie or funky you can get.
The main difference between Nob Hill and 4th Avenue regards two things:
Route 66 Art Deco is a theme in Nob Hill which makes it unique and actually makes it seem classier and cooler than 4th Ave which doesn't really have anything that unique as far as it's overall theme.
However, Central Ave is a main thoroughfare in Albuquerque and 4th Avenue is not. Therefore, 4th Ave doesn't have the distractions of through traffic that Central has and 4th Ave can be easily blocked off for street party activity without disrupting traffic patterns around Tucson. To do that on Central causes huge problems and can't really be done routinely.
That being said, Knob Hill is unique. I don't think there is a college district anywhere that is like it. 4th Ave isn't much different than a lot of other college town party areas.
And also, UA campus is way better than UNM. This is not to say that UNM is bad but UA has a great layout, the palm lined mall. It has some grassy areas while UNM has so much concrete. And the main gate on the west end has cool old buildings and palm trees leading to Old Main. Finally UofA has quirky retail stuff at main gate and some entertainment and retail on the north and south sides of campus.
I do like the UNM pond and the architecture is unique looking. But in the grand scheme of things UNM is pretty average as far as college campus beauty. UofA is probably above average.
Being from New Mexico myself, I've been to all three cities quite recently.
I can say that the three cities have some similarities and some differences. In some ways Albuquerque reminds me of El Paso, in terms of the terrain and how some parts of the cities are laid out. Yes
And speaking of construction, Albuquerque always completes construction on time or ahead of schedule, especially when involving construction on the freeways. El Paso is still slow with reconstructing I-10 on the West Side, and traffic has been getting worse.
Yes, a big reason I moved from crazy EP to Las Cruces, though ABQ road construction esp. freeways are superior. Helps to be the big fish in NM regarding ABQ for roads over some of Tucson's surface streets of near-off-road quality. EP is finally getting better there, but it's still a slow grind being in the same state and competing with larger fishes for $ like DFW, HOU, etc.
Last but not least, Albuquerque has a historic old town which feels like a centro historico in a lot of cities in Mexico. But El Paso doesn't have one.
EP has gorgeous, historic neighborhoods scattered around like Rim, Kern Place, Manhattan Hts, plus historical, refined downtown architecture poking out of all the slumlord, borderland stalls. Compare what ABQ or Tucson have to EP's recent San Jacinto Plaza, or what UNM or UA have to UTEP's recent Centennial Plaza. But some of EP's centro is now gone, as happened in downtown ABQ to some degree...fortunately Old Town was mostly spared. And Tucson has the Barrio Viejo area, Armory Park, and some other historic places. Tucson's new Mercado District respects that pattern too, though pricey. Those can easily compete with Old Town, Old Mesilla near me, etc on historical value, land use, aesthetics, sense-of-place, or with many other historic places in the US.
The Sandia Mountains are greener than the Franklin Mountains, just to add.
Yes! Same with the Catalinas also greener. Back to the Sandia vs. Franklin Mtns: less elevation change and mass in cross-sections = less life zones. The west side of the Franklins go from Chihuahuan desert scrub to SW chaparral at the top, and that's it except Chihuahuan desert grassland on the east side.
The ABQ Sandias don't have the EP Chihuahuan desert scrub, but it has the others...CD grassland at the base, SW chaparral / live oak / cactus in the lower 1,500 ft. Then the Sandias keep going into a colder Transitional conifer woodland, then Montane and Sub-Alpine forests the next 3,000+ feet up. Plus the conifer woodland and Great Plains steppe mix on the eastern bases as part of exurban ABQ.
Tucson I would say reminds me nothing of Albuquerque or El Paso, but rather its own city.
To me they seem somewhat alike but with notable differences, like different sisters from the same family that came into their own from being apart.
Enjoyed your take! All 3 places have things I like and don't, so it's good to be 45 minutes to 4 hours from each. But right now, I want a breakfast burrito from Golden Pride in ABQ...my fave!
As to climate, Tucson-El Paso-Albuquerque are rather equally spaced on at least a few key temperature patterns. And all 3 are arid. Though this is not all factors to base an ecoregion or even part of an ecoregion or garden on, the distinctions are not as crazy as the exaggerations.
In fact ABQ and the central NM valley are at the upper end of the Chihuahuan ecoregion, El Paso is near the dry but middle part of the Chihuahuan ecoregion, while Tucson is in the Sonoran ecoregion. That by decades observing and studying flora, fauna, and climatology.
Heading north to Santa Fe or south to Presidio provide similar changes and spacing of temperatures.
I forgot to add in more comparisons of Albuquerque's Big-I with El Paso's spaghetti bowl.
Similarities:
- Both the Big-I & Spaghetti Bowl are the busiest freeway-to-freeway interchanges in Albuquerque and El Paso, respectively
- They are stack interchanges with high-speed flyovers
- The bridges are painted in similar colors, except that at the Spaghetti Bowl, they're darker hues of turquoise and salmon pink, whereas at the Big-I, the colors are brighter
Differences:
- The Big-I was originally built in 1966, Spaghetti Bowl around 1972-73
- The original Big-I had all directional ramps, including left-hand entrances and exits; and it was designed to handle 40,000 vehicles per day. Traffic loads in the late 1990s exceeded the design limits, and hence, the interchange was rebuilt in 2000-2002.
- The Spaghetti Bowl was originally built as a stack interchange, and to this day is still original. Although flyovers are being built to directly connect Ciudad Juarez from US 54 & I-10, the interchange isn't being completely rebuilt unlike the Big-I.
- The Big-I is a five-level stack because of frontage roads; Spaghetti Bowl is a four-level stack.
El Paso is a straight shot from Tucson and Albuquerque on I-10 and I-25, respectively. Going from Albuquerque to El Paso, you'll be on I-25 most of the time, but the last 45 minutes you're on I-10. Tucson, on the other hand, is not a straight shot from Albuquerque. The route is indirect as it requires you to backtrack. The fastest way to get to Tucson from Albuquerque is you exit I-25 at Hatch and turn onto NM 26, which takes you to Deming and completely bypasses Las Cruces, and from there you get onto I-10 west.
If you can have direct freeway connections with Albuquerque & El Paso and with Tucson & El Paso, perhaps there ought to be a new interstate built (I-23?) to directly connect Albuquerque with Tucson (similar to I-11 providing a direct connection with Las Vegas & Phoenix once it's completed).
Ive travelled thru and stayed at all three. A huge factor is being missed here. El Paso is part of a bigger metro which includes Juarez. Also, Ft Bliss is an international base with joint operations with Germany military and NASA in nearby White Sands missile range.
One morning I met a retired lady moving from Tucson to El Paso. I asked her why, the cooler climate was a small factor. The largest was more international flights. She had two grown children living in Europe nd they can get to El Paso easier than Tucson she claimed. Another time driving thru from Houston to Phoenix, I stopped to grab motel in Las Cruzes as I frequently did without reservations without issue. This time a number of the motels were fully occuppied and not due to NMSU football. Nasa had a high tech test in the missile ranger and shut down US70 for the test and NASA and German partners flew in to observe the test. There long was a German Battalion stationed in this area I was told. Heard the October fest was a great one
My point is I believe despite the low incomes and crime of adjoining Juarez, El Paso punches' above its weight in many ways as my anecdotes illustrate
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