[SunFlower33]

I live one town over from Hartford and I won't even let my daughter consider Trinity because of the area of Hartford it is in.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by JayCT

Metropolitan Hartford has a population of over 1.2 million and is the 37th largest in the country, so yes it is a large city. I am not sure what a part of the city being a food desert has to do with this. Again that is likely true of any city. Jay

No. Hartford is 125,000 of mostly poor people with a Baltimore-level ghetto and crime rate. It's not even as large as Springfield Ma which is invisible. The suburban sprawl around Hartford is not Hartford.

Food desert certainly pertains to someone asking about Trinity College. If you want to grocery shop at Trinity, you'd have to go a mile through the 'hood to the nastiest Walmart on the planet.

[SunFlower33]

Originally Posted by lawmom

Thanks for the replies. It is our understanding that kids don't go off campus that much anyway, or at least that's her plan.

Don't be fooled. There's not much for them to do ON campus... of course they go off campus.

[lvrpl]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

No. Hartford is 125,000 of mostly poor people with a Baltimore-level ghetto and crime rate. It's not even as large as Springfield Ma which is invisible. The suburban sprawl around Hartford is not Hartford.

Food desert certainly pertains to someone asking about Trinity College. If you want to grocery shop at Trinity, you'd have to go a mile through the 'hood to the nastiest Walmart on the planet.

Which Walmart are you referring to? Flatbush?

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

No. Hartford is 125,000 of mostly poor people with a Baltimore-level ghetto and crime rate. It's not even as large as Springfield Ma which is invisible. The suburban sprawl around Hartford is not Hartford.

Food desert certainly pertains to someone asking about Trinity College. If you want to grocery shop at Trinity, you'd have to go a mile through the 'hood to the nastiest Walmart on the planet.

It is still considered a large city and the sprawl around Hartford would not be there if there was not the city center. The only difference is that the suburbs are independent towns and not part of the city itself. Jay

[MikefromCT]

Can we please stop treating the city’s suburbs as part of the city? They’re not. They are separate, and there’s a reason why suburbanites choose not to live there — because as others have correctly pointed out, too often the residential neighborhoods WITHIN city limits are undesirable, unappealing and unsafe, and that’s not the fault of the suburbs. With regards to Trinity, the campus is very nice but the neighborhood in which it’s located is not. I try to be a patron to Hartford establishments, and while I’m happy to spend time there, there’s no way I would live there. Couple of weeks ago, I went to Real Art Ways with friends, and while we love the theater, the immediate surrounding area is not well-kept. Old mattresses, random pieces of garbage and debris line the street around the corner, and this is just one example of what disincentivizes people from living there (if not returning there). It’s the same thing with Trinity; it’s safe because of intense security around the campus. Once you leave the confines of the campus, you run the risk of being susceptible to crime. Even in the worst of areas, you have law abiding people who go about their business, but the vast majority of them will not help you if you are in trouble.

[lawmom]

Wow, lots to think about based on these replies. It's interesting that the school gets over $70k a year and is fairly selective in accepting students.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by MikefromCT

Can we please stop treating the city’s suburbs as part of the city? They’re not. They are separate, and there’s a reason why suburbanites choose not to live there — because as others have correctly pointed out, too often the residential neighborhoods WITHIN city limits are undesirable, unappealing and unsafe, and that’s not the fault of the suburbs. With regards to Trinity, the campus is very nice but the neighborhood in which it’s located is not. I try to be a patron to Hartford establishments, and while I’m happy to spend time there, there’s no way I would live there. Couple of weeks ago, I went to Real Art Ways with friends, and while we love the theater, the immediate surrounding area is not well-kept. Old mattresses, random pieces of garbage and debris line the street around the corner, and this is just one example of what disincentivizes people from living there (if not returning there). It’s the same thing with Trinity; it’s safe because of intense security around the campus. Once you leave the confines of the campus, you run the risk of being susceptible to crime. Even in the worst of areas, you have law abiding people who go about their business, but the vast majority of them will not help you if you are in trouble.

This

The rose colored glasses spin about Hartford is kind of over the top. You can't glom the ghetto into the same bucket as Simsbury, Avon, et al. Hartford is a small urban city. Everything else in the metro area is a suburb. Downtown Hartford is the demographics of a classic edge city. At 5pm, everybody flees to the suburbs.

Here's the Neighborhood Scout neighborhood breakdown on crime rates in Hartford. The Trinity neighborhood is bad and the neighborhoods southwest and west of there are among the worst in the country. That's not just annoying property crime. It has big violent crime issues. Not the kind of place you'd want to put an 18-year-old suburban girl from Falmouth Foreside or wherever else you want to pick in Maine. Maine is the whitest state in the country. I'm not sure the OP quite understands urban poverty in failed cities since Maine doesn't have them. Lawrence, MA is the closest place to Portland like that. You're not going to say 'yeah, but Andover...'.
Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowed

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

This

The rose colored glasses spin about Hartford is kind of over the top. You can't glom the ghetto into the same bucket as Simsbury, Avon, et al. Hartford is a small urban city. Everything else in the metro area is a suburb. Downtown Hartford is the demographics of a classic edge city. At 5pm, everybody flees to the suburbs.

Here's the Neighborhood Scout neighborhood breakdown on crime rates in Hartford. The Trinity neighborhood is bad and the neighborhoods southwest and west of there are among the worst in the country. That's not just annoying property crime. It has big violent crime issues. Not the kind of place you'd want to put an 18-year-old suburban girl.
Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowed

Your link only gives the overall crime rate for the city. To get neighborhood crime rates you have to pay a fee so no one can see or confirm what you are talking about. However, right on the first page of this link it says that Trinity College/Broad Street is the 5th safest area in Hartford.

And no one is trying to put a "rose colored glasses spin" on this. It is a city so there are urban issues and problems with crime. What city does not have this? That is why I said that she needed to be careful. There are 2,300 students at Trinity. As the OP noted, it is an expensive school. If this was truly as unsafe as some people here claim, the school would not exist or not be so pricey. Jay

[missionhill]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

This

The rose colored glasses spin about Hartford is kind of over the top. You can't glom the ghetto into the same bucket as Simsbury, Avon, et al. Hartford is a small urban city. Everything else in the metro area is a suburb. Downtown Hartford is the demographics of a classic edge city. At 5pm, everybody flees to the suburbs.

Here's the Neighborhood Scout neighborhood breakdown on crime rates in Hartford. The Trinity neighborhood is bad and the neighborhoods southwest and west of there are among the worst in the country. That's not just annoying property crime. It has big violent crime issues. Not the kind of place you'd want to put an 18-year-old suburban girl from Falmouth Foreside or wherever else you want to pick in Maine. Maine is the whitest state in the country. I'm not sure the OP quite understands urban poverty in failed cities since Maine doesn't have them. Lawrence, MA is the closest place to Portland like that. You're not going to say 'yeah, but Andover...'.
Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowed

This is such rubbish! First of all, the scout data are all locked up. Second, crime rates in urban neighborhoods with high poverty will be relatively high. Are they not just as high in Fields Corner and Ashmont in Dorchester, where plenty of people with substantial assets are more than willing to invest and live? The South End of Boston is a classic case of poor and rich side by side-- Have those conditions driven away the rich or in any way discouraged discriminating people from redeeming its beautiful bowfront brick houses? No they have not. Trinity College has been thriving in Hartford for decades. If they had anything like the problem you describe Trinity would be a "failed college" (to paraphrase your favorite epithet). The OP can be sure that Trinity students are not routinely assaulted in the streets of Hartford. Third, Hartford city is absolutely central to the Hartford metro area. The suburbs revolve around Hartford and its jobs and political and cultural institutions just as suburbs do in any metro area in the US whether or not the suburbs are substantially incorporated into the city (as in Indianapolis and Jacksonville) or not at all, as in Hartford. None of these towns would be big suburbs if not for the central city they revolve around. It's a small city but a relatively big, interconnected metropolitan economy.