5 Reasons to live/move to Dallas (Houston, San Antonio: doctorate, relocate to, tickets)

[bencronin04]

Originally Posted by Andicustherobot

Well I disagree with the good schools, after all, Dallas does have the highest dropout rate in the nation according to the Dallas Morning News. And being someone who has lived and gone to school in Texas, our public school system is great in the rich neighborhoods, but the lower income areas are actually rated a lot lower. The average rating is high, but it's still not an accurate picture.

As for the no income tax... Although that is true I still lose about 17% of what I earn due to Social Security and whatever other taxes, and pay 8% sales tax on anything I buy. Keep in mind I earn less than 20,000 a year. So that means that I live on basically $15,000 a year, and that's close to impossible if it weren't for my bike commuting. And jobs, for a guy who has two college degrees, and the only jobs that are out there are usually not that great, or high paying.

And for the low cost of living... Not really. The houses can be cheap comparatively, but it still costs a good chunk of money to rent a DECENT apartment here. I live in a pretty run down house in a nice part of town and I still pay top dollar. But you can always move to the ghetto and rent a really nice apartment there, granted, you run the risk of getting broken into, or shot, or other property crime).

The sports are true, we have decent teams, and our fans are fanatic.

And I definitely want to address the issue of safety. I looked at some stats on the safety of Dallas, and we're actually one of the more dangerous cities to live in. I know personally, I've had two car break ins, and one home break in. I've been held up downtown. I don't attract the attention either, I'm a pretty normal, well read, educated man.

A few other notes... we have two seasons... hot, and reasonably cold. There is usually a week to two week period of fall / spring. But usually it stays one of the two. It's been rated by multiple sources as the most DANGEROUS place to ride a bike or motorcycle. Bicycling magazine has it as the #1 worst city to be on two wheels. It's "ghetto" areas and it's "super fancy" areas are often seen on the same roads, only a mile or less apart. To give you an idea, my parents live in a 700,000 house, but you could go three residential streets away to an apartment complex that has break ins constantly (this is where I grew up). You will see a lot of intolerance. Dallas is too large. The traffic is almost as bad as LA some days. It takes me close to an hour to get home if I drive on fridays at 5PM, and I live four miles from where I work. Anyone thinking about living here... I would say rethink it. It's one of my least favorite cities, and there's a lot of residents that agree.

All of these are focus primarily only on DallasISD, and Dallas proper. I think the person posting was referring to other areas of Dallas at it is a LARGE area. Overall the schools in the DFW area are higher than average in the nation. Also, DISD has the #1 and #3 HS in the nation according to many rankings.

[BigDGeek]

I know this is from 4 years ago, but I can't not respond to this.

Originally Posted by azriverfan.

5 top reasons not to live in Dallas
1. Bad weather - Dallas has hot humid summers and cold windy icy winters. It's one of the few cities like OKC that has bad summers and winters.

Wisconsin has cold windy icy winters. Dallas barely has winter.

2. Evangelical and conservative people

These people aren't the majority in Dallas itself. I grew up in Dallas and I never found people here to be that much more evangelical or conservative than people elsewhere. Are there are a lot of Republicans? Of course...this is Texas. Are they bad people? By and large, no.

3. Boredom - There isn't a lot to do there. The city is flat and lacks mountains and natural terrain relatively speaking. There are no fun cities a drive away, unless you consider Houston, Austin and San Antonio to be fun cities which I don't. A fun city to me is NY, LA, Las Vegas or San Diego. Aside from shopping and sports, there isn't a lot to do there.

I agree with this 100%. Dallas is boring as hell if you don't care for dining out or shopping.

4. Southern Quality - Mentally and culturally, Dallas is still very southern....

LOL, no it isn't.

5. Suburbia -

Yup, Dallas sprawls a lot.

5 top reasons to live in Dallas
1. Great Schools - like another poster said, the high schools are great. Their colleges are substandard. Sorry but SMU and TCU are fine schools but nothing compared to Rice or the University of Texas at Austin. Dallas has so many nationally ranked top public schools. Many of the public schools in Dallas equivalent if not better than private schools in other cities

I agree about our universities but Dallas's public schools are basically daycare for juvenile delinquents.

2. Pro Business environment and Jobs - no income tax, great environment that lures companies. Dallas has always had this going for them and they have consistently grown and developed as a result of this. Dallas is one of those cities that if you were concerned with job security, you could probably get a job here and not worry about company downsizing or closing down

LOL, tell that to all the people I know who got RIF'd in the last five years. Some have given up looking for another job.

3 Low cost of living and Safe - And by low cost of living, it should be reworded to say "You can buy a mansion for very little" because I saw some amazing homes that would be considered steals any where else. And many of their homes are brick and not the cheap stucco you find out west I love the southern style antebellum homes with the modern midwestern twist. Safe - Dallas is one of those cities in which you don't really find a bad part of the city. Sure there is South Dallas but it's nothing compared to some parts of LA or even Houston. There isn't really a part of Dallas that would be afraid to drive through at night. I'm not saying I would get out of the car but there are neighborhoods or areas in other cities in which I wouldn't even drive through at night.

LOL, 99% of this is so wrong. Low cost of living, yes. Everything else, hell to the no.

4. Sports - all 4 major sports teams and championship teams at that. The Cowboys and Stars are dominant teams. The Mavericks went to the NBA Finals. The OU-Texas game or the Red River Rivalry is played here each year. Lots of great golf courses

IMHO that's not a good reason to move somewhere.

5. Great Place to Raise a Family - With the combination of safety, great school, jobs, economically stable environment, Dallas is an ideal place to a raise a family. With other cities, to get the kind of lifestyle you can get in Dallas, you would have to live their more expensive areas and it would cost you 3 times as much (Los Angelas, San Diego) thankfully I make enough that I can do that.

To some people that is a drawback. Dallas is way too family-friendly. Those of us without children get tired of it.

[BigDGeek]

I'm kind of "out of the closet" as a Dallas-hater, but that doesn't mean I can't see some of its good points.

5 reasons to live here:

1.) Decent, diverse job market. Not the best, far from the worst.
2.) Relatively low cost of living.
3.) Relatively mild winters, low odds of natural disasters like earthquakes, wildfires, floods, hurricanes, even tornadoes....
4.) Excellent shopping and restaurant scene (if you're into that). Shopping is practically a sport here. If it exists on planet Earth, you can probably buy it here.
5.) Good airport/route access (if that's your thing).

5 reasons not to live here:

1.) If you're over 35 and single, forget it; the scene here is terrible, especially for educated women...double especially if you're not Christian.
2.) The area is so large that you could plausibly spend more time in your car commuting than you spend with your children...and many a weekend has passed where friends and I have contemplated going somewhere, then dismissed it as being "too far away".
3.) Dallas has no soul; it has been a city of transplants/migratory mid-level executives as long as I can remember. People who move here usually aren't invested in making the city a nice place to live in the long term; all they care about is the small 4-7 year window that they're here. Dallas doesn't care about its own history or heritage at all. (Except maybe Lakewooder in Lakewood.) The result of this is that Dallas doesn't have much of a community feel to it. Even in the suburbs, people are migratory and often don't take the time to get to know their neighbors. It's especially difficult to get to know your neighbors if you don't have children. Usually the people boasting about how great their community is are parents of young children. There's a reason for that.
4.) This isn't exactly a theocracy, but Texas's laws haven't caught up with the way some of its big-city people think. You may hear a lot of support for progressive ideas like legalizing marijuana or gay marriage, but it's not going to happen in Austin for decades. Perhaps not in my lifetime unless the SCOTUS gets involved. Texas is very much behind the curve when it comes to socially progessive ideas. Some people consider this to be a good thing. I don't. There's not a lot of pressure from people in Dallas on our elected representatives to change this. I think this is because it's easy to give lip service to progressive ideas to appear "hip" when you know deep-down that nothing's going to change in Austin for a very long time.
5.) Ted Cruz. This state sent him to Washington. Keep that in mind.

Honorary mention:

The summers. The less said, the better. If you like suffocating heat and humidity and being eaten alive by mosquitoes while watching your lawn turn to straw due to watering restrictions, that might not bother you.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by Andicustherobot

Well I disagree with the good schools, after all, Dallas does have the highest dropout rate in the nation according to the Dallas Morning News. And being someone who has lived and gone to school in Texas, our public school system is great in the rich neighborhoods, but the lower income areas are actually rated a lot lower. The average rating is high, but it's still not an accurate picture.

As for the no income tax... Although that is true I still lose about 17% of what I earn due to Social Security and whatever other taxes, and pay 8% sales tax on anything I buy. Keep in mind I earn less than 20,000 a year. So that means that I live on basically $15,000 a year, and that's close to impossible if it weren't for my bike commuting. And jobs, for a guy who has two college degrees, and the only jobs that are out there are usually not that great, or high paying.

And for the low cost of living... Not really. The houses can be cheap comparatively, but it still costs a good chunk of money to rent a DECENT apartment here. I live in a pretty run down house in a nice part of town and I still pay top dollar. But you can always move to the ghetto and rent a really nice apartment there, granted, you run the risk of getting broken into, or shot, or other property crime).

The sports are true, we have decent teams, and our fans are fanatic.

And I definitely want to address the issue of safety. I looked at some stats on the safety of Dallas, and we're actually one of the more dangerous cities to live in. I know personally, I've had two car break ins, and one home break in. I've been held up downtown. I don't attract the attention either, I'm a pretty normal, well read, educated man.

A few other notes... we have two seasons... hot, and reasonably cold. There is usually a week to two week period of fall / spring. But usually it stays one of the two. It's been rated by multiple sources as the most DANGEROUS place to ride a bike or motorcycle. Bicycling magazine has it as the #1 worst city to be on two wheels. It's "ghetto" areas and it's "super fancy" areas are often seen on the same roads, only a mile or less apart. To give you an idea, my parents live in a 700,000 house, but you could go three residential streets away to an apartment complex that has break ins constantly (this is where I grew up). You will see a lot of intolerance. Dallas is too large. The traffic is almost as bad as LA some days. It takes me close to an hour to get home if I drive on fridays at 5PM, and I live four miles from where I work. Anyone thinking about living here... I would say rethink it. It's one of my least favorite cities, and there's a lot of residents that agree.

That's just too bleak and most of it is overstated. For example the violent crime rate is Dallas is lower and in most cases much lower than Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Baltimore, Orlando, KCMO, Buffalo I could go on for a long time. Dallas is nowhere to be seen on the worst 100 cities for violent crime. Actually it's not close to be being on that list.

[jason87x]

1. Job market is really strong. The main reason why so many are moving here.
2. The weather. Summer may be hot, but it's also dry year round, which makes even the routine 100 degrees feel not that bad.
3. People are for the most part friendly. The exception would be those with Dalitude.
4. Food. Mainly from restaurants, as there are so many.
5. Shopping.

I will have to add a sixth.

6. Nightlife. Many big clubs here.

[andyadhi01]

There's only one reason..l It's cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheaaaappppppppp..... Compared to CA, it's like moving to a devloping country cost of living.

[Sam McCord]

For me, the five reasons are as follows:

- It's not California
- It's not Los Angeles
- Lower cost of living
- Right-to-work state
- No income tax

Next five reasons:

- It's not California
- It's not Los Angeles
- Dallas actually gets some pretty decent amounts of rainfall
- The people/culture
- There is actually green vegetation abound

[BigDGeek]

Originally Posted by Sam McCord

For me, the five reasons are as follows:

- It's not California
- It's not Los Angeles
- Lower cost of living
- Right-to-work state
- No income tax

Next five reasons:

- It's not California
- It's not Los Angeles
- Dallas actually gets some pretty decent amounts of rainfall
- The people/culture
- There is actually green vegetation abound

Damning us with faint praise, don't you think?

[jgn2013]

Top 5 reasons to live in Dallas:

1.) Opportunity to meet a diverse array of people from all walks of life (most likely in Dallas proper, Richardson or Plano)

2.) Great food...lots of excellent mom and pop shops along with all your favorite chains

3.) Job prospects are better here than in most other places

4.) Centrally located so traveling to either coast is much easier

5.) Plenty of activities to keep you occupied



Top 5 reasons not to live in Dallas:

1.) A distinct me-first attitude (most often seen on US 75 during peak traffic periods)

2.) Summer sucks. Some places are more humid, but Dallas summers go on-and-on, and unlike the humid places, we don't have random thunderstorms and rainfall to cool things off. Its' like a cross between the tropics and the desert.

3.) Public schools are hit or miss. Some are excellent while others look like prison yards. School board members often forget that their job exists to help educate children.

4.) There's some natural beauty but I'd personally love more topography and greenery.

5.) People have an unusual attachment to their cars...likely because they insist on living 20 miles from civilization. The thought of walking to the store or going outside for reasons not related to exercise/gardening is almost a foreign concept.

[Sam McCord]

Originally Posted by BigDGeek

Damning us with faint praise, don't you think?

Not at all. It's just that words alone cannot fully articulate the seething burning hatred I hold for California.

I see cars over here with Texas plates, obviously new transplants to L.A., and I just have to shake my head and ask why... why would anyone ever leave a state that has its head screwed on right like Texas, for the high prices, obscenely high taxes, and high temperatures of California? I just can't fathom why anyone would make such a decision... at least willfully.