Boston to Dallas

[Lakewooder]

Please explore Downtown, Uptown, West Village, Victory Park, CityPlace, Turtle Creek, Oak Lawn, Southside, North Oak Cliff, Deep Ellum, Knox-Henderson and my beloved Lakewood/East Dallas! If you are going to be working downtown you can have a 5-10-15 minute commute or take the train or McKinney Ave. Trolley or the bus. No need to be further out. You will find all the fun things to do are in those areas and you will like being close.

Most of Dallas was built in a suburban manner originally, but is evolving into a sophisticated, cosmopolitan urban feel in the areas mentioned above - although Lakewood is a bit more like the Park Cites but not as 'hoity-toity' as someone mentioned.

Richardson and Plano are definitely suburban. The passe' kind of suburban.

For biking, hiking, walking etc - see:

http://www.katytraildallas.org/site/PageServer

http://www.angelahunt.com/district14/trails/eastdallasveloway.asp (broken link)

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/081306dnmetwhitetocktrail.19b43f7.html (broken link)

http://www.whiterocklake.org/ - this is where our marathon is held.

http://www.watermelon-kid.com/places/wrl/wrl.htm

http://www.whiterocklakefoundation.org/

http://www.fairpark.org/index.cfm?FuseAction=Page&PageID=1000000 (broken link)

http://www.dallasfarmersmarket.org/

http://www.artsdistrict.org

http://www.victorydallas.com/index_flash.html (broken link)

[TriumphOfTheSprint]

It sounds like something more in Dallas would be a better fit from your description. Neither Plano nor Richardson is particulary urban (understatement there ).

You might look at Lakewood, Lake Highlands or North Dallas inside 635. These will put you much closer to the urban amenities, as well as reducing a downtown commute. You would also be close to SMU for grad school.

[kaykay]

I have to agree that neither Richardson or Plano have a particularly urban feel to them. But since you asked about Richardson or Plano, I would say Richardson feels a little more "urban" to me.

[socketz]

Richardson is home to the Telecom corridor...TI/Actel/Lucent/Verizon...

Not sure I'd paint that as strictly suburban. The residential areas do have a suburban feel as they are displaced from the retail/eating, so a car is required. When I think urban, I think walk to things...

[GoPadge]

Also the commute to downtown would have the potential to be very ugly. Not impossible, but certainly not a quick commute. (Though there is the Dart rail along Hwy 75.)

[kaykay]

Yeah, the commute would not be easy to downtown from Richardson or Plano. It just depends, though, on what you want. If you feel that living in the suburbs is where you want to be and you feel it's worth the commute, then it's certainly do-able. My husband commuted from Plano to downtown for years. Most of the time he did use Dart as GoPadge just mentioned (express bus before the rail was completed)

[dtkn]

Hey Parsec, I'm also from MA and have similar situation, planning to move to the DFW area. My wife and I just got back from a 3 day trip to checkout Plano/Richardson/Garland/Rockwall areas. So I'm sharing some of my findings here with you.

We're asian ourself and want to live around the asian communities. Richardson and Garland have large asian population, particularly, Vietnamese. These are the very nice place. I like Richardson a lot. Both Richardson and Garland are no Boston or Cambridge, but as a Bostonian, I wouldn't call it the suburb myself. These are decent size cities, Garland has over 200K people. The metropolitan civilization life is completely different from where we are. (also, people here are more friendly). You'll have access and close to everything in Garland/Richardson/Plano area. You'll have no problem to get to places you said and activities you want to do.

Commute to downtown Dallas? Sorry to say, it'll be tough if you're driving during peak hours. I was here during the week days and tried to go out and experienced myself. highway 75 is lining up in the morning during rush hours. For comparison, It's worse than 128 and 93 going into Boston in the morning. I didn't drive all the way to Downtown Dalas but did a quick estimation with my GPS and live traffic data, it'd take 50minutes for 20 mile route from Richardson to center of Dallas. It'd normaly take less than 30min during off-peak hours.

For housing, $300K would get you a nice house in this area. Houses are big in size here, compare to what we have in MA. From what I found, average sq for 4br house here is about 2600-3200. It'd be hard to find a 4br smaller than that here. Housing is very affordable in this area. But keep in mind and take into account of the cost of living also include high property tax+school tax, higher utility prices, insurances, sale tax etc..

These are my findings from this area. Some info could be wrong. So, if you're local and see things that not agreedable, please feel free to jump in to help to correct.

Hope to see you in DFW area.