Denver or Aurora? (Eagle: apartment, low crime, house)

[Authoresslin]

I might be moving from California to the Denver area... I don't know a lot about this except for that Denver and Aurora are kind of close together... My dad is pretty likely to land a good job at a hospital in Aurora, but my parents are torn between Denver and Aurora as a place to live.

So my question is to all you people who live in the area; which do you prefer, Aurora or Denver?

Which one has better schools? What schools are there? (high schools and middles)

What are some good neighborhoods? I don't want to wind up in a place with a lot of crime or anything.

Anything else I need to know. I've never moved before and I have no idea how to make sure my crazy parents don't end up moving us somewhere we'll hate.

[vegaspilgrim]

It's all one big intermeshed metro area of 3 million people. Denver has almost 600k, Aurora has 300k. This ain't no small town. Both municipalities span the entire gamut from rags to riches. It all depends which neighborhood, which area you're talking about. Use the search tool to look up past threads about Aurora. You'll find a lot of them.

[awarren09]

Originally Posted by vegaspilgrim

It's all one big intermeshed metro area of 3 million people. Denver has almost 600k, Aurora has 300k. This ain't no small town. Both municipalities span the entire gamut from rags to riches. It all depends which neighborhood, which area you're talking about. Use the search tool to look up past threads about Aurora. You'll find a lot of them.

Well said. If you can afford too live in a nice neighborhood in Denver i would suggest that over Aurora. In Denver you will be less than 30 mins to anywhere in the metro area. Aurora doesn't have a ghetto but it does have some high crime areas you want to stay away from. Aurora is very suburban in the sence that it doesn't have a downtown and is for the most part just a large mass of homes and appartments.

[the3Ds]

Originally Posted by Authoresslin

I might be moving from California to the Denver area... I don't know a lot about this except for that Denver and Aurora are kind of close together... My dad is pretty likely to land a good job at a hospital in Aurora, but my parents are torn between Denver and Aurora as a place to live.

So my question is to all you people who live in the area; which do you prefer, Aurora or Denver?

Which one has better schools? What schools are there? (high schools and middles)

What are some good neighborhoods? I don't want to wind up in a place with a lot of crime or anything.

Anything else I need to know. I've never moved before and I have no idea how to make sure my crazy parents don't end up moving us somewhere we'll hate.

What you are going to find is that "Denver" as an address isn't that huge. The actual city of Denver is totally surrounded by suburbs and the city of Aurora takes up nearly the whole East Side. I read somewhere that Aurora is one of the largest suburbs in the country. Keep that in mind and I'm sure you can understand that with any large city, there are good parts and bad. Aurora has a "reputation" that is fairly well deserved because there is a very large chunk that you want to stay out of (if you can help it). If you find a house or apartment that seems like a major bargain...it's probably in an area you don't want to be.

The middle and high schools in Aurora that you may be interested in are in the Cherry Creek School District. Look there for a good education, low crime, a wide variety of home prices, fairly close proximity to your dad's work and suburbia. It's not "cool" because it's suburbia, but the schools are good and depending on what you're looking for (a big sports school...Grandview HS is a top contender for nearly every sport it seems), you'll probably find it out this way. Look on the map for the toll road called the 470 and get off at Smoky Hill Rd. You'll find Grandview, Eaglecrest, Smoky Hill and Cherokee Trail High Schools. All of them are rated as either "high" or "excellent" by Colorado standards (so you have to take that with a grain of salt), but the basic facts are that you'll get a good education and live in a low-crime rate area. And it only takes 45 minutes to get downtown so for the various things you'll want to see or events you want to attend, it's a reasonable drive.

Here's the Cherry Creek School District map that can help you as a good reference point. http://www.ccsd.k12.co.us/documents/...istrictMap.pdf