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I'm a current undergrad student in Montana who intend to move in mid-2017. After attending a graduate school, I'll likely stay put for a while, so I want some advice about the cities I'm considering: Champaign, Chicago, and DeKalb.
Things to Consider:
I live in Montana. We don't lock the door at night and we live 1/2 block from the university. Previously I lived 17+ miles out of town (28000), in an extremely rural area. I'm excited to be moving to somewhere where they are people, but don't throw me into the deep end.
I'll likely end up raising children in the city I end up moving to, so I'm looking for pet/family friendly areas.
Any advice from current/former residents on what living there is really like would be great! I've already looked up the crime/climate/unemployment/taxes/etc. and I want some on-the-ground-views.
Last edited by Count David; 07-16-2015 at 02:10 AM..
Champaign is the home of the flagship university(UIUC) with more than 35000 students. It is surrounded by cattle, corn and beans. It is what we export. Urbana is smaller and somewhat more quiet than Champaign. Urbana is where the university houses visiting professors and post grad students. .
The Chicago MSA is 10 MILLION people. It is the seat of Cook County government. Cook, with its 1000 sq ft size is he second largest county in America. It is very densely populated with many streets and heavy traffic on most days. DeKalb is located this area, too. And because of its vast size where you live will be determined by where you work unless you do not mind driving or riding on a train a couple of hours one-way.
I never met too many landlords who wants pets. If your animals are used to quiet and not a lot of traffic the constant noise, lights, sirens and movement of Chicago may adversely affect them.
Illinois population is nearing 13 million. it is the 5th largest state in the union. You will lock our car, your house, and your garage all the time. It is an expensive lesson to learn the hard way. Cart thieves can strip your car and leave it on blocks in less than 10 minutes. There are more cars than garages in Chicago. Private parking, gated parking, underground or covered parking, or rented garage can cost $400 per month in some places.
Illinois is a lot like Montana. There is millions of acres of crops and cattle with pockets of communities scattered throughout the state. Between Chicago and St. Louis, Central Illinois has a larger area of communities within a 100 miles. What you find between Peoria, Bloomington-Normal, Springfield and Urbana-Champaign is one STEM city, the only seat of state government, and two large university towns. Interspersed in this area are smaller cities, towns and villages, some as small as a few houses. But unlike Montana you'll find a community every 10-20 miles from border to border.
A friend in Montana moved from Fromburg to Laurel and thought she'd gone to Heaven. Move a lifetime resident from Chicago to central Illinois and they will complain about hell. The Midwest is 13 states. Chicago is the dominate city; it has no peers except LA and NYC.
You need to visit a few times and have a job before you ever move.
Champaign, Chicago, and Dekalb is a pretty big swath. I really don't know what you're looking for. You're not going to find anything Montana offers in Illinois. Where in Montana every big city is 1.5 hours apart, in Illinois every big city is 45 minutes apart and in the Chicago metro it's just big city after big city after big city, and then the biggest of them all, Chicago. Illinois is the heart of the Midwest and it's very flat, well not everywhere, but it will be very flat compared to Montana. On the bright side you can easily visit many states without a long drive, and while your drive might be through cornfields but there are little towns dotted everywhere.
Anyway, to the OP... if you don't want to fling the pendulum from one side all the way to the other, scratch Chicago of the list. There are nearly three times as many people here as there are in all of Montana -- and that's not even counting the suburbs where there's an additional 6.5 million.
Champaign/Urbana combine to form a single cohesive small urban area. The two meet in the middle of U of I's campus and you wouldn't know where one stops and the other starts unless you know what to look for. U of I is of course the primary focus of the area in terms of employment and the main influence on the general culture the city (or cities if you prefer). Medicine is another major employer in the area (Carle in particular) and Urbana is the Champaign County seat, so there's some county-wide government employment in the area too.
Since you're thinking about raising kids... the schools in both aren't great, particularly the Urbana school district. There are small towns around the city that many university and other employees commute from that have much better school districts. Mahomet is the preferred one, and housing prices reflect that fact. St. Joseph is a close second, again with housing prices higher than you might expect from a small satellite community out in the cornfields. Monticello is another possibility, though its distance from Chambana puts it at a slight disadvantage compared to the other two. Plus it sounds like the school district is having a hard time convincing the residents to pay for a badly needed new school.
There are some genuinely bad areas of Champaign and Urbana but they're pretty easy to avoid.
DeKalb... a "meh" town. Even though NIU is a major second-tier state university, its proximity to the Chicago suburbs means it's a de facto commuter school and the dorms practically empty out on the weekends. Consequently, DeKalb doesn't have that kind of funky "university town" feel one might expect from hosting a pretty substantial university. Unless you have a specific need to live in DeKalb proper, Sycamore is widely considered a more preferable option because it has better schools, a well preserved Rockwell-esque "Small town USA" downtown, and has none of the problems associated with being a university town such as marauding drunks on weekends. Marengo and Genoa are another possibilities for similar reasons, but you wouldn't have the same quick access to the amenities found in the DeKalb/Sycamore shopping strip.
One benefit of the general area is that you can get a taste of living near a very large metropolitan area while still living on its quiet fringes so you don't feel like you're surrounded by millions of people all the time. However, since you're looking at a potential long-term place to settle, something to consider is that DeKalb and Sycamore may not be on the fringes much longer. Chicago's suburbia has been marching outward for 150 years now and it's only a matter of time before DeKalb and Sycamore are completely subsumed into the suburban fold.
Well yes. We have many enclaves smaller than Fromberg, with large forests, and large ranches, too, and towns that are 10 -20 miles apart, especially in central Illinois. The whole of Montana with its 1M pop is more than 1/3 the size of Chicago. What we don't have - that is where I live - is the bitter Canadian cold winds, deep snows, and large mountain range(s).
Chicago- WHERE???? In Chicago is a big big issue. U of IL Chicago for example is surrounded by really rough neighborhoods while others are not.
DeKalb - Surrounded by cornfields, shouldn't phase you at all and you can still go into "the city" and get that experience.
Champaign - A little more develop than DeKalb, nice medium sized town.
I've attended Champaign, lived in Chicago and others places in the state and have visited DeKalb repeatedly.
My only REAL caution is which school you are looking at in Chicago, I grew up in a town of 5,000 and it's a shock to the system in general. Be VERY careful with some of the colleges located around the dicey parts.
Anyway, to the OP... if you don't want to fling the pendulum from one side all the way to the other, scratch Chicago of the list. There are nearly three times as many people here as there are in all of Montana -- and that's not even counting the suburbs where there's an additional 6.5 million.
Champaign/Urbana combine to form a single cohesive small urban area. The two meet in the middle of U of I's campus and you wouldn't know where one stops and the other starts unless you know what to look for. U of I is of course the primary focus of the area in terms of employment and the main influence on the general culture the city (or cities if you prefer). Medicine is another major employer in the area (Carle in particular) and Urbana is the Champaign County seat, so there's some county-wide government employment in the area too.
Since you're thinking about raising kids... the schools in both aren't great, particularly the Urbana school district. There are small towns around the city that many university and other employees commute from that have much better school districts. Mahomet is the preferred one, and housing prices reflect that fact. St. Joseph is a close second, again with housing prices higher than you might expect from a small satellite community out in the cornfields. Monticello is another possibility, though its distance from Chambana puts it at a slight disadvantage compared to the other two. Plus it sounds like the school district is having a hard time convincing the residents to pay for a badly needed new school.
There are some genuinely bad areas of Champaign and Urbana but they're pretty easy to avoid.
DeKalb... a "meh" town. Even though NIU is a major second-tier state university, its proximity to the Chicago suburbs means it's a de facto commuter school and the dorms practically empty out on the weekends. Consequently, DeKalb doesn't have that kind of funky "university town" feel one might expect from hosting a pretty substantial university. Unless you have a specific need to live in DeKalb proper, Sycamore is widely considered a more preferable option because it has better schools, a well preserved Rockwell-esque "Small town USA" downtown, and has none of the problems associated with being a university town such as marauding drunks on weekends. Marengo and Genoa are another possibilities for similar reasons, but you wouldn't have the same quick access to the amenities found in the DeKalb/Sycamore shopping strip.
One benefit of the general area is that you can get a taste of living near a very large metropolitan area while still living on its quiet fringes so you don't feel like you're surrounded by millions of people all the time. However, since you're looking at a potential long-term place to settle, something to consider is that DeKalb and Sycamore may not be on the fringes much longer. Chicago's suburbia has been marching outward for 150 years now and it's only a matter of time before DeKalb and Sycamore are completely subsumed into the suburban fold.
Chicago- WHERE???? In Chicago is a big big issue. U of IL Chicago for example is surrounded by really rough neighborhoods while others are not.
Not sure when's the last time you were in the general area but the neighborhood around UIC has cleaned up a ton. UIC decided they wanted to be a "real" university, annexed a bunch of land, built a bunch of dorms, and that set off a redevelopment wave. So now there are a bunch of students living in the neighborhood, both on-campus and off.
Not sure when's the last time you were in the general area but the neighborhood around UIC has cleaned up a ton. UIC decided they wanted to be a "real" university, annexed a bunch of land, built a bunch of dorms, and that set off a redevelopment wave. So now there are a bunch of students living in the neighborhood, both on-campus and off.
Good points, it has been a while.
I remember various campus buildings... have they removed the alarm\panic buttons that run down the hallways and are in the bathrooms etc?
I checked the stats and it's "pretty safe" now by Chicago standards which by "leave your door unlocked" Montana standards is pretty unsafe I would guess.
I think it would be more urban shock than someone from Montana is ready for though.
Just my 2 cents having gone from small town to Champaign\Urbana to Chicago back in the day.
I wouldn't leave my doors unlocked in Chambana or DeKalb either. For that matter, I probably wouldn't do it in Montana.
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We have many enclaves smaller than Fromberg, with large forests, and large ranches, too, and towns that are 10 -20 miles apart, especially in central Illinois. The whole of Montana with its 1M pop is more than 1/3 the size of Chicago. What we don't have - that is where I live - is the bitter Canadian cold winds, deep snows, and large mountain range(s).
