[westernwilly]

As an ex-pat from Chicago, I love to keep up on my old city. In doing so, I found this recently.
The 6 Best Train Trips To Take From Chicago: Chicagoist

In short. 6 best Train Trip to take from Chicago. #2 is Kalamazoo! Good read, check it out. Also Grand Rapids makes the list at #6 (behind Memphis).

[pistonslova17]

All I said was my experience in Kalamazoo was bad. The town may have a decent amount of nice areas, but downtown is NOT a nice place to be.
Putting this out here for you Kzoo lovers, which is a pretty accurate cite before you back up the town again..10 Most Dangerous Cities in Michigan - Page 2 of 2 - Home Security Shield News Report

Why would Kzoo be ranked so high if according to you guys it's paradise lol

[Indentured Servant]

Originally Posted by westernwilly

Kalamazoo is like every other college town with a high number of students (more than 1/3 of the city's population). Nearly every student lives under the poverty line and it is not because of lack of opportunity or education, but it is by their own choice. In other words, they are students for Christ sake!

Here is the link to the full article:
Does the city of Kalamazoo really have one of the highest poverty rates in the country? (Julie Mack blog) | MLive.com

Read the full article instead of cherry picking figures and you will get the truth. Those are bad figures and article exposes them as the data did not take into account large student population that are not working by choice or need.

Here is a link to the NYT list in question. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...ml?ref=us&_r=0

Note: Kalamazoo is #5 on the list. Bloomington,IN (University of IN) is #3 and College Station,TX (Texas A&M) is at #9.
It is a list of only cities that are over 65,000. Most towns with large universities are smaller than 65k so they do not make the list, other wise all ten would be college towns. Cities with populations over 100k with large universities have enough non students to off set the non working or part time working student population. That 65k to 95k is the sweet spot were students can really effect the demographics of a city. Note: the average age in Kalamazoo is 26.

Now, please stop showing bad data to justify a bogus claim that Kalamazoo is a stink hole. Nobody that has been there in recent years would ever think that.























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Then what about Ann Arbor? I think it is true about college towns as East Lansing and Mt Pleasant have poverty rates above 40%, but that is because those cities are really small and hence the college students impact is much greater. Keep in mind that the poverty rate in America is 15% and anything over that is seen as a high rate of poverty. If you take out the college kids from the equation there would still be a poverty rate in Kzoo much greater than the national and Michigan's rate of poverty.

[westernwilly]

Originally Posted by Indentured Servant

Then what about Ann Arbor? I think it is true about college towns as East Lansing and Mt Pleasant have poverty rates above 40%, but that is because those cities are really small and hence the college students impact is much greater. Keep in mind that the poverty rate in America is 15% and anything over that is seen as a high rate of poverty. If you take out the college kids from the equation there would still be a poverty rate in Kzoo much greater than the national and Michigan's rate of poverty.

Kazoo has a population of 75k with 35 k students. That is 47% of the population. Now the city has a 38% poverty poverty rate.

Ann Arbor has 41,000 more people (116,000) to counter the student population. Ann Arbor is not land locked like Kalamazoo so it's city proper has been able to expand with suburban sprawl. The city of Kalamazoo has been land locked since 1963. Most of the newer homes over the last 50 years with the more affluent residents, have been built in the suburbs surrounding the city. The MSA is over 326k with the largest suburb (Portage) having over 47k.

The students are not living in the suburbs and the bulk of the area's middle class are not living in the city. However, we have seen a shift here in recent years. Boomers are flocking to condos downtown and Millennials are buying old homes in downtown neighborhoods in order to raise their families. Times are changing as poverty has been shifting from the city to the suburbs. Like in many other cities across America, attitudes toward urban living has changed and more people with means are rejecting the suburbs and are embracing urban life.

[westernwilly]

Originally Posted by pistonslova17

All I said was my experience in Kalamazoo was bad. The town may have a decent amount of nice areas, but downtown is NOT a nice place to be.
Putting this out here for you Kzoo lovers, which is a pretty accurate cite before you back up the town again..10 Most Dangerous Cities in Michigan - Page 2 of 2 - Home Security Shield News Report

Why would Kzoo be ranked so high if according to you guys it's paradise lol

I have already stated how much I hate bad data. Most of what you find on the web is crap. .....but I am sure they sell a lot of security systems with their list.

If you want real crime rates that were gathered using factual numbers and were put together right (often these web sites use the crime stats for Kalamazoo area codes (about 160,000 people) and then they use only the population of the City of Kalamazoo (75,000) as a multiplier, because they are too lazy to look up the actual population of each zip code.

If you want the truth, go to the FBI crime states or just stay where you are at right now, leave the forum section and look it up at City-Data.com
//www.city-data.com/city/Kalamazoo-Michigan.html