Young family, loop(south/west), lincoln/gold coast? (Chicago, Evanston: cheap apartments, rentals)

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Aleking

If you pick up a provincial/country attitude in AA, you're going to hate Chicago

I don't think so. The relative impact of a few bad apples in a small city is higher than the relative impact of a few bad apples in a much larger one. Chicago isn't Seattle, and it has a fair number of idiots, but it just plain has a broader range of everything compared to AA.

[jonnynonos]

Originally Posted by emathias

I don't think so. The relative impact of a few bad apples in a small city is higher than the relative impact of a few bad apples in a much larger one. Chicago isn't Seattle, and it has a fair number of idiots, but it just plain has a broader range of everything compared to AA.

It may have a broader range of everything, but the poster basically said that the ideal was Seattle.

Ann Arbor on average IMO is much more like Seattle than Chicago.

Chicago is a blue collar democratic city; Ann Arbor is cut from the intellectual/radical 60s stripe.

Honestly for someone to encounter racism in Ann Arbor is so far outside the normal realm of experience that it is somewhat like saying you don't want to move to Wilmette because your friend once saw a drag queen there.

It may have happened but it is utterly antithetical to the normal experience.

It is also not a small town. It may have about 100,000 people in it but in terms of sophistication it is more sophisticated than many towns five times as large and probably every town with a similar population. The cultural offerings, restaurants, nightlife and quality of life there leave little to be desired.

In fact my only gripe with it is the in-your-faceness of all the granolas. I don't mind them but I find it exhausting to be around it constantly.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by jonnynonos

Chicago is a blue collar democratic city; Ann Arbor is cut from the intellectual/radical 60s stripe.

Sorry, but you can't compare a city of 110,000 people to a city of 2.7 million. Chicago has a MUCH MUCH MUCH more complex urban system than Ann Arbor has and frankly a much more complicated one than Ann Arbor will have. For this matter, it depends on what part of Chicago you're in. If you were talking about say hmmm Garfield Park, then sure it's blue collar. If you're talking about people who live in areas like the Loop, West Loop, River North, Gold Coast, Streeterville, much of the South Loop, a vast majority of both Lincoln Park and Lakeview, etc then it's pretty white collar. Chicago's white collar population is definitely growing too all the time.

[jonnynonos]

How much time have you spent in Ann Arbor?

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by jonnynonos

How much time have you spent in Ann Arbor?

A good amount, and it doesn't matter. You're comparing a city of 110K people to a city of 2.7 million. It doesn't work. You have to break Chicago down. I'm not comparing them, but I"m more speaking about your "blue collar" thing. It's extremely misleading to present Chicago in such a way that every single part of it is blue collar. Not true and you know this.

[AArch]

Originally Posted by marothisu

There are certainly provinial parts of Chicago as others have hit on - and they're usually the ones where a lot of Big 10 grads tend to settle in such as Lincoln Park and Lakeview. However, there's plenty of non provincial people in these areas. It's a wash basically IMO. I went to college in a small city of Iowa, and although people like to say it here - it can be much worse in the midwest. I have experienced it. However, yes there are some close minded people here still, but I think people on here really exaggerate it. Anyway:

I think this sentiment is most in tune with what she's worried about. But I also agree with the other posters in the thread saying that AA is one of the most liberal places in the states and I had a great time here: I'm just trying to be receptive to her feelings in terms of scouting out our next place as I feel it's the least I can do after having made a Tokyo girl live in a small midwestern town (no matter how liberal - perhaps that's the key, not so much race as access to cultural events/etc) for 4 years. She's a classy girl, worked in galleries and the MoCA of Tokyo and it was just hard adjusting to life in a smaller town. So when I used provincial/country it was less about racial attitudes and more about cultural amenities or even experiences.

As for the other questions: I'll be working about a block west of SAIC. Perhaps some useful info: I started commuting by bike last February, taking my daughter 6 miles to her preschool in downtown AA, and then riding 5 miles back in the direction of home. I love commuting by bike, but would prefer to avoid this needless doubling back twice a day, living near her school would be great, so all the places mentioned seem great, if anything most are almost too close to consider the hassle of taking out the bike, so if there are places a bit further out, but are still walkable neighborhoods, those would be considered as well.

Finally, in terms of budget my wife was the only one working full-time this past year, making 50k. Our rent in AA was 1.4k, so in terms of a budget number we were expecting something around 2k ish given the bump up in market with the increase in salary we'll be moving to.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by AArch

I think this sentiment is most in tune with what she's worried about. But I also agree with the other posters in the thread saying that AA is one of the most liberal places in the states and I had a great time here: I'm just trying to be receptive to her feelings in terms of scouting out our next place as I feel it's the least I can do after having made a Tokyo girl live in a small midwestern town (no matter how liberal - perhaps that's the key, not so much race as access to cultural events/etc) for 4 years. She's a classy girl, worked in galleries and the MoCA of Tokyo and it was just hard adjusting to life in a smaller town. So when I used provincial/country it was less about racial attitudes and more about cultural amenities or even experiences.

Ann Arbor is a pretty liberal place, no doubt. It's in line, for me at least, with say Boulder. In my opinion and it's going to be an unpopular one but I think some people exaggerate stuff again. Again this isn't the pacific northwest by any means, but in some of these neighborhoods it may not be bad. This might be bad saying it, but if you were Black/African American in a few neighborhoods, it may be worse off than Asian. I am personally bi-racial, although I look like a lot of different things (White, Middle Eastern, Spanish/Mexican - nobody seems to know what I am. I can blend in as a local in many world places). Most of my relationships here have been interracial too. My last one was to a Chinese girl from Malaysia (One before that she was half Mexican. Before that was half Hawaiian-Chinese). She lived in Lakeview East and her roommate was from China. Her friends lived in Uptown, just north of Lakeview. I NEVER once heard any of them complain about any racism and as an interracial couple I NEVER ran into anything remotely bad. Nobody gave a **** about us. They didn't even question it and just treated us like normal - as people should be. I still hang out with her friends (my ex's VISA expired) and even if I'm out one on one with one where they think we're going out, never once has anything remotely racist arisen.


For the record, here are community areas (like big neighborhoods that are 8% or higher Asian:
* Armour Square (where Chinatown is) - 72.59%
* Bridgeport (next to Chinatown kind of) - 34.5%
* North Park - 25.65%
* West Ridge - 22.5%
* The Loop - 15.91%
* McKinley Park - 15.66%
* Near South Side - 15.46%
* Albany Park - 14.42%
* Near West Side - 14.62%
* Douglas - 12.68%
* Hyde Park (where U of Chicago is) - 12.4%
* Edgewater - 11.65%
* Uptown (where Little Vietnam (Argyle) is) - 11.38%
* Lincoln Square - 11.14%
* Forest Glen - 10.75%
* Near North Side - 10.11%
* O'Hare - 8.29%

As for the other questions: I'll be working about a block west of SAIC. Perhaps some useful info: I started commuting by bike last February, taking my daughter 6 miles to her preschool in downtown AA, and then riding 5 miles back in the direction of home. I love commuting by bike, but would prefer to avoid this needless doubling back twice a day, living near her school would be great, so all the places mentioned seem great, if anything most are almost too close to consider the hassle of taking out the bike, so if there are places a bit further out, but are still walkable neighborhoods, those would be considered as well.

Chicago is actually pretty walkable far out in a lot of areas. For example, Lincoln Square as I mentioned before would be a 30 minute commute to where you have to go via train but it's very walkable. Think more like Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, etc in some areas. That's how the walkability is here. It's one of the top 5 cities for it in the US and furthermore, the biking here is pretty good and there's a government initiative to increase the amount of bike friendly areas, lanes, etc. The city has a bike sharing system called Divvy and by August of 2014, there's supposed to be about 400 stations and 4000 bikes in the system. They're kind of releasing it little by little right now.

Finally, in terms of budget my wife was the only one working full-time this past year, making 50k. Our rent in AA was 1.4k, so in terms of a budget number we were expecting something around 2k ish given the bump up in market with the increase in salary we'll be moving to.

You could find a 3 bedroom place for that. If you even raised that to $2100/month you could find something in Lakeview. In other areas though, walkable but family oriented like Lincoln Square/Ravenswood...not bad. Some of the areas up there like Edgewater, Rogers Park, Albany Park, Uptown, etc are fairly integrated communities.

[chet everett]

The clarifications that AArch has provided make it pretty clear to me that some posters are way off in assuming the OP / spouse want to live in a part of Chicago that has a high percentage of "Asians". Being hungry for the sort of cultural amenities that one has access to working at a major art museum in Tokyo is considerably different than wanting to live near a place that serves Chinese or even Vietnamese foods...

[marothisu]

^ No, I was just pointing it out as a thing there, and how people seem to over exaggerate "racist attitudes" here. I have no doubt it happens in some areas, but I was kind of showing that even in areas that people on here think are just so incredibly "Big 10" that it's been my experience, as a person in an interracial relationship where the S.O. lives in that area, that none of the racist stuff has ever popped up.

I met a lot of people in Iowa when I went to college there, and really - just because you're from a small town doesn't mean you're close minded. One of the most open minded people I've ever met was from a town of 100 people in SW Iowa. I used to do it too - especially when I first lived in Iowa. I would say "Oh, well this girl doesn't want to date me because I'm not fully white," but in the end I realized I was being dumb.

I guess the point in all of this is that yes, people in these areas can be provincial, but in my experience it's not always the case, and really it's no different than other parts of the country. Whether it's Texas, Oregon, Washington, New York, etc - people are provincial from every geography in the world.

[jonnynonos]

Originally Posted by marothisu

A good amount, and it doesn't matter. You're comparing a city of 110K people to a city of 2.7 million. It doesn't work. You have to break Chicago down. I'm not comparing them, but I"m more speaking about your "blue collar" thing. It's extremely misleading to present Chicago in such a way that every single part of it is blue collar. Not true and you know this.

What I'm saying is that while both cities have Democratic reputations, Chicago's is born out of a kind of collectivization/union mentality, while Ann Arbor, to anyone remotely familiar with it, is profoundly rooted in the radical 60s/intellectual side of left wing politics.

It's like saying the collective attitude in Bridgeport is similar to Manhattan limousine liberals because both pull the democratic lever. In short, nonsense.

Ann Arbor is a VERY progressives town, far more progressive than Chicago on average, period.