Do you know anything about Cedar Rapids? (Des Moines, Iowa City: low crime, neighborhoods)

[alyssajoy]

I didn't get any answers to my first question, so i'm trying again.

We are moving from Phoenix to cedar rapids. My husband will be working midway between Hiathawa and Marion.

Is this a good city to raise a family? What areas should we avoid when purchasing a home? What is there to do on the weekends?

Thank you.

[UW Badgers]

I sent you a message yesterday. Did you get it?

[alyssajoy]

I did get it. Thank you very much for your response. I was hoping to see if anyone one else had a different perspective. I certainly hope it's not all bad!

[Chicago60614]

Who on earth said Cedar Rapids is all bad!?!?

There are good schools, low crime, no traffic, low pollution. The city is seen as "boring" by many, but it's a decent area of 200,000 people, close to Iowa City with another 120,000 people.

I think right now it's difficult for the city because of the floods, but things are moving along, and honestly aside from downtown, the floods had the biggest effect on the older neighborhoods and some run down areas. 80% of the city was perfectly fine, and that's the area of town you're probably moving to if you're working on the northern fringes. It's more of the newer areas, low cost housing, but still new construction and good areas.

Cedar Rapids' biggest issue for the most part is that it just completely flies under the radar. It never booms, it never crashes, it doesn't make a lot of news or have crazy things going on. It's more just your "default" medium sized area of a couple hundred thousand people.

It really depends on what you're looking for, but on a surface level there's nothing wrong with life in Cedar Rapids compared to our nation as a whole.

The largest issues with the area from residents are issues with in influx of new people to town, recovering from the flood, solid leadership and gaining a progressive path for the city in the future. These things need to be dealt with, but from traveling to the other 49 states and spending a lot of time in other areas of the country, Cedar Rapids really is a nice city/community when it comes down to it.

It suffers from unorganized leadership and being seen as a city that more "sits around" slowly growing and wandering through life as opposed to really being excited and having clear goals.

[nene87]

Alot of people are moving from Chicago to Cedar Rapids Iowa for some good reasons I hear that its nice there and if you get bored Chicago is like 4 hours away. In a minute Cedar Rapids gone be as big as Chicago and Des Moines.