States with low crime, blue/purple, great education, MCOL?

[Mississippi Mudstache]

Hey @Nick_Miller how did your new location search turn out? Did you move? If so, where?

I also moved after the 2016 elections, but the elections had nothing to do with it. I've know since college that I eventually wanted to settle down near Athens, GA, and I finally made it back. It's a fabulous college town and a little blue island in a deep red state. Life is grand and I hope to never leave :)

@Mississippi Mudstache , you mentioned your blue island in GA...was it by chance featured in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy last year? We watched all the episodes and I remember a small GA town with a very young mayor and the city was super progressive and diverse. It seemed like such an awesome little oasis!

No, the "blue island" is actually just Athens, which is a decent-sized city of about 125,000. We don't live in the city proper - it's about a 15-minute drive to our house out in the woods with 8 acres of hardwoods and creek frontage. I'm a rural person at heart, but I love having the culture and activities of a diverse college town close at hand. So this is the best of both worlds for us. Really happy to be raising our kids here, and we got them into a school system that we love before my oldest was in kindergarten. Couldn't have worked out better.

[Nick_Miller]

Hey @Nick_Miller how did your new location search turn out? Did you move? If so, where?

I also moved after the 2016 elections, but the elections had nothing to do with it. I've know since college that I eventually wanted to settle down near Athens, GA, and I finally made it back. It's a fabulous college town and a little blue island in a deep red state. Life is grand and I hope to never leave :)

@Mississippi Mudstache , you mentioned your blue island in GA...was it by chance featured in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy last year? We watched all the episodes and I remember a small GA town with a very young mayor and the city was super progressive and diverse. It seemed like such an awesome little oasis!

No, the "blue island" is actually just Athens, which is a decent-sized city of about 125,000. We don't live in the city proper - it's about a 15-minute drive to our house out in the woods with 8 acres of hardwoods and creek frontage. I'm a rural person at heart, but I love having the culture and activities of a diverse college town close at hand. So this is the best of both worlds for us. Really happy to be raising our kids here, and we got them into a school system that we love before my oldest was in kindergarten. Couldn't have worked out better.

Sounds great! I am not super outdoorsy but you really do seem to have the best of both worlds. Sounds we like both landed in sweet spots!

And btw the town featured on Queer Eye was Clarkston, which looks to be about an hour west of you guys, near Atlanta.

[Just Joe]

The thread is over but I would have suggested that you look at this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micropolitan_statistical_areas

And then pick one with the right climate, right politics, and pick one with a university nearby.

Its worked very well for us.

[Johnez]

This is probably the best "location" thread, and there's a ton of them out there. Los Alamos, NM seems particularly interesting.

[waltworks]

This is probably the best "location" thread, and there's a ton of them out there. Los Alamos, NM seems particularly interesting.

It has major downsides. People are educated and healthy, schools are excellent, and there's a ton of outdoor sports to do, but it's *isolated* and *small*. There is no culture or art or music scene. Getting to the *very small* Albuquerque airport (where you'll basically have to fly to PHX or DEN to get anywhere you actually want to go) requires a 2 hour drive.

There's also only one real employer, which means the possibility (IMO unlikely, but still) that the Feds close LANL and the down dries up and blows away.

Nevertheless, I'd totally live there. But I'm not an art and culture person and tend to go on longer trips when the family travels so don't mind an extra few hours of travel time.

-W

[iris lily]

This is probably the best "location" thread, and there's a ton of them out there. Los Alamos, NM seems particularly interesting.

To each his own.

Los Alamos seems like a restrictive circle of hell to me. There is NO architecture of significance there. Perhaps if it didnt win an Ugliest Town award it would certainly qualify as Blandville. Oh yeah, and then there is that desert topography.

I must have architecture. I must have green surroundings. I like diversity in cuisine so that means Diversity in populace. Unfortunately, that often means crime.

Los Alamos is in one of the poorest states in our union. Bubonic plague shows up in Northern
New Mexico now and then.

Just given ya the other side! :)

[Jtrey17]

Plus now we have Evers-things are looking up for Wisco!

As a Minnesotan, I feel compelled to discourage any reasonable person from considering Wisconsin.  Minnesota is better than Wisconsin in every way but Super Bowl Championships.  Politics are just one area where MN asserts it superiority over Wisconsin.  We are smarter, healthier, better looking, we have higher incomes, we have a higher success rate when throwing snack food up in the air and catching it in our mouths, ditto for throwing waste in a waste bin, etc.  And we don't feel too bad about our men's sports teams lack of success because there is no better WNBA team than the Minnesota Lynx.

Slightly kidding.  I work with a lot of people from Wisconsin (3M is about 20 minutes away from the border) and we have a good back and forth.  I think a good amount of what I perceive as the difference between MN and WI is actually the difference between city people and rural/small town people since the twin cities are so close to the border of WI and so far away from Milwaukee or even Madison.  But the statistics do back a lot of those things I've mentioned.

As a former Minnesota resident living in Wisconsin, I'll agree that the difference is largely city vs country.  Madison is pretty darn similar to Minneapolis (just smaller).  And small towns in Wisconsin and Minnesota are often quite similar to each other.  It's just than Madison and Milwaukee do not dominate WI culture like the Twin Cities do in MN.

Wisconsin has ~1.3 million more residents living outside "big" cities than Minnesota does.  Thant's the difference.