Sorry if I missed it upthread, but you can look up a score for it, apparently.
In our travels, we sometimes fly and rent a car. There have been three locations where we did not: 1) Boston, 2) Philadelphia (both too crowded and crazy, we figured), and 3) San Jose (cost of parking—our hotel wanted $25/day just to park).
OP, we looked at Asheville as a possible place to retire someday. Mrs. L thought it was too hipster (YMMV). As we were driving there, we stayed in TN and the folks at the TN tourist center said in TN they don’t pay income tax but they’re close enough to visit when they wanted.
We also looked at Chattanooga and we liked it. Internet connections there are supposed to be awesome. The word there is to drive a few miles across another line and shop in Georgia, where sales tax is less.
I’m not American but if I had to pick a city to live in I’d seriously consider Austin. Awesome town with lots of new investment to make it even better (or ruin it).
Thank you for those notes. If we do move to your lovely state, we’ll try to be good neighbors, haggle for the price of our house (I hate people who make offers above market…) and vote for the right laws
Oh! That is most useful information. TY! I’m all about that fiber internet. TN was already a candidate, and now Chattanooga is going on the list.
We mostly shop online and at grocery stores so driving to Georgia would probably be a hassle. If we had a family and a Costco membership, though? Yeah, I could see that!
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Multiple people have responded to your request. Just because their answers aren’t what you were hoping they would be, or that the concept isn’t as definitive or objective as you want it, doesn’t mean no one has told you, let alone made a case.
Like I said, I’ve been to Phoenix a handful of times the last couple of years. I’ve really enjoyed all my visits. I think the desert is beautiful, and there are areas that are really cool - even from a pedestrian’s viewpoint. But by all community development standard uses of the term “walkability”, Phoenix is pretty lacking. There were areas of Scottsdale that were cool and fit pretty well, and I didn’t get over near the university, which I imagine is also pretty walkable. But when you describe downtown as walkable because it has sidewalks, it’s pretty clear you have no idea what we mean by “walkable”. And enough attempts to explain it to you have been made that it appears to be a deliberate choice on your part to not understand what is meant.
That is complete BS. I NEVER said “because they have sidewalks” as the definition, though people have tried to claim that downtown doesn’t have any, which is absurd.
I’ve listed my reasons why I think downtown Phoenix is walkable. Maybe you should read it. Talk about deliberate choice.
The Phoenix metro area is 14K square miles! I never claimed every residential area is “walkable” (even though mine actually is, as is Beowulff’s above). There aren’t many large cities that do, either. But by any measure, which you haven’t given any example other than a couple empty street corners, downtown is “walkable”. I’m not sure why you’re pushing so hard on something so easily disprovable.
Picking a random downtown address, not an empty lot, 80, 65, 60
5th ave and van Buren gives 29, 39 and 49, which is odd because the two locations are about a 20 minute walk apart. Even though no one lives at 5th Ave and Van Buren, and there are no businesses there, so I guess that’s a bad example.
Modnote: Time to move any further discussion of Phoenix as walkable or not to another thread. It has become a distraction in this one and tempers seemed to be rising for almost no reason.
It does seem odd. The Central Arizona Project uses canals to get the water from the Colorado all the way to Phoenix. It’s yuge! There are also a large series of canals that take all the water from the east side Salt River (which still “runs” though Mesa-Tempe-Phoenix. Let’s just say it gets more use as a road than a river) and move it around town,.
You’d think there would be a lot of evapooration, but I guess the losses are acceptable for the cost.
These canals are quite extensive. Now they are used for bike paths, and the city has even added stop lights for the canal traffic at major street crossings.
The good is, the city has good reliable water supply. Originally it was used for farming and orange groves, which used to exist side by side with homes in the cities, but slowly they have gone away. The bad side is, a lot gets used for golf courses, which are frankly ridiculous and should be banned in the desert. (there are some courses that are desert landscaped, but not enough). There is a push to remove front lawns as being too water intensive, but it hasn’t caught on enough yet. Surprisingly, it is the “retiree” neighborhoods that have all the colored gravel front yards more than the new single-family homes.
Because the valley gets so little rain, and when it does come, it comes in rivers full, there are a lot of drainage diversion flows paths for all that rain, and in non-rainy times they make nice green belts for recreation. (every year, more than one idiot tries to cross a flooded wash, which are about three feet deep and flowing fast enough to send your car to west Phoenix.)
I should be clearer. We did the tourist thing at Sevierville, Gatlinburg, etc. Sevierville to Asheville is less than 100 miles, about 1h43 driving.
Chattanooga to Asheville is farther…225miles, 3h30.
However, Chatt to Nashville: 2h10, 133 miles.
Chatt to Atlanta (talk about airports) 1h52, 120 miles
We did fly into Chatt—there is an airport.
A co-worker who grew up there said that the money lives on the mountain—Lookout Mountain. If that’s a bit pricey look at Signal Mountain. Those are probably going to be good real estate values, though I don’t know about walkability.
PS-We went to the Costco in Ringgold GA, right across the line.
I’m going to bring up something I haven’t seen anyone mention - are you and your SO looking for somewhere to move where you can keep your current remote jobs or are you in the sort of industry where you can expect to find remote jobs after you decide where to move? If it’s the former, and you move to a state where they don’t currently have employees, there may be administrative and tax burdens that your employers don’t want to take on.
Mostly. But you can buy 3 bed houses in Santa Clarita CA for 600K.
Burbank airport is 30 minutes, LAX is more.
Lost of places to eat and yes, asian mkst
prop value on the way up.
Very, very safe, lots of walking trails.
The big crime wave is kids and homeless looking for unlocked cars.
100 for most of summer, but really nice spring and fall. Winter is chilly and often rainy, but “chilly” around here means 60 in the daytime. Very low humidity, so 100 isnt bad if you stay out of the sun.
One hour to beaches and Disneyland. Almost walk to Six Flags magic mountain. Large lake in Castaic for boating and fishing.
Newer developments have gig internet speed, rest have 400mps.
SLC getting somewhat less Mormon, but it is still very much the primary “culture”. Last ski trip I believe I heard about increasing pollution problems due to the development and surrounding mountains. But nowhere else I’d rather ski!
