Looks like I’ll moving soon as I just accepted a job based out of College Park, MD. Consider my lack of familiarity with the East Coast in general, I figured I could poll you guys for tips on the cool spots and places to avoid. A few general priorities for me:
I’d prefer to stay within a 30min drive to the University of Maryland.
Easy access into the city, preferably by walking/shuttling/taxiing to a metro stop.
Somewhere with at least some character and culture outside of standard suburbia would be nice, but not required.
Downtown Silver Spring. It’s about 20 minutes to College Park depending on traffic. There’s a Metro stop right there and you’re right on the line with DC. Lots of restaurants, shops, etc. to walk to and it’s reasonably safe. Very diverse.
Silver Spring is pretty large in the sense that a lot of places are called that without being “downtown” or close to it. You’d want zip code 20910. The rest of it is more typical suburbia.
Don’t live in College Park itself. Most of it sucks and is very ugly and overrun with students and dumpy housing. It’s also not very safe. Silver Spring will get you over the line into Montgomery County, which has better schools, better police, etc. Downside: cost of living is very high. In the area I’m thinking about, expect a 1BR to run you at least $1400/month if you don’t want to live in a dirtbox.
The one place I would advise you strongly to avoid is Langley Park (zip codes 20783 and 20787). It’s right next to College Park and you might think it looks appealing because the rents are lower but that’s because it’s a pretty bad area. Very poor and mostly Hispanic, which isn’t bad in and of itself, but there’s a lot of gang activity. MS-13, very nasty.
My Sister-In-Law (and husband and baby) lives in University Park. It’s really close to College Park, and they can walk to a Metro stop. They really like it, and it seems like a nice town.
Silver Spring is nice, but you might want to consider Columbia Heights (a DC neighborhood) instead. It’s on the same Metro line as College Park (green), and a short ride.
What is your price range? What is your tolerance for shadiness? Do you want to avoid the city? On a scale from “deep city” to “quiet suburb” what do you actively prefer? What would you go to the city for- clubbng? museums? Ethiopian food? Do you need a place to park a car? What is you maximum commute? What kind of place are you looking to rent? How ften do you imagine going in to the city? Do you have a family?
Last year I lived in a sort-of suburb and hated it. I was going in to the city all the time for this and that, and felt like I spent my whole life on the bus. If you like city life at all, I’d try to be in the city. The green line has some hip up and coming neighborhoods around Shaw, but that is real city living with attendent shadiness. Columbia Heights is hip, but also shady. If you were out that way and could afford it, I’d try for a place in Mt. Pleasant, a historic community that has lots of old leafy suburbs backed right up to a happening fairly central urban Salvadorian main street. It is a good location that mixes suburban and urban pretty well.
I live in Greenbelt about three miles from College Park. I think the notion that it’s ugly or that it’s unsafe is ridiculous. That is more Montgomery County snobbery from the people who are apparently convinced that anywhere without loads of interesting restaurants, upscale stores, and schools that are better than 99% of those in the U.S. must be a ghetto. In fact, Prince George’s County is quite a bit richer than most areas of the U.S. It’s among the top 100 counties in the U.S. in average family income.
Northern Prince George’s County is an excellent area to live if you want to be within a half hour’s driving distance of a lot of interesting things without having to pay the huge rents or the huge cost of buying a house in adjacent areas of the D.C. metropolitan area. If there’s any problem, it’s that the area is currently being turned into a copy of a Montgomery County. There are big expensive apartment buildings and upscale restaurants and stores being built here right now. They are mostly just north of College Park along Route 1 and in an area of Hyattsville called the Arts District. Even Silver Spring has become too expensive for most people (just as Bethesda became too expensive two or three decades ago), and it was necessary to extend upscale suburbia into northern Prince George’s County to accommodate people who wanted that sort of thing.
Incidentally, Langley Park is full of good cheap ethnic (mostly Salvadoran and Vietnamese) restaurants. I don’t live there, but it’s great to have it only four miles away. It’s great to have the Mexican restaurants in Riverdale Park only three miles away in another direction. I live in an apartment complex that’s majority black, but it also has lots of Asians and Hispanics. The white non-Hispanic population is, after decreasing for a couple of decades, about to increase again as the complex get gentrified.
Please come for a visit before you move here and we’ll show you around.
University Park is a very family-y neighborhood where lots of tenured faculty at UMCP raise their kids so… it’s probably very pricey. I’ll second Silver Spring as probably your best bet though Greenbelt is decent also. DC neighborhoods on the green line such as Columbia Heights are fine, and really if you live on a metro line you can commute no problem - part and parcel with living in DC. However, I understand if you want to drive instead of metro because walking the 10-15 to a metro in sweltering summer/early autumn heat and work clothes is no fun.
I’ve been living within walking distance of downtown Silver Spring and commuting to College Park for longer than I’m going to admit. (Stupid dissertation.) Outside of rush hour, it takes me about 20-25 minutes driving door to door. Driving during rush hour is wildly variable, anything from half an hour to an hour. Public transit is usually about 70 minutes. I do like the area a lot, but we moved here for the family friendliness. Oh, I should also note that one of the university’s free shuttle buses runs from the Silver Spring metro station to the middle of campus, so you could potentially commute from here for free, if you have a flexible schedule.
I second the recommendation for Columbia Heights if you’re more interested in urban living.
I knew Wendell Wagner would be in this thread to promote Greenbelt. I haven’t spent a lot of time over there, but I have grad school friends who have been very happy in that area.
How urban a neighborhood do you want?You’ll run the gamut from very dense to suburban between the DC stops on the green line and College Park. Petworth which is north of Columbia Heights is far more residential in character, but you face issues in that you’ll need to drive to a lot of places.
The drawback with Columbia Heights is that a lot of the apartments there don’t have parking so you’ll be trying to find street parking in a very dense neighborhood. If you need or want to have a car, you’ll be paying a bit extra per month for parking.
Thanks for all the current input. To answer all the questions on desired urban qualities, I’m looking for a good balance between city and suburban living. If you’re familiar with it at all, I’m in the middle of Ann Arbor right now and it’s about the perfect blend for me of nightlife and crowds while still being mostly quiet and safe. I probably would only go into DC on weekends so I think someplace outside would be fine. Along these lines, Silver Spring is looking pretty good right now.
It’s just me, so I’m looking to rent a room in a house or townhouse. Probably not an apartment just because I play guitar. And price is less of a factor though I would definitely want to stay below 14-15 hundred.
I lived in A[sup]2[/sup] for 8 years. I think you would like Takoma Park. It’s a small, close-in town with a mind of its own–they passed a law making it a “nuclear-free zone” in 1983. I have not lived there but have a friend there who loves it (she commutes to DC). It is closer in than Silver Spring. (Silver Spring is not an incorporated city and so its boundaries are not all that clear.) There is a Takoma Park Metro station, though technically it’s just over the border in DC.
I lived in the northern reaches of SS in an area called White Oak for about 3-4 years. I also lived in Beltsville, Md., just north of College Park, for 2 years. There are certainly some nice areas in Prince Georges county. It struggles with image problems because of problems with corruption in the police force and the county government. It struggles against prejudice because the majority of the population is African-American, although it is the wealthiest such country in the country (according to Wikipedia).
One thing to keep in mind is that east-west travel in that part of Maryland is quite difficult. So, you might find yourself looking at a map and thinking, “Bethesda looks lively and fun, and it’s just a short hop on the Beltway to work,” but in practice that’s a miserable commute.
Yeah, it really depends. Silver Spring to College Park is fine on the Beltway. That section of the Inner Loop in the morning is generally flying along, as all the traffic is going the other way. Afternoon is more variable, but not too bad. I rarely have serious trouble unless there’s a major accident.
Where it really seems to get backed up is between Georgia Ave. and where 270 splits off/joins. I think it’s because the road curves a lot there. Seriously. Because people around here find it difficult to steer and stay in their lane. That makes Bethesda, Rockville, etc. an unpleasant option.
OP, check out a map of the Metro. I don’t know if you’re planning on commuting that way, but if you are, I’d advise against living anywhere on the left half of the map. A commute like that will take you forever. Bethesda and Silver Spring are 10 minutes apart by car on MD-410 but an hour on Metro because you have to go all the way through DC and back out again, which is time-consuming and expensive.