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Originally Posted by Crawford
I'm not talking about urban cores, I'm talking about outer sprawl vs. inner suburbia. I really doubt your average McMansion buyer is simultaneously considering urban living.
Is there a metro where the outer sprawl McMansion zone has better schools than the older suburbs? I doubt it. In Dallas, older suburbs like Frisco have much better schools than the newest sprawlburbs. And schools in the oldest suburbs like University Park/Highland Park are better still. In Detroit, the best school districts are all in fully built-out suburbs.
If you're building a McMansion in a cornfield, you're pretty likely to have inferior schools. IMO it's more of a more space/new construction thing.
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Frisco is not an older Dallas suburb. It is one of the newer suburbs and didn't start growing until the mid to late 90s. Its still at the far north end of DFW sprawl too, despite all the growth in Collin County. An old typical sprawling suburb for Dallas is somewhere like Richardson which started growing in the 50s. But one reason why Frisco has better schools than other newer suburbs like it is because Frisco is where many of the jobs are now so it commands a higher dollar, which higher incomes trickle down to better schools. That and Collin County in general is very competitive with its schools. Great schools there have become a self-fulfilling prophecy, hence the price points to get in now.
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan
"OMG, I would never take my family down into the city, it's WAY too dangerous!" says the suburban soccer mom, without the slightest hint of irony, as she buckles her brood into the back of the minivan to go careening down the high speed stroads of her world multiple times per day, every day.
People generally suck at risk assessment.
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Yes driving down a high speed road is dangerous because people don't pay attention on the road but you can get distracted drivers hitting you in ped-crossongs plus random muggings or damaged/stolen property in urban areas too. There's a lot to offer in the core so it's nice to see them still growing but the stats don't lie.
For me I don't get the same diversity of restaurants or get to walk to an area with as many offerings. Now restaurants close early and the trails lead to parks or parking lots. On the flipside I could leave my keys in the car overnight and not worry. Kids can go to the neighborhood school with everyone else. And my suburb has walkable areas we go to when we need a fix but don't want to drive in to town. I see both sides.
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Originally Posted by DCReid
Interesting, especially about the old downtowns. I thought maybe since Dallas was an older city, it had more old downtowns. Houston has been written off many times, and I would suspect it is doing well given its economic profile because it is in Texas. A joke in the 80s was that it was the next Detroit. Other oil towns have not done well - New Orleans is not really growing and Tulsa is an oil town that is overshadowed by OKC and growing much more slowly. I guess it also benefited because the industry consolidated there, and it also drew in international companies. Even the small metro next to it, Beaumont, is not growing.
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Houston is the older city. Dallas had more little cities with identities they wanted to keep so when annexation started they did their part too, whereas Houston area suburbs did nothing as Houston surrounded them. Houston benefited from the energy industry consolidation that is still going on but also finally diversifying. The way DFW planned and built itself just appeals to more general Americans which is why it is far and away the most popular metro area right now to move to (it gained 90k alone in domestic migrants last year).