I lived in Springfield, MO for about five years. This was just a couple of years ago. During my time there I learned that there seems to be little rhyme or reason to where the bad neighborhoods are. There are small pockets all over the city that you could call bad neighborhoods.First, keep in mind that a bad neighborhood in Springfield isn’t the same thing as a bad neighborhood in St. Louis or Chicago. There are occasional purse snatchings, muggings, and violent assaults , but nothing like the frequency in a bad neighborhood in most of the major cities. There is some increased gang activity in the last few years, but so far there isn’t all out gang warfare you will see in other places. The most frequent crimes are theft related. This can happen anywhere but in the worse areas they will steal anything that’s not hidden or chained down. Car break-ins, theft of motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, etc happen a lot. There is a high rate of meth addiction and a good amount of heroin and cocaine addicts as well. Addicts supporting their habit seems to be the major cause of the fairly high rate of property crimes in the city.Generally the west side of Springfield has the highest concentration of bad neighborhoods. Especially in the central west and north west parts of town. As you go west of about Campbell Ave. it gets increasingly worse. Especially west of S. Fort Ave.The north side and central areas of town are peppered with pockets of neighborhoods which aren’t the best. The only way to know is to talk to locals before moving to any certain area. Some places will be obvious with run down looking homes or a lot of junk laying around. Other places might not be so obvious. You just have to investigate.Generally the south and east sides of town are the best. There will be small pockets of less desirable places here and there. As you move south of Sunshine St. it gets better the further south you go. As you go east of about Jefferson Ave. it gets better and further east of Glennstone Ave. has a lot of nice residential neighborhoods.The best way to know where to move or where to stay away from is to talk to locals who know the city well. You can also look up crime statistics that will give outlines of crimes and frequency plotted on a city map.Springfield Missouri Crime Map
Seattle area — decent, affordable neighborhoods?
Bellevue is not what most people would consider affordable - it is one of the most expensive cities in the Seattle area. Tacoma has been a more affordable area for many years, but has some questionable neighborhoods and the housing prices there have actually increased while other area prices have decreased in recent years. Personally I prefer some of the older communities on/near Puget Sound that are north of Seattle like Edmonds: http://www.squidoo.com/edmondswa and Mukilteo: http://www.squidoo.com/mukilteo-lighthou... and the area between the two. That area is generally more affordable than anything in Seattle or the eastside (like Bellevue), but yet are safe and residential areas with good schools and a quaint little small town business district at their core. In fact Mukilteo just made Money magazinestop 10 list of best places to live small towns: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/... You are looking at about a one hour commute to Seattle from any area that would be considered more affordable. There is industry scattered around the entire area so depending on your profession you may find a job that doesn't require a commute to Seattle.
This is actually quite a difficult question to answer as Cambridge has changed so much over the past nearly 40 years whilst I have lived here. Traditionally, the worst areas were Arbury, Kings Hedges, Abbey and Cherry Hinton, with Coleridge, East Chesterton and Romsey not far behind. (These are seven of the fourteen electoral wards of Cambridge, used for simplicity here). The best areas were traditionally Newnham, Trumpington, and West Chesterton, with Castle knocking on the door. In reality though, it is about a lot more than the whole electoral ward. In parts of the City, some streets are significantly better and more desirable than others.I lived in a very smart little cul-de-sac in Cherry Hinton for a number of years, and the immediate neighbourhood was magnificent, but the wider area horrible. We were pleased to move on. The DeFreville area of West Chesterton is incredibly sought after, and incredibly expensive, as are Newnham, particularly close to Granchester Meadows, and the key Trumpington streets of Latham, Chaucer, Bentley roads, Southacre (for an apartment), Barrow, Porson, Rutherford and Sedley Taylor Roads. Forget the village part of Trumpington which is very different however. In Castle, Huntingdon Road, and particularly some of the very smart residential streets off it, are less expensive but within a stones throw (or ten minute walk in many cases) of the northern part of the City Centre.
Hi Issac, Thanks for the A2A.Common - Actually yes they are. From non venomous carpet pythons and tree snakes to the venomous red bellied black snakes and the deadly Eastern Brown snake. The further north you travel you will run into Taipans which can be aggressive when mating, foraging or are cornered.Obviously in areas like business districts and inner city regions it is rare to see a snake but they do turn up a lot more than everybody likes to think. With the loss of habitat due to housing and development snakes are learning to adapt to their new environments in quite creative ways. Here are a couple of news articles that explain things a little more in depth.'Baby boomers' keep snake catcher busySnake plague strikes Brisbane backyardsThese days death from a snake bite is incredibly rare since the development of antivenins and people are more educated about what to do if they come across a snake i.e. leave it alone and it will go away on its own, or call snake removal expert.In saying that a young boy was bitten by a Taipan last week and is lucky to be alive, but this was not in a city and as the article said “He was more likely to be stuck by lightning”'You're more likely to be hit by lightning': 2yo boy bitten three times by deadly snake
Is it legal to do fireworks in residental areas?
It all depends on the law. Most states band fireworks in residential areas because it led to fires within the community and problems. However I am stationed in Germany and fireworks are legal every where. I was downtown for the new years and I had to run from a few fire works that the germans threw at people for fun. LIke I said it depends on your state laws, you will have to look that up online or check your government.
What is the law on parking an 18-wheeler on a residential street?
I'm a trucker. It depends on the town. Some have ordinance's against it, some don't. I see your point, but generally i don't agree with these ordinances. I'm home a lousy 3 days a month, and I have to leave an $80,000 rig 40 miles away where it can be broken in to, hit by another truck, or stolen all together. My town is ridiculous about it too. I pulled up out front, no trailer once to pick up a few items, and two minutes later the cops were banging at my door. I would never leave it running, that's ridiculous, most of them have block heaters on them so you can plug it in with an extension cord and keep the engine warm. Why don't you just ask him to shut it off? What's the deal anyway? is he home every day? most of us aren't. I'm gone for weeks at a time. Would you complain if it were an RV? Of course you wouldn't. I work hard, pay my taxes. For the most part, people like you treat us like second class humans. We can't park at walmart and shop. no, you want to eat go to the truck stop where a bottle of soda costs $2.59 and a loaf of bread is $3.99. We deliver at customers and are told we aren't allowed to use the bathrooms. Go to the truckstop we are told. We are generally treated like dirt. Then I come home and have to put up with this. I paid my property taxes. it's my driveway, I paid for it. i pay my city income taxes. I can't park in my driveway because it's one of them "filthy" 18 wheelers, which by the way, minus the trailer it's a ten wheeler and I might also add is worth as much and in some cases more than most of the houses on my street. Like I said the only thing I agree with you is him keeping it running. he should turn it off.
When faced with a choice of about 2000 areas of London, all of which are safe, within the 30 minute circle of both places, all of which are "nice" and all of which offer accommodation for your price it's handy to have more information about what is important to you.Imagine I was to say I want to live in New York, in a lively area, spend $4000 a month and be within 30 mins of Wall Street and Newark Airport, it wouldn't really be enough to separate out the East Village from the West Village, from Hells Kitchen, TriBeCa and Hoboken.By far the most demanding part of your list is the need to be within 30 mins of Gatwick, this means your question isn't really " what are the good parts of London for a couple, it's "what are the good parts of London near to Gatwick Airport routes" . This is essentially the exact same problem as needing to be within 30 mins of Newark, everything around Gatwick is not what London is about. So by choosing this limitation you are probably limiting yourself from many nice areas.But with the information you have.- Best for Modern Living like NYC- Live in Canary Wharf.- Best for value for money and transport - Live in Croydon ( it's horrible)- Best for combination of central living plus shortest total commute for both of you- London Bridge.- All around nicest place that works - probably Pimlico or near Victoria Station.- Live in a Architectural masterpiece in the Barbican.But again, we need more information, I quite like the newness of Canary Wharf, but it's dead and not what living in London is about. Some people love the edginess of shoreditch, I think it's full of twats.I like Farringdon, but it's a bit quiet.
Neighbors complaining about dust from mowing the lawn?
We've lived in this house for about 40 years now. It is in a residential neighborhood in the city. We own our home and have seen a lot of neighbors come and go, mostly in rental properties surrounding us. The neighborhood has gone downhill some over the years. In a year or two, we're planning to move further out to another area to get away from city nonsense. So there are some people that moved into the house behind us at some point and built this odd deck with just wood slats across the top, but no roof. They put a bunch of colorful lights above the deck and I guess sit out there and drink on the weekends or something. Our back yard is about 80 feet long or so and about 70 feet wide. I mow the back yard every couple of weeks or so because it doesn't grow that fast. The last 20-30 of our back yard has pine trees that drop a lot of pine combs, pine straw and various sticks that fall down. It is impossible to get them all up to mow each time. I mow that very back 20-30 feet area maybe one a month, if even that. This guy claims the "dust is getting on their table" or something on their back deck and that mowing "disturbs their party" or whatever he's talking about. It takes me about 30 minutes to mow that once per month. Obviously, this is pretty childish. I don't control the dust in the air.
It really depends on what type of neighborhood, and how much you want to spend. Generally speaking, if we were looking, we would look east of Gilbert Road. If you are looking for a golf course community or master planned community, Alta Mesa, Red Mountain Ranch, and Las Sendas are nice. All have good HOAs and propert values are pretty steady, with low crime rates and good schools nearby. Las Sendas and Red Mtn Ranch have better freeway access. Mesa has lots of small parcel neighborhoods if you prefer something without an HOA. Mesa (like most cities here) prefers subdivisions with HOAs, because it relieves much of the burden from them for code violations, common area maintenance and parks.
The overemphasis on carpet area or so called usable area. Carpet area is the area within each apartment, not including walls or common areas. Whereas built up area is the total built area including common areas such as stairs, corridors, elevators, lobbies etc.Apartments are generally designed to have a very high efficiency of carpet to built area as most people prefer to own maximum usable area inside their apartment. Carpet area would be about 75%-80% of built area. This leads to extremely tight common areas (not to mention shared walls), narrow corridors, small lobbies and zero interaction spaces and in turn alienation of individual apartment owners holed up in their fat apartments. Most don't know who their neighbors are, due to lack of well designed interaction spaces where one could hang around or bump into people and interact.Other important flaw is lack of spacious balconies and/or outdoor spaces in each apartment, where people can grow gardens, be close to nature and enjoy the weather. This is again a result of carpet area greed.What most builders don't realize is open spaces are extremely important and there are people willing to pay for it. Its great to have outdoor spaces and interesting corridors with sit outs which are treated more than just rigid linear walkways to get from point A to B.