So, the wife and I have decided that after living in Washington state for all of her life and most of mine that we're sick of this place and we want out. It's expensive to live here, traffic is unbelievably horrible and getting worse every year, and she can work her job anywhere in the country where there's a Siemens office - which gives us a pretty big selection of places where we could possibly move. That selection is narrowed by personal preferences regarding climate and congestion and other such things, of course.
What I'm looking for is not necessarily information about various cities and states and such across the country, but more of resources where I could find that information. Before I pick up and move (possibly) cross country, I want to know about various neighborhoods of individual cities, crime rates (and types of crime), average cost of living per area of the city, what prevailing traffic is like in that area, what the average yearly weather pattern is, etc. I don't want to just be hunting and picking over Craigslist (do people still use CL?) and apartmentfinder.com or 4rent.com and not realizing that the reason that this apartment complex has such an awesome deal is because they're three blocks away from the state pen, there's a massive drug problem in the area, and you can't go 3 blocks without seeing a cop bust someone.
I can pull average yearly weather data from weather.com, weather underground, or through my mom's company, so that one's not so much an issue as just knowing about the neighborhoods or at least having some rough idea of them without having to fly to each prospective city and rule them in or out one by one... that would be way too expensive.
What I'm looking for is not necessarily information about various cities and states and such across the country, but more of resources where I could find that information. Before I pick up and move (possibly) cross country, I want to know about various neighborhoods of individual cities, crime rates (and types of crime), average cost of living per area of the city, what prevailing traffic is like in that area, what the average yearly weather pattern is, etc. I don't want to just be hunting and picking over Craigslist (do people still use CL?) and apartmentfinder.com or 4rent.com and not realizing that the reason that this apartment complex has such an awesome deal is because they're three blocks away from the state pen, there's a massive drug problem in the area, and you can't go 3 blocks without seeing a cop bust someone.
I can pull average yearly weather data from weather.com, weather underground, or through my mom's company, so that one's not so much an issue as just knowing about the neighborhoods or at least having some rough idea of them without having to fly to each prospective city and rule them in or out one by one... that would be way too expensive.
