I've actually looked at Ann Arbor before as I adore college towns and was looking at trying to find one in the great lakes region as a forever / retirement destination. Given you're from the area would you have any others to recommend?
Things I'm mainly looking for:
* A climate change refuge
* No 'lake effect' snow
* Continuing education opportunities (i.e. auditing classes as a retiree)
* A good public / uni library system
* Walkable density
* Reasonable cost of living (yea, this is gonna be higher in college towns)
I realize that moving to the great lakes region and wanting to avoid snow are naturally in conflict. I have a disability so I'm just bearing in mind my balance and ability to shovel snow in my old age.
I live in this area, and feel qualified to comment.
> climate change refuge
Not totally sure what that means, but we get anywhere between 2-4 weeks of (usually non-consecutive) high heat (90F plus) per summer and 7 months of cold, as judged by whether or not I ride my motorcycle. If you mean will you have to swim through your house after the polar ice caps melt, no, I don't believe so.
> Continuing education opportunities
You're in luck, there two major universities, a community college, and branch locations for other universities and colleges, all within probably 10 minutes of each other.
> A good public / uni library system
The AADL and Ypsilanti libraries are amazing. Thanks to Melcat, you can borrow any book at any other Michigan library.
> Walkable density
As long as you're okay renting. Ann Arbor property values and property taxes are reasonably ridiculous and Ypsi is getting there. That said, I live in a suburb north of Ypsi and there are enough sidewalks and trails here to keep me happy. (But I do have to drive for all of my errands.)
> Reasonable cost of living
I consider AA/Ypsi to be on the low end of medium COL. Everyday living stuff (groceries, gas) is pretty typical compared to other places around the state but housing and entertainment are higher. As an upside, there is no local income tax, only federal and state.
> As long as you're okay renting. Ann Arbor property values and property taxes are reasonably ridiculous and Ypsi is getting there.
In fact, A2 housing prices are simply insane. Even a 1000 sq ft hovel without garage sells for upward of $500k; I kid you not. Nowhere in MI is the housing market more expensive, even the tonier resort spots like Charlevoix. A2 prices rival upscale neighborhoods just outside large US cities, but the houses in A2 are smaller and relatively downscale.
In the past couple years the fraction of A2 homes bought with cash is very high, so there seems to be an influx of emigre coastal urbanites driving the demand.
The area between UVA's campus and downtown is walkable and continues to develop. Charlottesville has mild winters and beautiful falls. UVA has a gorgeous campus and lots of programming.
The town punches above its weight with respect to the food scene and is surrounded by wineries. The Shenandoah mountains are close by. There is an airport in the town that makes it less remote.
The CityNerd, Ray Delahanty, just published a video on this topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcn77OwF9XE
(You can safely increase the speed of the video to 1.5x. He speaks slowly.)
If you don't feel like watching the entire video, I'll just recommend Iowa City, Iowa. It ticks all your boxes except maybe climate change refuge. But with all the money you save on housing, you can buy a vacation cabin/bunker further north.
You probably need to decide if you want no "lake effect" snow specifically or just don't want a lot of snow. It still snows a lot in places that aren't Buffalo or Syracuse. Just in New York state Ithaca is pretty much out of the lake effect snow belt but it still snows quite a bit.
I have cerebral palsy. I'm from the south, and the few experiences I have with snow and ice have not been great, lol. A fall that might just bruise a hip in your 30's might well break it in you 70's and at that age, it's often a serious hit to your quality of life or even 'game over'. I want to be far enough north to rarely deal with dangerous heat, but far enough south that I'm not basically 'snowed in' given I seem to struggle with icey sidewalks.
As someone else commented, you're probably talking about Pacific Northwest (Washington or Oregon coastal regions) then. It's not completely snow-free and can get fairly hot in the summers. But it's probably the best compromise between mostly snow-free and not-too-hot. Pretty much anyplace else in the North that (usually) doesn't get too hot in the summer gets snow, if not the consistent heavy snowfalls of places in the lake effect belt.
In addition to the larger cities, you have places like Corvallis where Oregon State is located.
Im not sure how easy or hard they would be to put on and take off for you, but one thing a lot of people ignore in the winter that can help, simple crampons/ice cleats. They make ice basically a non-issue if you are wearing them. The downside is some stores might not like you walking on their floors with them on, but of course parking lots and store walkways are pretty well salted so you might only need them at your house or if you walk around residential areas.
With the heat issue though, Michigan is surrounded by water and half the state is swamp, so yeah it might not be quite 100 degrees out, but if it is 95% humidity out it might as well be well over 100 degrees out. It is definitely something to consider if you want to avoid the heat.
This is basically what every human on Earth wants. Which is why the entire west coast is so expensive, because it's about the only place in the US that fits that bill.
Plenty of people are fine with snow and ice in the winter—certainly relative to places where the alternative is >100 degree F summers. But I don't really disagree that many people like a Mediterranean climate (that the coastal PNW also largely has except for the non-summer grayness) which tilts the scales. Also generally good outdoor recreation options for the most part.
But in the Winter, the entire state does suffer from persistent lake effect gloom. I grew up in central MI and had no idea how much sunnier it was elsewhere in the US (esp. along the eastern seaboard) when seasonal daylight gets short.
Grand Rapids and Traverse City might meet your criteria, but it's hard to say given how subjectively they are worded. If you want to live in a town with a large university, then obviously just look at the top three universities by size in each state.
Yeah, I'd look at university towns and small cities generally in the northern end of the country. Though it's probably not just the largest universities--there are smaller schools that caan still give a place a feel of a university town. Then pick some climate metrics like average inches of snow. Create a shortish list and go from there. I suspect some of the criteria are also less important than others.
Continuing ed opportunities are probably actually one of the tougher things. There are often things you can do informally with unis if you know the landscape but it's not something that's routinely offered as part as I know. There are community colleges and nightime continuing ed but, honestly, I'd probably mostly look online for that sort of thing.
Re: continuing education: I just wanted a way to take some classes and gain access to the university library. Technically I have access to lifetimes of material online via books, papers, MOOCs, etc; but it would be really nice take a philosophy class and actually be able to have in depth discussions, or check out some book that's never been published on kindle.
The in-depth discussions part (i.e. things like seminars) is probably difficult without registering for a class in some manner—which, in turn, is difficult at a traditional university without enrolling, outside of some continuing ed program. My undergrad university library is also accessible (at least if you look like you belong) post-COVID in the sense that you don't have to card in but even I (as an alum and moderately large donor) would almost certainly have to pay an annual access fee to check something out. It also has some generally accessible activities in January but you need to know where to look.
Universities/colleges are a pretty good source of cultural activities and other things in a town but their classes, and to a lesser degree libraries (it depends as some libraries let people just walk-in though not check-out material; others control access pretty tightly), are not really public resources.
I lived in Ann Arbor for about a decade. I’ll do my best to answer some of these.
* On climate change, I think the Midwest is generally pretty good, and the models show Michigan as a green zone last I looked (especially moving a bit more north). But I don’t know that I’d make this a major buying decision.
* I’ve always felt the idea of lake effect snow was overblown I spent several years on the west side of the state, everyone warned me about the lake effect snow, and I honestly didn’t notice a major difference vs the Detroit metro area. You will get snow, but even now it doesn’t snow like it did when I was a kid.
* I’m not sure what options U of M has for auditing classes, but I’m guessing there is something. You’d also have Washtenaw Community College, and Eastern Michigan University over in Ypsilanti. I took some a Unix course years ago at WCC to fill the empty time in my schedule many years ago. It was pretty painless to sign up. Ann Arbor also has a lot of classes for seniors through the rec center. And of course private business… I took a knife skills course and some cooking classes at a local place there.
* The Ann Arbor library system is pretty decent and has several branches. UofM has several as well. I’m not sure what public access is like for UofM, as I never tried while I was living there, but I do remember going there in high school to find a rare book I needed. I tried to pop in to the Library at Harvard recently, when I was in the area, and it didn’t seem open to the public, which is the only reason I’m questioning of UofM would give you trouble.
* Ann Arbor is probably the most walkable city in the area, which makes sense due to the university. Also, the freeways on all sides bound it to prevent too much sprawl. Though you will want to be adjacent to the downtown area for prime walkability. They have also been putting in some protected bike lanes if you’re into that. Some of this, and more big apartment complexes downtown have left the city feeling more congested, it doesn’t feel quite as quant as it once did, but still has some of its charm.
* For cost of living… for Michigan it’s high, but if you’re coming from a coast, it probably won’t feel too bad. It’s really housing that is the main expense.
On the topic of snow… a lot of people from Michigan become snow birds as they get older. They spend most of the year in Michigan, then head down to Florida for a couple months in the winter. My dad has been doing this for the last 5 years or so (using something like VRBO). He also recently started hiring out to take care of snow removal. Or, if you choose a condo over a house, it may not be an issue at all. Just keep parking in mind, and getting to and from the car, if you’re looking for something like that near downtown. If you haven’t lived around snow before, a good hack is to walk on the grass to avoid an icy sidewalk.
The temps hovering around freezing, like they are now are the worst for ice. If it would get cold and stay cold, it seems much safer. But downtown Ann Arbor usually does a pretty good job keeping things clean.
I have an alternative proposal to Ann Arbor for this that hits every single one of your criteria, but with a plus-minus (with a caveat, but i will elaborate on that later) regarding reasonable cost of living. That would be Seattle area.
I will go point by point.
The good:
* According to their own Climate Vulnerability Assessment[0], the region is fairly resilient to the impacts of the climate change.
* There is no lake effect snow (despite being adjacent to multiple fantastic lakes). I’ve lived there for 7 years, and the amount of snow was much less than even in places like Atlanta. The amount of rainfall is ridiculously small too (despite the stereotype), and it is usually just drizzle that doesn’t necessitate even an umbrella 99% of the time. It got nothing on typical east coast rains that just pour like hell. I was able to commute to work on motorcycle for about 90-95% days of the year. For any east coast city I’ve been to (ATL/NYC/DC), I don’t foresee that number being even above 50% (most of the time it would be either too cold or too hot or too rainy/snowy/dangerous).
* UW is a very popular and common option for continuing education opportunities. Had friends who would take classes there for fun outside of work, just to fill gaps in whichever topics they were curious about (typically math). Seems like there is a large population that does this, and UW is a great school.
* Public library system is the best I’ve experienced hands down. Free, many accessible locations, and libraries even have stuff like 3d printers and hackerspaces available for anyone’s use.
* Had plenty of friends who lived there with no car for years, and they have zero plans to ever buy one. Especially with the public transit lightrail having some really significant expansions completed recently (with many more nearing the completion; the lightrail to eastside is something i am personally excited for)
The mixed:
* Reasonable cost of leaving is the one plus-minus I mentioned. The minus is that it isn’t cheap. It is much cheaper than Bay Area/NYC/etc., but it is still a major city area. The plus is that there is no state income tax. So, in retirement, your 401k withdrawals would not get any taxes skimmed off on the state level. This point is by far the biggest potential concern I have as far as Seattle being a good suggestion for you.
The bad:
* While the weather is amazing temperature/precipitation-wise year-round, clear skies and sun outside of summer are not that common. Grey skies for more than half of the month during winter eventually got to me.
Bonus points:
* If you are into outdoorsy stuff (skiing/snowboarding/hiking/kayaking/lake stuff), I cannot think of a better area. So many options within just a couple of hours. Hell, Discovery Park (calling it a park feels like a misnomer, because it is a massive cliffside forest, fields, and a beach) is just a 15 min drive from downtown.
* Flying to asian countries is much faster and cheaper than from east coast (13 hour non-stop flight to Japan from NJ vs. a 7-8hr flight from Seattle).
There is no state income tax . . . yet. But the "soak the rich" band is already tuning up, and with the cost of living being what it is out here, "rich" will probably include anyone who can afford a house.
There are attempts at it at least once every decade, and every time they get squashed in the very end, even if they are passing the vote and get pretty much to the finish line. Any form of taxing it is against state constitution, and the state struck down any previous attempts at loopholes around that provision of the constitution.
I agree with the sibling comment that this is not something to realistically worry about at all.
I would not be too worried about that. Washington legislators just outlawed income tax last year. While those who want earned income tax are vocal, the support for the initiative against income tax was so widespread that the politicians did not want it on the ballot for fear of voters being swayed to vote for the other ballot initiatives.
I wasn't just referring to income tax, but things like capital gains and so forth. The state Supreme Court ruled an excise tax on capital gains was not an income tax, and though the limit is like $250K currently, that could change. And the party that runs Washington is the one that's currently on the warpath about "rich tech bros."
They’ve been on that warpath since the glory days of msft and amazon (i.e., for multiple decades at least). All with that same party running things back then in WA. All they’ve accomplished is shooting themselves in the foot here and there, without any meaningful progress.
Yes, that (and the LTCi payroll tax) was some nonsense and does bring into question the integrity of the leadership. But the 2111 legislation gives me hope that they aren’t stupid enough to get rid of the states’ most attractive feature for a young, productive workforce.
Especially in a future where young, productive people are going to be in shorter and shorter supply.
I had previously looked at the PNW. I adore seattle , but the earthquake / tsunami / wild fire risk projections are extreme. I know they're retrofitting a lot of infra and housing there, but a cascadia fault quake / tsunami is gonna be a bad time even if fema's 'everything east of I-5 is toast' is overhyped.
At some point, you need to do the pro/con analysis. If you add minimum natural disasters risk, based on when I knew something about datacenter siting details, you were looking at maybe Las Vegas area (which also has access to Hoover Dam power). But, now, you're in extreme desert heat (predictably) in the summer and probably don't tick off a lot of other considerations either.
Things I'm mainly looking for:
* A climate change refuge
* No 'lake effect' snow
* Continuing education opportunities (i.e. auditing classes as a retiree)
* A good public / uni library system
* Walkable density
* Reasonable cost of living (yea, this is gonna be higher in college towns)
I realize that moving to the great lakes region and wanting to avoid snow are naturally in conflict. I have a disability so I'm just bearing in mind my balance and ability to shovel snow in my old age.