Monday, November 19, 2012

From Dungeon Family to Monroe Dungeon

It's only about 3 months late but here's the official blog announcement of our move to Madison. We left the Dirty South and ended up in the spiffy clean Midwest, left East Atlanta and found ourselves in West Madison. In the nick of time just before leaving we were able to find a nice home for rent that fit our needs. It had previously been on the market for sale and, finding themselves in a bit of a time crunch of their own, the owners agreed to rent to us. The home is right on the edge, or maybe just inside, a neighborhood called Dungeon-Monroe. The house and the neighborhood are great. Getting here didn't go exactly as planned. Our things were put on a moving truck in Atlanta and unfortunately were not scheduled to arrive in Madison until mor than two weeks later, after Lauren was scheduled to begin work. We decided to leave Detroit and move into the house without our things. My folks followed us with towels and air mattresses, some chairs, and a table. Even without our things, we found Madison to be very enjoyable and accommodating. One of the first things we noticed was that things were very close. Compared to Atlanta, where you'd have to drive 20 minutes to get somethings, the small town feel of Madison is enhanced by it actually being small. Lauren was able to use the bike share to get to work before our bikes arrived. We could walk to parks, the grocery store, and the free zoo. I wanted to compare the old neighborhood to the new one on some factors
East AltantaDungeon-Monroe
Population32,65410,012
Median HH income$44,101$67,454
Median HH Value$208,257$255,959
Median Age34.836.8
Walk Score2074
Transit Score3341
Registered Sex Offenders679
Avg Jan High5228
Avg July High8983
Feels like temp at time of posting 5340
Notable RankingsMaxim's #1 Man CityBest City for Young Adults
Madison is #29Don't see Atlanta
The first thing that strikes me about this list is that the numbers do a very poor job of capturing the most important differences between the places. The two neighborhoods are closer than expected for many of these metrics (July High temp?). When we moved here we immediately felt a lot better about our location and living situation. There are a lot of variables but is there really a number to capture the way you feel in a place?