Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
I think Hartford is modestly underrated. It's very hilly, green and pretty. The urbanity is good, not great, and prices are low for the NE corridor. Lots of arts/culture relative to size. One of the higher-income U.S. metros. Also direct train access to NYC now, and Boston isn't too far away either.
Negatives: area isn't really growing, not a super-exciting metro, downtown is still kinda bleh.
West Hartford is probably the nicest part for someone desiring walkability/semi-urbanity. It's a separate town, but you can basically bike to downtown Hartford. Multiple town centers, and lots of older streetcar suburbia. There are also some nice walkable, urban Hartford-proper neighborhoods, mostly in between downtown Hartford and West Hartford.
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I'm Connecticut raised, and I have a hard disagreement with this TBH.
Hartford is probably one of the worst cases of urban renewal in the country - certainly the worst in the Northeast. In the mid 20th century they basically demolished most of the traditional downtown area to make way for highrises for the insurance industry and state government. Then they demolished the next ring out of neighborhoods which is largely taken up by a moat of parking. There are also highways cutting off downtown from the riverfront and neighborhoods to the north and west. Aside from
a single block of Pratt Street, it barely has more charm than somewhere like Charlotte at this point. There have been a few residential conversions over the last 10-20 years, but Downtown is still mostly an area which is inhabited by people from 9-5 for office jobs and then becomes a ghost town.
As to the remainder of Hartford, the northern part of the city is entirely low-income, high-crime black neighborhoods, and the southern part of the city is entirely low-income, high crime Latino neighborhoods. Somewhere like Frog Hollow (in the south of the city) has real potential, including
a mostly-there business district and
cool brick walkups. But there's not a whiff of gentrification.
The "West End" of Hartford is really the only portion of the city proper with any remaining wealth (and any real number of white people). It's still lame though.
This is what passes for an urban business district.
When people bring up Hartford, they usually say "yes, but the suburbs." But the suburbs are largely pretty indistinguishable from any other part of Connecticut (meaning not very walkable by New England town standards). West Hartford stands out as an exception, with
a kind of impressive downtown area. But it's very much a "fake downtown" - with the nice street wall in the front, and a sea of parking in the rear, followed by low-density single-family housing.
There's some new urbanist development a few blocks away, but 90% of people drive there, park, and walk around.
If I ever have to move back to CT, I'll move to New Haven. It's ten times nicer as a city, and has some legit intact urban neighborhoods like East Rock and Wooster Square. Plus it's only a 30 minute drive from Hartford regardless.
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