Arlington or Montgomery County? [VA/MD]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Both MoCo and Arlington are fine places to live, with nice homes, good schools, decent suburban amenities. Each with their boosters, who like to pretend (on DCUM) that small differences are fundamental.

But to build on a point made earlier, Montgomery County is part of the state of Maryland, which in many key respects - demographics (and diversity), political registration (and vote margin for Dem presidential candidates), urbanization level, religious observation (and church attendance) -- tends to be more like California than is Virginia, where Arlington is situated. Which means that state-level politics and policies -- which affect even blessed enclaves like Bethesda or McLean -- are less likely in Maryland to be hijacked by ugly cultural wedge issues like trans access or 'woke' book-burnings or Jan 6 denial. Maryland, whose population is overwhelmingly dominated by the DC and Baltimore metro areas, has a political orientation that's basically like northeastern or western states, and migrants from those areas feel very much at home in Maryland communities. But while Virginia may have voted blue in the last four Presidential elections, its political orientation is essentially even (as characterized by 538.com before the 2020 and 2021 elections), it's still a state in transition, and the educated achievers of northern Virginia are still a minority in the state. That might sound good and non-partisan in theory, but it also means there's a lot of lively/contentious battle for the state-wide political-intellectual terrain.

So if OP's family really likes the 'feel' of life in the Bay Area, it's more likely to feel similar in Montgomery County MD. If they routinely look around them on the Peninsula and say "OMG all this woke craziness -- we've got to move out of California" then Arlington County VA is probably a better bet.

That's just an objective observation. If someone were posting to say "we're blissfully happy here in the suburbs of Atlanta/Charlotte/Dallas and will be moving to DC but don't know if we'd prefer Arlington or MoCo" I'd note exactly the opposite.

Very accurate. Nice job

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both MoCo and Arlington are fine places to live, with nice homes, good schools, decent suburban amenities. Each with their boosters, who like to pretend (on DCUM) that small differences are fundamental.

But to build on a point made earlier, Montgomery County is part of the state of Maryland, which in many key respects - demographics (and diversity), political registration (and vote margin for Dem presidential candidates), urbanization level, religious observation (and church attendance) -- tends to be more like California than is Virginia, where Arlington is situated. Which means that state-level politics and policies -- which affect even blessed enclaves like Bethesda or McLean -- are less likely in Maryland to be hijacked by ugly cultural wedge issues like trans access or 'woke' book-burnings or Jan 6 denial. Maryland, whose population is overwhelmingly dominated by the DC and Baltimore metro areas, has a political orientation that's basically like northeastern or western states, and migrants from those areas feel very much at home in Maryland communities. But while Virginia may have voted blue in the last four Presidential elections, its political orientation is essentially even (as characterized by 538.com before the 2020 and 2021 elections), it's still a state in transition, and the educated achievers of northern Virginia are still a minority in the state. That might sound good and non-partisan in theory, but it also means there's a lot of lively/contentious battle for the state-wide political-intellectual terrain.

So if OP's family really likes the 'feel' of life in the Bay Area, it's more likely to feel similar in Montgomery County MD. If they routinely look around them on the Peninsula and say "OMG all this woke craziness -- we've got to move out of California" then Arlington County VA is probably a better bet.

That's just an objective observation. If someone were posting to say "we're blissfully happy here in the suburbs of Atlanta/Charlotte/Dallas and will be moving to DC but don't know if we'd prefer Arlington or MoCo" I'd note exactly the opposite.

Very accurate. Nice job

To the extent that it suggests that decisions are based primarily on perceived cultural and political affinities.

Economic considerations also come into play. The Census data shows more Californians moving to Virginia then to Maryland. In the most recent Census data set available, the number of Californians moving to Virginia in the prior 12-month period was 68% higher than the number moving to Maryland. This can't be explained away simply by pointing to the size of each state, since the population of Virginia is about 40% higher than the population of Maryland.

[Anonymous]

Economic considerations also come into play. The Census data shows more Californians moving to Virginia then to Maryland. In the most recent Census data set available, the number of Californians moving to Virginia in the prior 12-month period was 68% higher than the number moving to Maryland. This can't be explained away simply by pointing to the size of each state, since the population of Virginia is about 40% higher than the population of Maryland.

Oh please. You're trying to craft an argument based on isolated data points that prove nothing absent context. The difference (in CA migrants to VA and MD respectively) in absolute terms is less than 7K people; the difference adjusted for VA and MD's population size is less than 3000 people. For all we know that might reflect that CA and VA are two of the three US state's with the biggest (frequently PCS-ing) military populations (unlike MD which isn't even in the top ten). Which might also account for why migration to CA from VA was twice as high as from MD over that same period.

How about another data point -- the fact Maryland has the highest average Household Income (HHI) in the nation, while Virginia is ranked tenth, lower than both Maryland and California (and btw the gap between MD and VA isn't that close -- about eight percent). Guess that means at least at a macro/average level, Californians have the potential to increase their HHI by moving to MD while facing a decrease if they move to VA. That's actually a silly argument to make to an individual/family - who knows what their particular circumstances are -- but it underscores why these arguments based on a single data point are kind of meaningless.

As for the population growth data others here have gone on about, VA's increased by 7.88% over the last census, while Maryland's increased by 6.99%, which is a pretty negligible difference, esp if you consider that Maryland's population density (per sq mile) is already three times that of Virginia's. Of course, population growth in both states is dwarfed by that of DC (14.9%) - does that prove that DC is automatically the best fit for transplanting Californians?

The point is, the economic distinctions between MD and VA aren't particularly dramatic, unless you happen to work for the state chamber of commerce or are some partisan/cable news warrior. Which is exactly why it's also worth delving into cultural distinctions. If you've never been asked by neighbors "what church do you go to?" and don't really want to live in a community where that might be a conversational ice-breaker, or don't want to raise your kids among families that use "woke" as an all-purpose term of dismissal, or in a community where some parents may seek to ban 'problematic' books from the local library - and come from a Bay Area community where that's never been an issue -- it's a lot more germane to consider where in the DMV that's a likelier possibility, rather than attaching undue importance to, say, whether one state's population growth rate was almost 1 percent higher than another's over the preceding decade.

[Anonymous]

Always choose Montgomery country. While it has a lot more crime, it is still miles above Arlington and Virginia.

[Anonymous]

OP probably isn’t following anymore but I’ll add my 2c, having moved from Marin a few years ago after spending over a decade in the Bay Area. We were looking for a lot of the same things and same budget when we moved here and really struggled. The suburbs here aren’t like CA where there are individual towns that have walkable commercial areas—it’s much more suburban sprawl. The parts of Arlington and Chevy Chase people are mentioning are much more urban feeling (think high rises) than towns on the Peninsula, so it has a completely different feel. Bethesda Ave is the closest thing we found—it has a Burlingame Ave vibe (w same complaints re chains etc). We ended up in NWDC which you may want to consider. We originally dismissed living in the District because of the schools, but found the housing stock was much more what we were looking for (small, charming vs emphasis on size and new build) and some areas have a much more “neighborhood” vibe than the suburbs. Elementary schools in NW actually tend to be excellent - it’s middle and high school that get tougher so we’ll probably go private before that. Our kids weren’t even in school yet when we moved, and we figured even if we bought in a great district, a lot can happen in the 10 years til they enter middle in terms of school quality and whether we’ll even still be living here.

Good luck! There’s nothing like the Bay Area but quality of life here is good and you’ll be thrilled at how much further your money goes (we laughed the first time we paid our DC car reg fee - it’s like 10% of the annual cost in CA).

[Anonymous]

VA traffic is a nightmare and makes 0 sense to me still.

Moco all the way

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:VA traffic is a nightmare and makes 0 sense to me still.

Moco all the way

I live in Moco and like it, but it's hard to believe that traffic in Moco is superior to VA. Moco has horrific drivers; I've done road trips through most of the U.S., and I think nothing compares to how horrible the drivers in Moco are. I am mainly referring to areas like SS, Bethesda, and Chevy Chase. The drivers are slow, gabbing/texting away on the cell phone, think that pulling over at random points along major roads is acceptable, brake randomly out of nowhere, don't use turn signals, think that a speed camera requires slowing down to 10 miles below the posted speed limit (FYI -- the camera only flashes at 12 above), etc. It's a total s***show.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both MoCo and Arlington are fine places to live, with nice homes, good schools, decent suburban amenities. Each with their boosters, who like to pretend (on DCUM) that small differences are fundamental.

But to build on a point made earlier, Montgomery County is part of the state of Maryland, which in many key respects - demographics (and diversity), political registration (and vote margin for Dem presidential candidates), urbanization level, religious observation (and church attendance) -- tends to be more like California than is Virginia, where Arlington is situated. Which means that state-level politics and policies -- which affect even blessed enclaves like Bethesda or McLean -- are less likely in Maryland to be hijacked by ugly cultural wedge issues like trans access or 'woke' book-burnings or Jan 6 denial. Maryland, whose population is overwhelmingly dominated by the DC and Baltimore metro areas, has a political orientation that's basically like northeastern or western states, and migrants from those areas feel very much at home in Maryland communities. But while Virginia may have voted blue in the last four Presidential elections, its political orientation is essentially even (as characterized by 538.com before the 2020 and 2021 elections), it's still a state in transition, and the educated achievers of northern Virginia are still a minority in the state. That might sound good and non-partisan in theory, but it also means there's a lot of lively/contentious battle for the state-wide political-intellectual terrain.

So if OP's family really likes the 'feel' of life in the Bay Area, it's more likely to feel similar in Montgomery County MD. If they routinely look around them on the Peninsula and say "OMG all this woke craziness -- we've got to move out of California" then Arlington County VA is probably a better bet.

That's just an objective observation. If someone were posting to say "we're blissfully happy here in the suburbs of Atlanta/Charlotte/Dallas and will be moving to DC but don't know if we'd prefer Arlington or MoCo" I'd note exactly the opposite.

Very accurate. Nice job

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! NOT AT ALL. Arlington is one of the most woke places in the country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VA traffic is a nightmare and makes 0 sense to me still.

Moco all the way

I live in Moco and like it, but it's hard to believe that traffic in Moco is superior to VA. Moco has horrific drivers; I've done road trips through most of the U.S., and I think nothing compares to how horrible the drivers in Moco are. I am mainly referring to areas like SS, Bethesda, and Chevy Chase. The drivers are slow, gabbing/texting away on the cell phone, think that pulling over at random points along major roads is acceptable, brake randomly out of nowhere, don't use turn signals, think that a speed camera requires slowing down to 10 miles below the posted speed limit (FYI -- the camera only flashes at 12 above), etc. It's a total s***show.

MD were #7 of worst drivers in the entire country. I don't even need to see the plate and know they are MD drivers. Incredibly dangerous and high speed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VA traffic is a nightmare and makes 0 sense to me still.

Moco all the way

I live in Moco and like it, but it's hard to believe that traffic in Moco is superior to VA. Moco has horrific drivers; I've done road trips through most of the U.S., and I think nothing compares to how horrible the drivers in Moco are. I am mainly referring to areas like SS, Bethesda, and Chevy Chase. The drivers are slow, gabbing/texting away on the cell phone, think that pulling over at random points along major roads is acceptable, brake randomly out of nowhere, don't use turn signals, think that a speed camera requires slowing down to 10 miles below the posted speed limit (FYI -- the camera only flashes at 12 above), etc. It's a total s***show.

MD were #7 of worst drivers in the entire country. I don't even need to see the plate and know they are MD drivers. Incredibly dangerous and high speed.

MD drivers drive at high speeds? That's only true if you think high speed is 10 mph below the speed limit. MD drivers are horrifically slow. I think some of it is because there are so many elderly folks in the MD burbs. I would love to know where the dangerous MD speed demons are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VA traffic is a nightmare and makes 0 sense to me still.

Moco all the way

I live in Moco and like it, but it's hard to believe that traffic in Moco is superior to VA. Moco has horrific drivers; I've done road trips through most of the U.S., and I think nothing compares to how horrible the drivers in Moco are. I am mainly referring to areas like SS, Bethesda, and Chevy Chase. The drivers are slow, gabbing/texting away on the cell phone, think that pulling over at random points along major roads is acceptable, brake randomly out of nowhere, don't use turn signals, think that a speed camera requires slowing down to 10 miles below the posted speed limit (FYI -- the camera only flashes at 12 above), etc. It's a total s***show.

MD were #7 of worst drivers in the entire country. I don't even need to see the plate and know they are MD drivers. Incredibly dangerous and high speed.

Nah, I think you meant to say Virginia.
https://insurify.com/insights/states-worst-drivers-2022/


And they are the rudest drivers too.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/article/the-states-with-the-rudest-drivers/ss-BB1gbyTu#image=13

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VA traffic is a nightmare and makes 0 sense to me still.

Moco all the way

I live in Moco and like it, but it's hard to believe that traffic in Moco is superior to VA. Moco has horrific drivers; I've done road trips through most of the U.S., and I think nothing compares to how horrible the drivers in Moco are. I am mainly referring to areas like SS, Bethesda, and Chevy Chase. The drivers are slow, gabbing/texting away on the cell phone, think that pulling over at random points along major roads is acceptable, brake randomly out of nowhere, don't use turn signals, think that a speed camera requires slowing down to 10 miles below the posted speed limit (FYI -- the camera only flashes at 12 above), etc. It's a total s***show.

MD were #7 of worst drivers in the entire country. I don't even need to see the plate and know they are MD drivers. Incredibly dangerous and high speed.

MD drivers drive at high speeds? That's only true if you think high speed is 10 mph below the speed limit. MD drivers are horrifically slow. I think some of it is because there are so many elderly folks in the MD burbs. I would love to know where the dangerous MD speed demons are.

I'm willing to bet you only drive in Potomac, Bethesda, Chevy Chase and close in Silver Spring. You've never stepped foot in PG county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Economic considerations also come into play. The Census data shows more Californians moving to Virginia then to Maryland. In the most recent Census data set available, the number of Californians moving to Virginia in the prior 12-month period was 68% higher than the number moving to Maryland. This can't be explained away simply by pointing to the size of each state, since the population of Virginia is about 40% higher than the population of Maryland.

Oh please. You're trying to craft an argument based on isolated data points that prove nothing absent context. The difference (in CA migrants to VA and MD respectively) in absolute terms is less than 7K people; the difference adjusted for VA and MD's population size is less than 3000 people. For all we know that might reflect that CA and VA are two of the three US state's with the biggest (frequently PCS-ing) military populations (unlike MD which isn't even in the top ten). Which might also account for why migration to CA from VA was twice as high as from MD over that same period.

How about another data point -- the fact Maryland has the highest average Household Income (HHI) in the nation, while Virginia is ranked tenth, lower than both Maryland and California (and btw the gap between MD and VA isn't that close -- about eight percent). Guess that means at least at a macro/average level, Californians have the potential to increase their HHI by moving to MD while facing a decrease if they move to VA. That's actually a silly argument to make to an individual/family - who knows what their particular circumstances are -- but it underscores why these arguments based on a single data point are kind of meaningless.

As for the population growth data others here have gone on about, VA's increased by 7.88% over the last census, while Maryland's increased by 6.99%, which is a pretty negligible difference, esp if you consider that Maryland's population density (per sq mile) is already three times that of Virginia's. Of course, population growth in both states is dwarfed by that of DC (14.9%) - does that prove that DC is automatically the best fit for transplanting Californians?

The point is, the economic distinctions between MD and VA aren't particularly dramatic, unless you happen to work for the state chamber of commerce or are some partisan/cable news warrior. Which is exactly why it's also worth delving into cultural distinctions. If you've never been asked by neighbors "what church do you go to?" and don't really want to live in a community where that might be a conversational ice-breaker, or don't want to raise your kids among families that use "woke" as an all-purpose term of dismissal, or in a community where some parents may seek to ban 'problematic' books from the local library - and come from a Bay Area community where that's never been an issue -- it's a lot more germane to consider where in the DMV that's a likelier possibility, rather than attaching undue importance to, say, whether one state's population growth rate was almost 1 percent higher than another's over the preceding decade.

Wow, this is spot on, very clear, articulate.

I'm from the Bay Area originally. Not OP.

Both Arlington and Rockville made the top cities of best places to live. Both are nice areas, but the cities don't exist in a vacuum of their own politics. State policies and politics do impact you locally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VA traffic is a nightmare and makes 0 sense to me still.

Moco all the way

I live in Moco and like it, but it's hard to believe that traffic in Moco is superior to VA. Moco has horrific drivers; I've done road trips through most of the U.S., and I think nothing compares to how horrible the drivers in Moco are. I am mainly referring to areas like SS, Bethesda, and Chevy Chase. The drivers are slow, gabbing/texting away on the cell phone, think that pulling over at random points along major roads is acceptable, brake randomly out of nowhere, don't use turn signals, think that a speed camera requires slowing down to 10 miles below the posted speed limit (FYI -- the camera only flashes at 12 above), etc. It's a total s***show.

MD were #7 of worst drivers in the entire country. I don't even need to see the plate and know they are MD drivers. Incredibly dangerous and high speed.

Nah, I think you meant to say Virginia.
https://insurify.com/insights/states-worst-drivers-2022/


And they are the rudest drivers too.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/article/the-states-with-the-rudest-drivers/ss-BB1gbyTu#image=13

+1 not only that I find MD drivers actually really slow, and VA drivers to be rude and aggressive.

I'm originally from CA. The slow MD drivers annoy me, but the aggressive VA drivers scare me.

[Anonymous]

A vote for Arlington.
Lots of walkable neighborhoods (westover, Lyon park)
Better taxes and better run government.
My kids schools have been less crowded than for my friends who have kids in Bethesda/Chevy chase
Better commute into DC - including more reliable metro line.