Suburbs like Mesa, Henderson, or Aurora are NOT included for convience. I'll say Colorado Springs, with Las Vegas and Denver close in. I would love to move to this area of the country sometime in my lifetime.
Colorado Springs? WTF? Seriously, Colorado Springs is terrible even if you put politics aside. As for me, it's probably a tie between Las Vegas and Denver.
Why is Colorado Springs terrible? For starters its right next to beautiful mountains and many national parks. I've never been there, so what have you faced when you went there? (or do you live there?)
Yeah, I've lived in several places in Colorado including Colorado Springs.
Colorado in general has many beautiful mountains and national parks. Even if you choose to live in Denver or around that area, you're still still relatively close to famous national park areas like Garden of the Gods. So if you're looking for beautiful mountains and national parks, Colorado Springs doesn't really have an "advantage" over, say, Denver.
Politically speaking, it is a pretty strong Jesus land. After all, Focus on the Family is headquartered there. As a libertarian, Colorado Springs is presumably the "wrong" kind of conservatism for you. (Unless you are a fundamentalist). It's also a huge military and police town. If you like that, then maybe you should choose the Springs to live. But if you aren't a "military" person, you're likely going to feel uncomfortable. This is because much of the town is designed to accommodate the military.
There is nothing to do in the city. It's one of the most boring cities to have ever existed in the entire history of this planet. All of the things to do (music scene, bar scene, events etc) are all in Denver. Yeah, there are some hippies, musicians, and ski bums but the culture of the city is pretty dry for a city of its size.
The transportation is notoriously bad. It's designed for a city of about 200,000 people yet the city is approaching 500,000 people. The city is famous for having traffic back-ups and other traffic problems. This actually becomes a big problem in winter because Colorado Springs is slower than the rest of the state when it comes to clearing snow and ice off the road. There isn't much in terms of bus or rail systems (the exact opposite of Denver). Colorado Springs is known for having terrible drivers and also not a great record when it comes to crime.
In conclusion, CO Springs sucks.
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