Madison still has “it” - 1/16/2024

Unfortunately, a number of these reviews are politically based. Madison remains the only shining star in Wisconsin’s economy. The economy is broadly based, with insurance, medical software, and agri-genetics being some of the biggest private sector employers. In my 60 years, Madison has always been a highly desirable place to live. Unfortunately, with it having increased its metropolitan population fivefold in my lifetime, there have been changes—as there would be in any city with that amount of growth. Yes, there’s more crime, and traffic has become a big issue, and many of the local places that provided charm and interest are being torn down for high-rises but you tell me a city that’s growing that doesn’t face these issues also. Madison is becoming more expensive on par with other leading cities of the Midwest, but it still retains a very high-quality of life in a beautiful setting, with lots of the performing arts, athletics, green spaces, friendly people, good health care, and terrific food. Other cities should be so lucky to have to the amenities that Madison does. People still chose to pay more to live in desirable places with a high quality of life, in spite of the anti-tax crowd trying to turn Wisconsin into Mississippi with snow.

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Overall nice place to live - 5/19/2023

Have been living in Madison for almost 3 years. It’s very safe, ppl generally friendly and for a town of its size it has fair number of good restaurants and interesting shows and events to attend. Cost of living here I think is the lowest among all the places in US I have lived. I can’t believe why it gets such a low rating on this site. Only drawbacks are that it’s freezing in winter, and also it’s a small town so job opportunities are limited.

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Leaders head in the clouds & hands in your pockets - 11/8/2021

Lacks balance and zero accountability.

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Terrible place to live! - 7/19/2021

Moved here five years ago and am ready to glorified college town! The rent is increasing astronomically, as are property taxes. The traffic is terrible and increasing because city leaders are not doing enough to accommodate the modest population growth. There are too many transplants from Milwaukee and Chicago bring crime into this once safe city. Due to Madison's extreme liberalism, the mayor cut $2 million to the local police department. Good luck being a conservative in Madison (or anywhere in Dane County, really). West Madison and Middleton are the epitome of limousine liberalism - you know, rich people who have "all are welcome" yard signs all while living in the least diverse neighborhoods and sending their kids to very segregated schools. The Madison area is nothing but a group think metro full of people who look down on rural people or anyone who isn't at least left of center. Ready to get out of here!

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Formerly fantastic, presently bleak - 9/7/2020

We chose Madison for a voluntary, lifestyle improvement move 5 years ago. Initially, we loved it. Clean, so much to do, everyone on bikes with endless paths throughout the city, lakes, and tons of cool community activities. Madison has big city resources with a smaller city feel. Unfortunately, the city has changed for the worst over the last two years. Crime has sky rocketed with visible drug issues, car theft, burglary, and shootings/gun fire (shots fired into bystander houses and moving vehicles) almost daily, often in broad daylight. Taxes are huge and increasingly for odd, pet project services. Traffic is insane and a new mid rise building seems to spring up daily. Over the top liberalism permeates everything with zero criminal accountability from judges, frivolous services for special interest groups, an incompetent and ineffective mayor. Downtown, formerly fun and inviting, is a no go zone due to violence, unchecked protesting and COVID or looting shuttered businesses. I live intown in a walkable community, but now have to think about safety when I go for a run, dog walk, or bike ride. Super sad, I would strongly discourage moving here.

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Madison, WI is no longer livable - 7/26/2020

Grew up here in the 70s and have lived here most of my life. Lived elsewhere a few times, including a foreign country, and most recently returned in 2015. This month alone, July 2020, we have had 3 murders. Shots fired incidents every day. Our once vibrant downtown has been terrorized, destroyed and boarded up. It is no longer safe, thanks the revolving door of so-called "restorative justice." Pro-Marxist/Fascist groups are in control, receive sizable taxpayer dollars and have ruined the school system. Identity politics has left this place a shambles. If you want to move here and support this nonsense, be my guest. I'll be happy to let the door hit me in the ass on the way out, the sooner the better.

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Beautiful But Ugly - 5/10/2020

Grew up and lived in Madison for over 30 years before leaving it behind. In all honesty, it's a beautiful little capital city nestled between lakes and seeing respectable growth. Pros: - Nature. Lot's of conservation efforts. Great parks and lakes inside the city. Just a short drive to even more natural beauty to the north and west. - Farmers market. Top 5 in the U.S. imo. Access to farm CSA's is amazing too. - Some amazing city neighborhoods. Near west side has Greenbush, Vilas and Regent neighborhoods, and the Atwood and Jenifer neighborhoods on the east side are all beautiful, walkable and safe. - Economy is still small but growing fast. Cons: - Expensive. Housing has shot through the roof. Taxes are really high. While the economy is growing, it's nowhere on par with costs of living. Only luxury condos/apts have been built in the last 20 years, mostly on the outskirts of town where its unwalkable. Nearly the entirety of downtown housing is university students in converted single family homes. This has pushed housing costs unreasonably high in the surrounding city neighborhoods. - Sprawl. Continuation from above, the consequence of not improving density is massive sprawl. Farm land is being bought and paved by the day. Obviously, not unique to Madison alone, but a shame given the opportunity and need. Watching Sun Prairie and Verona boom like they have this past decade saddens me. Madison is following the same failed path as other urban cores. Lose their tax base, failing schools, increasing infrastructure costs to support suburban growth, rising crime, horrible traffic... ugh. East to west on the beltline used to take 40 minutes tops in rush hour. Last year, before I moved, it took me over an 1hr 30mins. Middleton to downtown used to take 15-20 minutes when traffic was busiest. Now takes upwards of 40 minutes. - Government. Part of the high cost of living is due to blunders on part of the City. City planning and the Mayors office has done a really poor job managing the growth on multiple levels. The ban on multi-family zoning and building taller than the capital has forced runaway housing costs and rapid suburban sprawl. Crime is also way out of hand and no serious plan has been put forth. Burglary's, car jacking's and armed robberies were rare in the 80's, 90s and early 00's. These are crimes of poverty, which tells you a deeper story of "liberal" Madison. - The people and culture. Lot's of great, community active people. Lots of really snobby, unfriendly people too. Something about the culture being centered around the capital and university that created an elitist vibe to most of the more liberally minded people. Maybe it's the strong Scandinavian and German roots, or the long bitter winters. However, Madisonians are not very warm or relatable folks. Then you have those who wear camouflage to dinner and ask for juice when they want a Mountain Dew... this is still Wisconsin after all. - Racism. Building on the last point, Madison has not been very friendly to it's black population. Madison is REALLY NOT a diverse or liberal place, despite their belief that LGBTQ rights = those things. Madison is much closer in terms of culture to Boise, ID than to Berkeley, CA or Ann Arbor, MI. The achievement gap between whites and blacks is (I think) the worst in the United States. Lots of them proclaim liberal values but act as staunch conservatives when it comes to the things that really matter. Nearly all of that growth has been young white professionals from rural parts of Wisconsin. Trust me, I work in tech and these younger whites are even more racist than their parents. They moved to Madison BECAUSE it's mostly white.

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Nice, but cold Easters, high taxes, very liberal - 4/1/2018

Madison offers quite a bit for a metro area of 600,000. It is like a small big city. But it suffers these faults: 5 months of winter-like weather (I have seen snow from Halloween to Mothers Day), high property taxes, very liberal focus in politics, love of bicycles to the exclusion of cars so the roads are pathetic in term of repair and are way under built, very high rents and house prices for a mid-western town, and a beautiful airport with less than a dozen non-stop flight cities and outrageous air fares wherever you go. Stay away from government and university employment as this state does not give pay raises that even keep up with 2 percent inflation. The best part of the city is that the lakes and warmist summers are BEAUTIFUL! Late winter to early Spring is the hardest time living here because you just want winter to leave.

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Difficult Move From Blue State - 2/16/2018

Since they passed Act 10 in 2007 they have done away with collective bargaining and many protective measurers for workers have been eliminated, like reductions of vacation time from 5 weeks to 2 weeks at the hospital. The elected officials are looking to institute open carry at the universities and do away with tenure. My sense is people who could get out left and the people left behind are bitter, busy, stuck or retired. I moved here with my husband in 2015 for his job and as a middle aged educator looking for work I have experienced a negative reception. I can't tell you how many people asked me to volunteer my time, which is the norm here, they have no idea how insulting it is to be asked to work for free. They are obsessed with work and for the most menial jobs they will ask for 3 references, call every one of them and also have you interviewed by a panel of 3. Wages are low for most jobs and it doesn't make sense because the cost of living here is high. The public schools are a quagmire of red tape to navigate, I have never encountered such ridiculous requirements to substitute teach, reams of paper work, two background checks, physical exams at clinics they specify and nothing was concrete, the rules and regulations of what I would need to work kept changing, one person said one thing and another person said another, at that point I felt like I had slipped down some crazy rabbit hole and decided not to pursue work in the public schools. I have found the people here to be pretty linear, lacking in humor and polite but not inclusive. As a group there seems to be a lot of rule followers who do as they are told and don't think much outside of the box. We have been here 3 years and have not been invited to dinner, maybe it's cultural? They will meet you at a bar. It's a bar society. People in Chicago and Minneapolis are more friendly, maybe they are happier? One woman I met recently who works at the UW Madison said she was told by nurse at the hospital that a lot of people at the University: staff and students are on record levels of antidepressants. Her comment was a sad reality check for me. Maybe 20 years ago it would have been a cool place to move, maybe people were happier then? Culturally there is very little to do. The weather is extreme; very hot and humid in the summer and bitter cold in the winter. The landscape is dull and in very little time you are in the middle of cornfields. Chicago is 2 1/2 hours away, Minneapolis is close to 5 hours away. It takes 1 1/2 hours to get to Milwaukee for a reasonably priced flight; the local airport here is costly, so we drive to Milwaukee. Renting in Madison is very expensive and the quality of architecture is sub par compared to other areas of the country. Beige, vanilla and poorly designed, maybe it's because Wisconsin traditionally has had little money so the best architects moved to the bigger cities? At least that is my theory. Buying a home in Madison is costly and competitive, it can take months and luck to get a modest, poorly designed house. There are many people bidding on the same property and there are not many single family homes for sale. I have seen so many glowing reports about Madison that I just want to get my opinion out there because if you have a choice I would not move here. The elected officials here have decimated the state, it's a petri dish for their political theories of no government, we have the Koch brothers, Governor Walker and Paul Ryan to thank for that.

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Very quickly becoming unaffordable. - 1/22/2018

I call it the most conservative liberal city in the US. After living here 35+ years I've seen the best and worst. There has been a boom in Dane County recently with much of it surrounding Madison. The UW is causing major changes with regard to housing. Luxury high rises are going up everywhere and students are moving there as opposed to the old run down victorians all over town. The drawback is rental agencies are raising their prices as well to make up the difference. The prices shown on the previous page are ALL OFF by at LEAST $200. Finding a studio to live in for $650 is next to impossible without being on a waitlist for several years. The city is throwing money to gentrify a lot of the older rundown areas of town in order to attract new people to move here. The East Washington corridor is in a state of constant high rise construction. The Pros: The UW. State Street and Capitol Square. Buses. Access to farm fresh foods. No sales tax on unprepared foods. Numerous summer farmers markets. Numerous summer neighborhood festivals. Nationally know concert venues. Great for young families. Lakes. Outdoor activities. Commuter biking opportunity. Lower unemployment. LOTS of Insurance & Tech companies. Good health care. 10 mins from the country. People are very nice. Diversity, but not a large minority population. The Cons: Cost of living, PROPERTY TAXES ARE HIGH! On a $100,000 condo you pay as much as a $200,000 home in one of the bedroom communities OUTSIDE of Dane County. RENT is ridiculous (a studio rents for $850+ for a nice place). Even with the high rises there is a shortage of affordable rentals. High utility rates. PARKING PARKING PARKING, costs can be an additional $125+ a month with alternate side parking during off summer months. Everyone has a car, or two. Parking tickets (numerous and for just about any reason). Retail is either east side or west side (neither convenient). Commutes for a city 12 miles across can be ridiculous. Layout of the city(three major roads to either side. Bus routes. Expensive regional airport (most people make the drive to Milwaukee or Chicago). A younger up and coming age group but none of the national retail services as a major city. Expensive health care. Not a great town for singles. Laws against almost anything (ie dog laws, don't bring one to the farmers markets, or a wagon). Listed the 15th worst city for allergies in the US. Algae bloom on the lakes making them unusable and smelly. Cold winters. It's crowded for a small city. Very large population of homeless and mentally ill. Crime is rising quickly.

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Pretty mid-sized metro area with pros and cons - 12/22/2017

This city would be on my short list if the winters weren't so long and cold.

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Mad City - 2/5/2017

Madison has a lot going for it: good employment ops., lots of culture, a little leftover hippyness to take the edge off and it's the capital. Living there, you get the feeling of close quarters. The U. though world class, has sort of taken over the city like a slow growing tumor. So, on week days driving or walking downtown is quite an adventure. Bike lanes seemingly spring up in roadways that would scare me to pedal through. Buses are convenient. Personally I like my U and City a bit more separated. Housing sure isn't cheap. Cost of living isn't cheap, at least for me. But, I'm a frugal frau. Occasionally there is a march on the capital. It can be quite politically inclined, a mix of everything. Medically speaking, you'll be in the pink. People come from far and wide to see their doctors. Also, on certain days you might be driving the Beltway (heavy traffic) but then you'll see some cows staring back at you from the U Vet School. It tends to put a smile on your face.

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nice college town - 2/4/2016

Madison is a mid sized city located in South Central Wisconsin. Some of the biggest employers are The University of Wisconsin, UW hospital ( Voted number 1 hospital in Wisconsin) And Epic Systems(electronic charting for hospitals). You will find plenty to do as Madison boasts miles of biking and hiking trails, popular college sports teams and many choices to enjoy the arts. Just bring your coat.

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Why we like Madison and perhaps why we don't so mu - 2/10/2015

We met at Madison in our 40s and got married. We bought a house in town with a nice yard, close to bus transportation so Jim could get to work and near a good grocery store, parks, schools, and a short distance from our favorite (more pricy) parts of town. Our home value went up and we really liked our neighborhood and we gardened and could get to intellectual and fun activities as well as the "commons" of our city and area, coffee shops, parks, lakes, rural places nearby, shopping. Friends bought houses not very far from us which was also wonderful. Kids grew up and moved out and health issues meant that it might be better if we didn't have to shovel, carry salt for softener, work so hard on gardens, or take lots of stairs. So we sold our house and bought a condo on the lake, quite near. It was more expensive but is quite lovely and the living is easy (laundry room just behind the bedroom, for instance.) Also everyone in the building is great. We cooperate well and enjoy each other. More neighborly than the neighborhood. I can garden on my deck and we eat out there, even have a natural gas grill on the balcony. It's a good walking area too and right next to a fabulous botanical garden. Bus location is even better. We like Madison, WI partially because we are lefties and are worried about what has happened to WI under Scott Walker and the gerrymandering that has put in right wing legislators. Sometimes we think we might move after retirement but hate to leave our friends. We loved Boulder Colorado but I wasn't too impressed with the quality of housing I saw online (I think this place has spoiled me.) The climate there in the summer was fabulous. I'm also thinking of Portland OR because it is supposed to be walkable, have good transportation, and because of the right to die issue. I am 63 and hope to retire in a few years. We won't be rich but do want to live in a city. I spent many years in the country and have had my fill.

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Housing, it's relative. - 7/16/2014

Other than the Milwaukee Metro area, it does cost more to live in Madison than the rest of WI. Housing is the primary factor making this community a difficult place for lower income folks to reside in. We knew this upon our arrival here back in 2000 and so we purchased a mobile home, believing we could have some privacy, our kids with their own bedrooms and not go broke in the process. Now however, the lot rent has climbed to over $600/mo, making this less economical than we believed it would be at this point, back when we moved in. Finding any sort of house to rent for under $1k/mo is next to impossible ansd apartments or condos aren't much better. While most of the country was suffering through a collapse in the realestate market a number of years ago, Madison kept right on chugging along, just at a bit of a lesser pace. Now again it has climbed back to double digit appreciation in the market. Unemployment always remains very low. The primary employers are state government related, given this is the state capitol, and at or related to the U of W, both behemoths relatively immune to recessions and just about anything else with the ability to suppress housing prices. Also key players in Madison's economy are the healthcare and insurance industries, more white collar types with greater than average immunity to business ups and downs. The Madison area is very nice, if you can afford it. You may or may not find it has pluses that outweigh the higher costs of living here. Comnpared to larger metro areas in other states, it could fare much better than versus those in the midwest.

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Love this town! - 1/24/2014

Way more music, theater, fine dining, and general fun than you'd expect from a small city.

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Breathing - poor quality of air - 5/18/2013

I moved to Madison a month ago from Gainesville, Fl because the climate there gave e terrible asthma. I thought the air would be better in Madison. I was here 10 days and started having terrible coughing attacks. I had a severe asthma attack and am staying inside. I am also wearing a mask when I go out. I plan to move in 4 days. There is something very wrong with the air her - high particulate matter. It's too bad because I like the city and the people but must go where I can breath. If you plan to move to Madison go and stay for at least a week to see how you react to the climate.

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Safest place to live! - 2/5/2012

I have lived in Madison all my life and I will be the first to say that this city is a very safe place to raise a family, go to school, and even just a relocation for a single person. The crime and unemployment rate are low. Yes we get some snow in the winter months but it is not as bad as some people have previously stated. The northern Wisconsin cities get most of the snow. Yes it does get humid in the summer but then again the last couple summers have had highs in the 70's and 80's with very little 90's. There are 4 lakes in and around this city. The Capital and downtown area sits on an isthmus and is a pretty sight while driving in on John Nolen Drive. If your looking smaller towns with a short commute to Madison there are a couple of good choice. Overall Madison is a very safe place to live and a great choice!

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Beware - 12/30/2011

First, I've lived there 20 years. College town, government workers and working poor dominate the population. Good schools - I raised my son here. Good restaurants, limited but interesting neighborhoods. Fun place to visit for a day, or two. But outside of a precious few weeks each spring and fall, the weather is godawful! Oppressive heat and humid, mosquitoes, stench from the lakes, just awful. Winter is deadly, and seems to last forever and ever without break. Housing is wa-ay expensive, and surviving requires at least 85G, or you will be scraping buy and priced out of most entertainment. And it is getting worse by the year. Madison residents are better than you, get over it. Keep your politics to yourself - either way, left or right, you will ruin yourself. Taxes outrageous, even considering the good schools. Streets are lousy, and it is extraordinarily difficult to travel more than a mile or two from Dec through March. Unless you are getting huge bucks, consider elsewhere. An awful lot of PhDs, engineers and professionals serving coffee at all the coffee shops.

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Subject title - 7/25/2011

Eh, it's alright.

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