Dubuque, IA Reviews

Nice place to live for the cost of living. - 10/6/2022
I have been here for 3 years. I enjoy it here. I travel all over the country for work. Dubuque is the perfect size of city for me. I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest which has gone down the toilet in the last 12 years and has an extremely high cost of living. Dubuque has all the amenities I need, the cost of living is low, no traffic jams, people are very friendly, theft and crime are very low, no homeless camps. It is a clean scenic area in the Mississippi valley. There is about 2 months of the winter that are pretty miserable but the rest of the year is pretty Read More

No opportunity - 11/29/2020
I've lived in Dubuque for over 25 years. Dubuque is not a very good place to live if you are open minded and want to experience new things. Dubuque is an old town with old beliefs. It votes blue but it is socially conservative. If I could describe it I would say it is a dumb place, as in the people here are generally not intelligent. It is an okay place for a family, but certainly not a good place anymore. There are not very many good jobs here, the school system has gotten very bad over the years, it like the rest of Iowa has been hit severely by brain drain. Every smart person I went to school with moved away, far away, and has no plan of ever coming back. Hardly any opportunity for a high paying job unless you are part of a wealthy family or know someone in a wealthy family. It is one of those towns. The poor people are stuffed into downtown where drug use and violence grows worse every year, people are pretty racist here as well. If you are white, vanilla, uncultured/ignorant, you Read More

Great town to live in! - 3/2/2018
Dubuque, IA is a great town to live  Read More

Sad town - 7/14/2016
This town is not for ANYONE that is not from a different ethnicity. THEY ACT THE ROLE BUT THEY ARE NOT SINCERE TGEY DO NOT LISTEN AND THEY DON'T WANT TO HELP ANYONE FROM A DIFFERET ETHNICITY UNLESS YOU FIT IN THERE WORLD ...WORK ETHNICITY HERE IS SHAMEFUL ...LEFT MY BELONGINGS (YES I TAKE ACCOUNTABILITY FOR LEAVING MY THINGS) DIDN'T GET MY THINGS UNTIL LATE AFTERNOON AND I KNEW AFTER I CHECKED ONE OTHER PLACE I WOULD HAVE LEFT IT AT I KNEW WHERE IT WAS BUT I WAS TOLD SOMEBODY FOUND IT
..NO THEY DID NOT ONCE I REALIZED WHERE I LEFT IT I WAITED TO SEE WHEN IT WOULD TURN UP NO EMAIL SENT OUT INFORMING EMPOLYEES THAT A PURSE WAS FOUND AND TO BRING ID OR INFORMATION VERIFYING IT WAS YOURS INSTEAD MGMT WALKED UP AND GAVE IT TO ME.HOW DID YOU KNOW IT WAS MINE? THAT MEANS YOU WENT THROUGH MY THINGS DISRESPECTFUL NOT AN ENVIRONMENT I WOULD EVEN CONSIDER TO RAISE MY CHILD EVENIF I DIDNT HAVE A CHILD NOT AN ENVIRONMENT I WOULD LIVE IN....IF YOU INVADE MY PRIVACY THAT IS WRONG IM A VERY Read More

Mixed Bag - 11/4/2015
DBQ is like most places where it can be good or bad depending on your perspective. My biggest problem, by far, is that I struggle to appreciate the vast majority of working class people that make up DBQ. I've had a lot of runs-ins with people for nonsensical reasons -- like parking on the street in front of someone's house. My neighbor is one of these people and I'm considering selling my house, so I don't have to deal with this kind of thing. Some people are more tolerant. I'm not. This also makes it difficult to date if you are an educated, single person. The dating pool is small.

However, the city is doing a lot to make improvements. They say the downtown area has developed over the years from what it was. The general area is beautiful and hilly. It's not far from Madison, which is a great city. It's pretty liberal for Iowa, which can be good or bad depending. There are several new yoga studios in town. And there are meat packing factories on the west side of town and Read More

Above Reasonable - 7/6/2015
Food/Groceries still higher than most states. Rent is not as reasonable. Crime is there but mostly hidden or shrugged under the rug to avoid attention. It still needs to be integrated. Its still is a bit unfriendly. People who have been here and grew up here call themselves Dubuquers. That's another way they identify themselves so in essence outsiders are not quite welcome especially if you are non-white. Though I have met some really nice Caucasians who were welcoming. But the majority are a little cold.

Good place to raise a family but with those characteristics...it will take a lifetime to make friends and new generation may not be that way. However, I know I would not want to waste to much of my adult life tying to prove myself because of not being white. It's a lot of wasted energy.
If majority of the people could be nicer and welcoming and not so cold it is a nice place I'd say.
Thanks for reading.

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DBQ is for conservative families! - 4/28/2011
Dubuque is a town for families and religious folks. If you are young this is the wrong place to be at, there is no nightlife and activities are limited, you have to drive 2 hours to Iowa City to go to a concert or exciting bar. There are churches in every corner, and the town is culturally dead! Liberal folks should stay away because you will not fit Read More

Masterpiece on the Mississippi - a City of History - 11/28/2009
Dubuque, Iowa is built into the limestone bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River in the heart of the Upper Mississippi River Valley, ranked the third most beautiful place to live in the United States by USA Today Magazine. In 2009 IBM chose Dubuque to locate a 1,300 employee Information Technology Service Center in a downtown office building that is on the National Historic Register.

In a 5 year study Dubuque was selected as the #1 mid-sized city in the country for high tech output. Dubuque was also selected as the #1 city for housing affordablity. From 2006 to 2007 Dubuque was ranked #22 in the country for the rate of job growth. In 2007 and 20008 Dubuque was ranked in the top 100 communities for young people. In 2008 it was selected as the most livable city in the United States with a population under 100,000. In 2007 Dubuque was named an All-America City by the National Civic League.

With 18,000 college students in 7 colleges in the tri-states and the Read More

Housing - 11/1/2009
I am trying to find a place to rent here in Dubuque, but it has been difficult to find one to rent. My problem is made worse by the fact that none of the apartments allow pets, and few people renting out apartments/homes allow Read More

Nothing to do - 10/6/2009
Many people say there is not a lot of things to do in this community, but that could not be further from the truth. There are many art/music festivals throughout the year as well as a variety of outdoor activities such as hiking, skiing, snow shoeing, fishing, hunting, etc. The scenery here is absolutely breathtaking! I have lived all around the US and I find it wonderfully refreshing living in the Read More