Asheville is a great place to live! Particularly if the job market is not of concern. I do not have any children, but have plenty of friends with kids, and they are pleased with the Asheville city schools. Would definitely recommend the city schools, not the county schools. There are a lot of charter schools, specializing in arts, environment, music, etc. I've heard great things about Asheville High, and the campus is gorgeous. You will be pleased by the cost of living, coming from California! There are so many great restaurants, the downtown scene is very active, and it seems that many big bands are tending to make Asheville a stop on their tours lately! If you like craft beer, we have been rated Beer City USA two years in a row now! There's a strong outdoor element here, hiking, river rafting, etc. Everyone who lives here seems to be having fun doing so! A lot of happy, but largely poor, but happy people! If you like dining out, your waitress/waiter often will have an advanced degree of some sort! Sad, but true--the lack of jobs, but desire to live here, often leads to people taking jobs out of their field and beneath their desired income bracket, just to be able to live here. I've never had a problem with that, but I think it's because I just jumped into one of the areas that seems to be a bigger industry here, the human services sector. Not my desired area overall, but it's nice and it works. Only down side: while Asheville does tout "cultural diversity", there is not much of that here. I've lived here for 14 years now, and it has always seemed to be the one things that is lacking for me. But this could be indicative of smaller towns. Though there are many different ethnic groups that call Asheville home, and the underlying culture here seems to be one of acceptance, it seems that there is not a whole lot of intermingling between ethnicities. Again, this is probably an affect of a smaller city, where people are not forced to live on top of eachother as much. Good luck!
Susan | Asheville, NC | Report Abuse