middle-of the road downtown, many very run-down ne
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11/12/2007
I moved to Lincoln just over a year ago and overall I am not impressed with the city at all.
The infrastructure for a city of its size (around 240,000 people) is awful. Many of the roads have potholes that are not patched for along time, are in great need of repair and the traffic backups are incredible for such a sized city because of the horrific road infrastructure. The city has a very run-down library downtown, the city auditorium is from the 50s and is totally unacceptable for a city of its size. Also, Lincoln has a moderate violent crime rate which is higher then the national average. Most neighborhoods are fairly safe, but they have some very, very high violent crime neighborhoods in the center neighborhoods that cause it to be a high violent crime rate city overall.
Downtown Lincoln has quite a few coffee shops, restaurants and bars. They have alot of assaults in the downtown area however. It is a fairly dangerous neighborhood especially on Thursday thru Saturday nights, other times of the week its quite a bit safer. Lincoln also has a severe homeless issue for an area of its size. Overall, I would say while downtown Lincoln has a good selection of bars, restaurants and coffee shops on the downside it is rather crime-ridden and much of downtown needs a major face-lift.
The neighborhoods in Lincoln are the worst part of Lincoln however. Basically, the selection is between run-down neighborhoods with lots of empty buildings and vacant storefronts or the other about half of the city which is lots of newer, heavily cookie-cutter type neighborhoods like what is typical of alot of cities suburban areas. Alot of the older neighborhoods have alot of empty storefronts also and the city has a tremendous amount of vacant land. Overall, not being from Lincoln I find the many of the neighborhoods to be some of the some characterless, demoralizing and uninteresting I have ever seen.
Lincoln has alot of parks, tremendous amount of parks for a city of its size. But its mainly due to the fact its either on a floodplain or the neighborhood wasnt good enough for devolopers for new devolopment, so they turned into a park.
Overall, I would not recommend Lincoln. It is not the worst city, but it has alot of run-down areas, with high poverty and above average violent crime rates. Downtown overall is decent, but many of neighborhoods are very run-down and very unappealing.
ryan | Lincoln, NE