Flagstaff, AZ

by Felix Wong | 21 Sep 2005

Flagstaff was one of my only hopes in Arizona for a new home, as it is one of the only major cities in that state where the summers are not consistently in the triple-digits from May to September. In contrast, Flagstaff gets about 100′ of snow each year! (It melts quickly under the Arizona sun, I hear). However, as I arrived in town I was fairly unimpressed. Here’s why:

• Too many highways—e.g., Interstate 40, Business 40, Route 66, US 89, US 89A, and US 180—go right through town and hence there are fast food restaurants and motels everywhere! Presumably, this is because Flagstaff is the nearest major city to the Grand Canyon and a last stop for many sight-seers. I now refer to Flagstaff as a “drive-thru” town.
• More urban blight includes numerous apartment complexes and strip joints. Yet, housing is way more expensive here than most places in, say, Colorado. Arizona as a whole seems to have housing costs like that of Oregon (i.e., approaching California).
• Crime statistics are fairly unimpressive (at least compared to most of Colorado and other places). Supposedly, Flagstaff has lower violent crime rates that most of the rest of the state, but property crime and theft is statistically significant. (Some try to say they are overstated since the tourist population whom much of the crime is committed against is not included in the residential population, inflating crimer per capita figures.)
• Downtown was small and less hip than I’d imagined for this college town.

All that said, the Coconino National Forest just south of Flagstaff was gorgeous and made for an awesome sports car drive down US 89A, and is pretty ideally located just 90 miles south of the Grand Canyon, 30 miles north of Sedona, and 90 miles north of Phoenix. I could imagine living here, unlike sprawling super-hot Phoenix!