Common Questions About Your City

Common questions about your city — answered with sources

This page started as a notebook. Every time someone moving to a new city asked me a question I had to Google three times to actually answer ("how cold does it actually get in Winnipeg in February?", "what's the property tax rate in Austin?", "do I need a car in Vancouver?"), I added the question and a short, sourced answer here. Over time the notebook turned into a city-aware Q&A guide that adapts to whatever location you've selected.

The questions you see below are the ones I get asked the most often — about climate, cost of living, transit, schools, safety, weekend plans and the local quirks that don't show up in any tourism brochure. Each answer is short on purpose. The goal isn't to write the definitive thousand-word essay on Calgary's housing market; it's to give you the one-paragraph answer plus a link to where you can dig deeper if you want.

How I write the answers

Each answer is based on a public, verifiable source — Statistics Canada or the US Census for population and demographics, municipal open-data portals for transit and zoning, provincial or state ministry data for schools and tax rates, and Environment and Climate Change Canada (or NOAA in the US) for climate norms. I cite my source on the card when there's space, and I update answers whenever a number meaningfully moves. If you spot an answer that feels off — too high, too low, or out of date — use the contact page; corrections are the single most valuable kind of feedback this page gets.

Questions that don't have a single right answer

Some of the most asked questions ("Is X a good city to raise a family?", "Is Y safe?", "Should I move to Z?") don't have a single objective answer, and I won't pretend they do. For those I link out to the three or four data sources that tend to shape the conversation — crime rate per 100,000, median household income, school report cards, walkability scores — and let you weigh them. Anyone who tells you a city is unambiguously "safe" or "unsafe" is selling you something.

Asking your own question

There's a free-text box near the bottom of the page that turns whatever you type into a tailored answer for your selected city. It's most useful for practical, fact-shaped questions ("what's the best way to get from the airport to downtown?", "what time do bars close on Sundays?") and less useful for opinion questions. If the answer it gives feels light, drop the question into the contact form too — I add the strongest reader questions to the permanent list.

Why this isn't a Wikipedia replacement

Wikipedia is excellent for the big-picture history and structure of a place. This page is something different: a working answer to the small, practical, day-of questions that don't earn their own Wikipedia paragraph. The two are complementary. If you're starting cold on a city, read the Wikipedia article first, then come here for the lived-experience details that don't fit in a reference work.