Columbia

I spent the first 18 years of my life in Columbia, MD but have now moved away. Columbia is a very metropolitan suburb 10 minutes outside of Baltimore, and some say it is becoming a mini baltimore. As far as suburbs go it is pretty big and not a far drive from surrounding cities. You can find a lot inside of Columbia. There are also many public pools, movie theaters, a fantastic mall, and public transportation. However, crime is bad and the way the city is built you cannot really get away from it. The good neighborhoods are placed right next to the bad ones in an effort to keep the bad neighbohoods from not being too bad and to keep from having one very bad area of Columbia. Schools are mixed with both rich and poor. Again however, as a teenager growing up there I would not raise a teenager there. All I did (and most of the kids I knew) was do drugs, drink til I could have developed a drinking problem, and engage in other things you wouldn't want your children doing. People who moved there from other places that had never been bad kids quickly became bad kids like everyone else. Many of my peers dropped out of high school and many of those peers are now still there on welfare. Now that I have moved away I realize that people don't have that high school experience everywhere. The cost of living is also extremely high. Getting a one bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood (not the ghetto) anywhere around Columbia will cost you at least $900+/month

A smallish suburb located roughly halfway between Baltimore, Md and D.C. The median income, as well as the median age of residents (and cost of living) is slowly rising. Best known for its ridiculous literary street names. The example below features actual street names.

The Capital of the great state of South Carolina. Also the home of the University of South Carolina whose mascot is the GAMECOCK!

The best and sparkliest character from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

A planned city in Maryland of about 100,000 people between Baltimore and DC. Probably one of the most diverse places you can find in this country. You can find every type of person from the rich, to the middle class, to the poor, and a lot of different ethnicities.

Columbia is made up of 10 villages. Some of the apartments in the oldest villages (oakland mills, wilde lake, harpers choice, owen brown, long reach) have high crime due to relocation of public housing from mostly Baltimore but also DC,PG County, and NY. Lotta hispanics in some areas to. But this is seen in all of the Baltimore-Washington burbs, even the richest city in montgomery county (Potomac) has section 8 apartments yup. Oakland Mills is probably the worst part of columbia, feels like a clone of Baltimore City and there's nothing there to do. Due to the growing public housing over the past 20 years and increasing, and more gentrification in baltimore, a lot of people say Columbia will become the next Baltimore City but I doubt that, maybe more like a Yonkers like in NY with a higher crime rate and more money lol.

Columbia is in howard county, which is now ranked the third richest county in the nation. Columbia and Ellicott City together were ranked by money magazine as the #8 best place 2 live. Makes sense since the schools are good and it is right in between 2 cities with a lot of sh*t to do in those cities. But you take the good w/ the bad, you have to deal with a lot of fake people, like lower-middle class pretendin to be rich, or upper middle class pretendin to act "street" like the poor people who live in the apartments down the street lol.

A planned community in central Maryland. The vision of James Rouse in the 1960's.

Not a town, not a city, but huge and threatening to take over surrounding areas like Scaggsville and Clarksville, Columbia is also notorious for many nursing homes and being "Suburban Nation".

The spacecraft that crashed on Jan. 30, 2003. There were seven people on boarda nd because I'm from Texas everyone is still making a big deal out of this.