Is Phoenix, Arizona a nice place to live?

I am a 16 year old girl thinking of moving to Arizona with my parents. We're looking at Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Chandler. I'd like to know what the weather is like, what kind of things there are to do for teenagers, the nicest/safest places to live, and just your general opinion :) Thanks so much!Is Phoenix, Arizona a nice place to live?
Actually Scottsdale and Chandler are less hot than Phoenix by a few degrees, bc there is less concrete absorbing and reflecting the heat.



Anyway, Chandler is the nicest places out of all of those. Its not as snobby as Scottsdale, not as ghetto as Phoenix. It has good stores and restaurants, nice homes and neighborhoods.



If I were you though I wouldn't move here. It's too hot and dry. I like Sedona, Tuscon and Flagstaff better, weather-wise and there are more trees and beauty in those places too.



Phoenix is really a concrete jungle.
One of the things I like best about this area is that the valley that's all pretty much considered "Phoenix" area is so sprawled out! Chandler, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Sun City, Surprise, Avondale etc. are all pretty much "in the city" but it's broken up very nicely with public landscaping and just plain space that you don't feel like you do in LA or San Diego of being in "wall o' city". It's also a little funny how the metro area has grown up. You will find a lot of pockets of horse property right in the middle of the city. I've watched people "trail ride" through cross walks and ride in vacant dirt lots next to K-mart O_O so it's a great city to choose if you've always wanted a horse.



Phoenix is also MUCH cleaner than pretty much all of southern california. Old Downtown Phoenix is really the worst part of the area I've seen, so I always suggest the outlying towns first.



Prices are very low on property, and it's fairly cheap to live here, but the job market is really really rough. Your family shouldn't consider it unless your parents can transfer here with his current company or lines up a job before you leave because the economy is so iffy. I'd personally like it a lot better if I could find a better job so I'd have money to spend enjoying it here. At least food is cheap since so much produce grows here.



In my opinion this is a great place for teens, with a lot of fantastic and specialized high schools (medical, liberal arts, or technical aimed public high schools) and charter schools that will actually let you focus on the same subjects you want to focus on in college. Education here is second to none and very inexpensive for residents. It's really worth moving here as a teen to establish residency. Like any metro area, there is plenty of stuff to do. We've got the usual malls, museums, zoos, amusement parks, water parks, rec centers, cheap concerts and anything else you can imagine. There's a lot of public parks and recreation areas right in the city, or near it.



My personal preferences for areas are South Valley by Chandler, and West Valley either Surprise or Avondale, and Tempe. They're all relatively low crime, clean, and convenient.



The weather here is great most of the year. Winter feels like fall elsewhere. Summer and spring usually sit in the 80s and 90s, spiking to the 110s in high summer. It sounds bad until you consider that everything you do, and everywhere you go has air conditioning, and most nice houses come with their own in ground swimming pool.

It's pretty much sunny all the time until "monsoon" season that runs from late june to august. Monsoons are huge thunder/lightning storms with high winds, and some torrential rain. They usually only last for a couple of hours at a time, and we don't even get them every day (or even every two weeks) for most of the season. Apart from that, we get a few average rainstorms in winter.



The further away from the city center you get, the more house you get for the money. Tempe and Scottsdale are pretty expensive, but out where I am in the West Valley there's a lot of mostly empty housing developments dying to sell 5 bedroom houses with pools and granite counters for under 150,000. I can't vouch for the housing market in other parts of the valley but a quick look on craigslist will give you good information fast.



Reasons NOT to move here: If you're unemployed and looking for work, or if you'll miss rain and snow a lot.



We also have a local illness called "Valley Fever" from spores in the ground that get exposed by farming. These spores get in the wind and if you inhale them they live in your lungs permanently. You can live here 50 years and not get it, or change planes at phoenix sky harbor for 30 minutes and get it, it's more or less a matter of luck.



If you have an "attack" of valley fever you can be hit with symptoms similar to mono and it can take you a couple months to fully recover. My sister has it, but no one else in my family does, and it hardly effects her at all, it's just worth mentioning as "an environmental risk"Is Phoenix, Arizona a nice place to live?
Wake up Timothy! - Scottsdale and Chandler are in the same valley as Phoenix - same weather temps!



The weather is the same in Phoenix and all the suburbs - hot and hotter in the summer and nice weather in the winter. Here are monthly average temps

http://phoenix.about.com/od/weather/a/av鈥?/a>



There are lots of fun things for teenagers depending upon which suburb you choose to live in and how much money you have (reality sucks). Chandlelr, Gilbert, and Queen Creek are the newest parts of the valley. Housing is a buyers' market - get a realtor to show you around!



We love it here in the valley!



Aquila - Phoenix is the 5th largest city in the US. It is very diverse - more to it than downtown Phoenix center. It is not ghetto or a concrete jungle.



A degree or two makes no difference when we're talking about 100 or more degrees!
Well, it's been about 50 years since I was a teenager, so I probably wouldn't be much help on that score, but I like Phoenix. The weather in the winter is just about perfect. Summertime except for the rainy season (mid-July through August; it varies) is, in a word, hot. Daytime temperatures right now run to 105 or so. The climate is very dry, though, so it's not directly comparable to places with more moisture. A neighbor about your age just went back East for a family visit. It was 110 degrees here, and about 80 where she is staying, but I hear that she is constantly complaining about the heat. The humidity makes the difference. It takes most people a couple of years to adapt to the heat here if they come from a colder area. Scottsdale is nice, but it's also the most expensive area in the Valley. The older parts of central and southern Phoenix are generally less safe than outlying areas. Overall, there should be almost any sort of recreation available that you might wish for. The difference between the Phoenix area and many other cities in that sense is that our area is spread out in all directions, so you don't find things like a theater district. Attractions would include things like the immense Phoenix Zoo, Wildlife World, Out of Africa (lions and tigers, oh my) Rawhide western town, Goldfield Ghost town, lots of lakes nearby, and the list goes on. Sports are covered well; the area is home to spring training for several major-league baseball teams, and the are local teams in all major sports. The Grand Canyon is a must-see on anyone's list. Houses are a bargain at the moment due to the depressed real estate market, but jobs are scarce and wages tend to be low. The Valley of the Sun is a shopper's paradise; I've never seen so many shopping malls. Owning a car is expensive and traffic is bad; public transit is poor. Overall, though, it's quite a place. You might check a local library or bookstore for a guidebook on the area. Hope this helps a bit. Good luck.Is Phoenix, Arizona a nice place to live?
Just think of Phoenix as being like L.A. without the beach only hotter. Scottsdale or Chandler less hot and smaller.