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St. Louis is similar, but I think in both cases it won't fly unless you homeschool or can afford parochial school, because the St. Louis city schools are very bad.

Philadelphia has good public schools I think if you are out of the black areas (its magnet schools are the top high schools in the state). The schools in the black areas are abysmal and border on inhuman. And the parochial schools are very cheap up to 8th grade - about $1200 per child.

Then there is the reluctance many people have to raise children in an inner city area.

I found, growing up in the city better because there were things to do, and you could get their on public transit or bike or walk, so you didn't need to be dependent upon getting a ride from the parents all the time. My neighborhood is very safe because it has a well deserved reputation for not treating street thugs very nicely when caught by the local citizenry. Our biggest problem is probably high school rivals picking fights periodically.

In my area the farther out from the central core you go, the more conservative the people get.

This is another funny thing about Philadelphia. My neighborhood in the city voted for President Bush by a 55% majority. No suburban neighborhood within 5-10 miles of me (I live one block from the city line) was even above 45% for Bush. We also have Republicans as our representatives in the City Council and State House (we would have a Republican State Senator too, except that we were gerrymandered into a majority black district after our State Senator suffered a surprise defeat in 2000). The neighborhing suburban townships have Democrats at those levels.