Definitely look at Milford as a 2nd option to New Haven. It’s the least quiet suburb in the area, has a great downtown, shoreline, food, community events, etc. You might be bored in Shelton, and Hamden has insane property tax without the schools to back it up.

Some spots to check out in Milford: downtown/harbor/green/duck ponds, Silver Sands boardwalk, Trumbull Ave, Gulf St to water, Beach Ave walk along water in Woodmont, Audubon Center. Great food at Strega, Scratch Baking, Walnut Beach Creamery (in season), Corner (brunch), Dogtown. Tribus Brewery. Stappa Winery in nearby Orange. Lots of good pizza, Jimmy’s and Papa’s are favorites.

Milford has several walkable areas (downtown, Devon center, Walnut Beach). In fact, much of the town south of Route 1 has sidewalks.

Easy access to NW CT with excellent highway access.

In New Haven, Downtown, East Rock, and Wooster Square is where you want to be. While Westville is nice and cute little center, and has the excellent Westville Music Bowl, it’s fairly small, smaller and quieter than Milford downtown and not well connected to the downtown New Haven area.

I need to try Lazeez!

Ah yes, they are solid. Good to know they’re still doing buffet.

Sitar is good but House of Naan and Coromandel are my favorite for traditional Indian. I do like Sherkaan too but that’s more “creative” Indian I’d say.

Never tried it!

For that budget you could get a decent place in Milford. West Haven is fine, but I’d move when it comes time for public schools.

Menya Gumi is my current favorite, the most authentic and not too heavy. Chicken based stocks for most part. Cool owner too.

Mecha is a bit on the heavier side but very tasty.

I find Kuro Shiro decent but the pork itself is really lacking which is important.

Snow is unlikely in December 😞

There’s some cool stuff for kids too. Roman/Greek artifacts are always cool, battle scenes, animal paintings. 😊

They said as early as December in Westville New Haven

One of the best food scenes in any small/medium sized city I’ve been in, and I’ve been in a ton (travel a lot for work).

Plenty of music in a dozen or so venues of all sizes. Great architecture. Lots of character. World class art museums. Lots of great stuff to do within a day’s drive (big benefit of New England in general).

Tyler of Millwright’s was chef at Hamilton Park in New Haven for a minute. Not sure what happened there. They can’t seem to keep a chef long.

I found Artisan just OK. Better spots in New Haven. I’d like to try Winvian and also RSVP.

It’s good but Fair Haven is several steps above IMO. And more reasonably priced.

I’d add Rockfish to that.

Also Hachiroku, though I wish they’d get their service figured out.

I’ve heard great things about Luke from friends.

You could live in West Haven (cheap) or Milford (better schools) and either drive or train in.

It’s usually a connection

There’s patchy fog here in Milford too.

I know someone that lives a couple blocks beyond Dwight and it’s been fine for him. Definitely still room for improvement though.

The biggest problem the city has with progress is the local alderman and general bureaucracy that makes for slow approval on development.

Downtown gentrified 100%. Ninth Square is another example. Parts of East Rock weren’t nice like they are now. Like Goatville. Parts of Westville too. City Point used to be bad, now it’s quite nice. The area around Science Park was very bad, now it’s improving.

I have been around JC for decades. Most of the city is pretty nice but the West Side areas are still not amazing. The waterfront and downtown were looking up as early as the late 90’s. It was really bad in the early 90’s but has been steadily improving for 20+ years.

New Haven has had a shorter run of improvement. Crime peaked around 2010. Since then the city has been improving, lots of investment, new apartments, and as I said before, the crime index in 2009 from City Data based on FBI stats was 769, and 2019 it’s 431. That’s not just looking safer, that IS safer.

New Haven downtown is drastically better than the 90’s. Those are much bigger cities. There’s still a lot of crime issues in NYC, and neighborhoods that haven’t improved that much. JC the same, I have family that still lives there. Outside downtown and the waterfront, it still has issues. Not as bad, but that can be said of New Haven too. New Haven’s crime index is half of what it was a decade ago.

Many of those New Haven neighborhoods you mention were OK but not nearly as desirable as now.

What other cities? It has absolutely gentrified but what city “fully” gentrifies? I think you have unrealistic expectations of the effect.

We have solid Cuban food at Soul De Cuba. Co-signed by a friend with Cuban family in Miami.

How long have you been in the area? Even East Rock and Wooster Square are much nicer than they used to be. I remember East Rock when most houses needed paint, renovations. It was shoddier looking for sure. It’s much more desirable now.