We lived in Boulder, Colorado for over 20 years and recently spent a few months exploring Tucson as a place to live.
My take, FWIW, is that Tucson is much more livable than Phoenix. There's a limit to the sprawl, a really nice downtown and easy access to hiking and biking trails. The 5 degree nominal difference in summer temperatures might not seem like much, but it does make a difference.
That said, there's no way I'd even consider living there if we didn't have family in the Pacific Northwest as well as friends in the highlands of New Mexico we can spend June through August with. We're avid hikers, cyclists and tennis players, and short of getting up at 5 a.m. to play tennis (the other activities are out of the question) there's just no way to get up early enough for anything but a swim (pool access is helpfu if not mandatory!).
Someone else already mentioned Albuquerque, which has some planned communities. Otherwise I'd think at the very least you'd want to have access to a cabin in the mountains back home in Colorado or check out Silver City, New Mexico or mountain towns in Arizona for a regular summer rental. Being trapped indoors for 4+ months at a time is much harder than bundling up in Colorado's cold, in my view.
My take, FWIW, is that Tucson is much more livable than Phoenix. There's a limit to the sprawl, a really nice downtown and easy access to hiking and biking trails. The 5 degree nominal difference in summer temperatures might not seem like much, but it does make a difference.
That said, there's no way I'd even consider living there if we didn't have family in the Pacific Northwest as well as friends in the highlands of New Mexico we can spend June through August with. We're avid hikers, cyclists and tennis players, and short of getting up at 5 a.m. to play tennis (the other activities are out of the question) there's just no way to get up early enough for anything but a swim (pool access is helpfu if not mandatory!).
Someone else already mentioned Albuquerque, which has some planned communities. Otherwise I'd think at the very least you'd want to have access to a cabin in the mountains back home in Colorado or check out Silver City, New Mexico or mountain towns in Arizona for a regular summer rental. Being trapped indoors for 4+ months at a time is much harder than bundling up in Colorado's cold, in my view.
