Chico?

[colin 0]

Does anyone have any pictures of Chico? Or has anyone been there?

I was reading up on it and it sounds like a really interesting town, although it's so far north that it'll be a while before I could get up there myself. But there are apparently several New Urbanist communities in the city and it has a nice Downtown area.

[FromCityToRural 2]

Spent my freshman year of college up there in 2004-2005. If you want to get there, make it quick, they apparantly had the fastest rising cost of housing anywhere in the nation (or in California, I forget which). It's centrally located between Sacramento and Redding, and is close to Lake Oroville and relatively close to skiing.

I'm not so sure about the New Urbanist projects, I didn't see any. I did see several subdivisions going up though.

But, I can second the nice downtown - it's pretty vibrant and large for a city of ~100k, and is directly adjecent to the University. There's also a pretty new shopping district around the older Chico Mall, mostly consisting of strip malls and the like - most locals I think prefer it there to the downtown. The kids keep it young + bring a lot of money into the city, though on the drinking nights it can get pretty rowdy in certain neighborhoods. But, that's pretty well localized and I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I don't have many pictures, but if you like, I can try and dig some up for you. It's really a nice place, if you're interested it's certainly worth a visit sometime. Try and hit it up in the spring or fall, summer is not only hot, it's humid, and falltime brings you autumn colors on the trees, too.