fishboat

In my experience, primarily the winter of 2009, the City of Detroit only plowed emergency routes. All other roads are unplowed for the winter, due to cost reasons I'd guess. Never saw such a thing in my life anywhere else. The snowpack on busy roads can be a foot above the pavement with the occasion snow-pot-hole 10 inches deep. Bizarre. I remember a 60 Minutes show many years ago where they were comparing snow removal capability between Boston and Detroit (similar sized cities by the measure they used). Boston had something a 900-1100 snow removal trucks (including those vehicles able to be converted to a plowing vehicle). Detroit had something like 3 trucks.

In cities where they do plow..like most any other city in the snowbelt, they plow past the edge of the road (or up to the curb) to make sure there's enough room for the next plowing event. Wider roads aren't due to snow plowing. If I were to guess..wider roads have a lot to do with safety and higher taxes. In the Carolinas you pay less in taxes and frankly you get less(I took a hard look at this prior to considering a move). I'm spoiled by living in the Milwaukee area. We have dedicated bike trails all over the place. The Oak Leaf Trail alone travels about 100 miles around the city and near suburbs. We have parks all over the place and the bike trails run through many of them. Many of the parks have permanent or traveling beer gardens. The local trails connect to state wide trails to the north and west. Music plays in the some of the parks in the summer, most often for free. We have a large music fest each summer for about 10 days (Summerfest). Lots of venues for top music artists to play. Lots of options for live theater. Lots of options for ethnic food markets(German, Italian, Polish, Greek, Thai, French, Chinese, Mexican....) and farmers markets in most communities............ and then I compared all that to Charlotte..which I found to have none of this, or so little it didn't matter. Maybe some of this is there, but in the week I spent visiting and researching the town(2015)..I didn't find it.

OP..take a look at Milwaukee. You could do much worse. The more I travel the better I think I have it right at home.