The number one question hitting the socials these days is about where to live if you are young(ish) and not from the area. Sure, the easy answer is it depends but that doesn’t help people figure out the real reasons you might prefer one versus the other city. As with anything in Connecticut, affordability will dictate everything, so while the cost of renting will be one of your biggest expenses, a deeper dive into the adjacent costs might tip you in one direction versus the other.
Car Free
Neither city is really able to meet the goal of car-free living. Each has areas that are more walkable than others but both suffer from the same issue. Stamford’s south end, (Harbor Point), and Norwalk’s SoNo, lack a good grocery store where you can stock up on fresh veggies and fruits and get pretty much anything else you might need. Sure, you can get your goods delivered, as well as hardware for your DIY projects and pet food. But if you are expecting anything more than a stroll through a handful of restaurants, access to the waterfront but no beach, and not much else, then you’ll be fine. SoNo at least has a functioning retail center in a mall within walking distance. Both are near train stations for the critical transit option into NYC or points between. The thing is that once you get to your destination, unless it is midtown Manhattan, you will need to get to your destination by car (Connecticut) or subway (NYC.) You can however get away to JFK by taking Metro North, LIIR and the JFK Airtram.
Parking
If you have a car, or your have visitors with cars, both cities make it expensive to park on street in the downtown areas. While Stamford has a well defined downtown, Norwalk has pockets of downtown(ish) places and an aggressive view that all street parking must be fee based. Stamford has multiple public lots and garages in its downtown, and has a relaxed attitude about parking in the rest of the city except the residential streets near the beaches. Norwalk offers residents with registered cars in Norwalk free parking at the beach. Car registration is yet another tax to pay making the car ownership question in Connecticut more expensive. Norwalk has a bus stop at Calf Pasture Beach so you can easily take the bus at least from parts of Norwalk.
Biking
Both cities promote their bike friendliness. But neither does a decent job managing their roads, cleaning bike lanes, and still have sharrows in challenging places. There’s some infrastructure for bike racks, but they also attract a high number of bike thefts.
Pet Friendly
Stamford’s South End is much more pet-friendly than Norwalk’s SoNo. But anywhere else in the city it flips. Norwalk has more parks than Stamford, and they are scattered all over the city. Stamford is denser from a housing perspective, so its more of a suburban mindset to pets, as in your pet your yard.
Friendliness
If you are looking to hangout and meet people who like to do the same things you do, neither city has much on offer. Stamford’s main programming is by the downtown merchants association called appropriately Stamford Downtown. They rotate through the usual offerings they’ve been showcasing for decades: farmers market, art and craft markets, live concerts, and restaurant weeks. Stamford also has active communities organized around running, biking, and gaming. Reddit’s Stamford forum is very active.
Norwalk relies on its city government to showcase much of the same, but there’s no one place you can rely on to see something. Private organizations do a better job in Norwalk, with festivals that appeal to the arts, music, and various causes.
But both cities have a lack of soul. It’s mostly due to being a high cost of living area (HCOL). Despite all the hedge funds that exist, there’s no nightlife like you’d find in Miami, no vibe that’s beyond basic, and a pay for play ethos that’s kind of soul crushing. There’s no concentration of any arty people or activities that you find pretty much anywhere else. For that, New Haven is the Best of Connecticut, but if you are in southwest Connecticut NYC is where you will find your tribe.
Commuting
Norwalk has a transit district, which translates into bus service that is somewhat controlled by a city-based entity. Like much of Norwalk, the thinking of the 1980s dominates how the transit district operates. Routes reach every part of Norwalk, including the beach. But the system works on a hub and spoke system, meaning that all bus routes converge in Norwalk Center and cause the simplest of trips to extend to hours. The East/West routes are only provided as direct routes by CT Transit which is moored to the idea that people need to travel along the Post Road. Norwalk Transit has tried. They introduced a microtransit on demand bus system, but they mostly limit it to an idea that a internal combustion engine (ICE) mini bus provides enough flexibility in the the urban core, which chiefly means up and down the harbor.
The commuter school, CT State Norwalk is inconveniently located in West Norwalk, away from trains and is exactly what you’d expect from a suburban city. Norwalk High School, Nathan Hale Middle School and Naramanke Elementary School are conveniently lined up on Strawberry Hill, but still rely on school busses and cars to be reached easily.
But Norwalk has four Metro North train stations, the stops are Rowayton, Meritt 7, East Norwalk and South Norwalk. Only the Meritt 7 stop is on a branch line that runs on a single track to Danbury. Norwalk as a city sets the rates for parking at its stations because it still owns them. This results in high costs associated with both SoNo and East Norwalk, as those stops really are the workhorse stations for those who commute between Grand Central and New Haven.
Stamford has the Transportation Center, a bus and Amtrak hub as well as Metro North. It boasts express trains to Grand Central on Metro North, and outside of Grand Central it is the busiest station in greater NYC. That makes Stamford the pick if you need to zip in and out of the City. If you land on the east side of Stamford, there are two stations, Glenbrook and Springdale, that are on a branch line to New Canaan. The commute is a little longer, but you get more of a suburban housing market in those neighborhoods, which means tree-lined streets and single-family housing.
The Metro North New Haven line does stop in New Haven, making the Hartford commute more car dependent. You can take the CT Transit Line to Hartford, and the shoreline East Line to New London.
Amtrak does not stop in Norwalk, so a transfer in Stamford or Bridgeport will get you to farther flung destinations.
There is little to say about the experience of I-95 and the Merritt Parkway as commuting options except that it’s been more than 4 decades of status quo on the commute time by car. Since COVID the old commuting windows have been expanded to cover pretty much the entire 7 day / week 6 am to 9 pm timeframe. This has perplexed commuters, since the transportation planners keep addressing commuting hours as if they exist. Instead the proliferation of apartments have created the gig economy workers lifestyle, and your Amazon, Uber, Door Dash, Grub Hub, Instacart lifestyle has moved into Stamford and Norwalk and then proceeds to make the daytime traffic in both cities a perennial display of what happens when narrow roads, the movement away from cheap on street parking and delivery life pervades. But it is like that everywhere, but in the Northeast density, and the shoreline waters head just squeeze all this traffic into congestion clogs that any construction project adds to. 10 miles anywhere routinely ranges between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours. That’s way this corridor ranks as one of the worst in the country, and no amount of bike lanes, sidewalks, transit oriented development which change that. If you can deal with a miserable commute, or avoid commuting you will love it here.
Recreation
Norwalk has more parks than Stamford. Stamford has more types of activities programmed in its parks. Norwalk has more publicly accessible waterfront than any other town in Connecticut. Neither city has a robust community center that kids can hang out in, leaving parents to figure that out. Stamford has a greater investment in private facilities whether its baseball, soccer, or multiplex fitness facilities. Norwalk has more DIY find a park, see what’s happening. If you are into group running, running for a cause, group biking, fundraising by activity, Stamford is the place to be. There is almost a daily race of something somewhere for something.
Literary
Stamford’s Ferguson Library is centrally located, with a few branches that are part of the same system. They do great programming, have a large multi-level main library that offers everything you might need to read, explores a hobby, hold a meeting or connect with community. Norwalk has a main library that was once a beautiful Carnegie building, the first in Connecticut in fact. But successive alterations have rendered it a suburban ode to book stacks and little else. South Norwalk has a nice building and more book stacks, but it is small. East Norwalk and Rowayton run their own branches and ignore the rest of Norwalk . That sums up the literary life in Norwalk though, fractured and retro. Stamford brings in best selling authors, and programs that appeal to a community thirsty for avoiding heading into the City for intellectual stimulation. Stamford also has UCONN, although run as a commuter school to UCONN Storrs, it still attracts students and curiosity. Stamford also has a Barnes and Noble book store. Norwalk is a book store desert.
Food
Most guides to the area provide ample lists of the latest restaurant scene. Even we do, but this is section is about grocery shopping. Norwalk is home to Patel’s an Indian Grocery store. Stamford is starting to see Asian grocery stores open. Both are beholden to the idea that large families need to go to big grocery stores like Stop N Shop. But where Stamford is losing one of theirs, Norwalk is gaining a Wegman’s. While Foods is opening in the Bull’s Head neighborhood in Stamford, Norwalkers hop across the line to Westport, but really it’s just like being in Norwalk. West Norwalkers go to Darien. Norwalk has no Trader Joe’s. Stamford does. But Norwalk has Stew Leonard’s. the homegrown chain that innovated many grocery store experiences like singing cows. Both cities have small bodega markets that cater to the latino flavors and products. Neither has a decent grocery store in the heart of the highest density areas like downtown Stamford, the south end (Harbor Point), and SoNo. Downtown dwellers in Stamford have Target’s grocery offerings.
Conclusion
Did we miss anything you need to know? Hit us up with ideas or suggestions, disagree with us or give us a thumbs up for telling it like we see it. As with anything, our perspective is subjective and your experiences may differ.
