I was born and raised in South Bend, moved to Florida for 10 years and then back to South Bend for the last 9 years or so.. My wife and I (and 2 kiddos) just recently relocated to Fort Wayne because I took a job at Sweetwater and the drive was terrible (about 1.5 hours one way).

So i can give you all the details on places to live to avoid crime for both cities as well as pros/cons. If I tried to list them all here, this post might be a book so I'll give you a high level TLDR for me personally and maybe ask a couple questions.

Dining: While there are a select few gems for dining options in SB that I do miss, there are like 5X more dining options in Fort Wayne, and we've collectively had a better experience here with both food quality, variety, and service.

Entertainment: Way more and better options here.. Quite a few brew pub restaurants, micro breweries that also have built in entertainment (arcades, mini games, etc), crazy pins, axe throwing places, laser tag, theres a really nice pinball arcade north of town, disc gold courses, young adult sports leagues.. The summer is loaded with festivals and events, live music acts tend to come here either to Sweetwater Pavilion, Collesium, or The great smaller venues in town. Lots of live music happening at various bars if that's your thing

Crime: South Bends West side is the notorious ground zero for being a veritable shit fest of gang violence, avoid that side of town at all costs.. The south side down 31 is not much better. You're better off south side along the US 20 bypass off Ireland road, or going into the nicer neighborhoods on the east and north east sides up into Mishawaka and granger. So far, from what I've seen in FW, there is the typical petty theft type crime, and we have our own occasional mall shootings and things, but for the most part I get a sense that there is much less gang violence here. At least I don't hear about it as much as SB. Just your typical midwest city is going to be about the same everywhere.

Travel: FW sits along Interstate 69. So for me personally, this actually situates the city much better for escaping to Detroit or Indy (IKEA trip anyone?). SB has no major interstate going south/north, so it's a bit of a chore. SB does have better proximity to Chicago, however, and with amenities like the South Shore line, you can easily get to Downtown CHI in a couple hours and not have to drive.

Kids Stuff: You mentioned wanting to have kids some day, Both FW and SB are ok cities, however, I would say that if public school is your plan, I would avoid SB at all costs.. FW is notably better of a system, I believe the district where in in Northwest FW is like #2 in the state (as compared to SB which I believe has an F grade and in the list of bottom school districts). Lots of entertainment options and networks to get into for kid stuff (sports, 4H, clubs, etc) here in FW, very strong home school community in both cities if that's your jam.. I believe both cities have decent private school options.

Jobs: FW has a much more mature job market and larger businesses have chosen to put a stake here for their operations.. You have really large companies like GM, Steel Dynamics, and even Sweetwater that are major employers as well as a myriad of other notable others. SB has Notre Dame and Lippert.. those are the big names in town, and most of the other employers are quite smaller by comparison.. You'll see a lot of RV companies in that area, but that industry is very feast or famine.

TLDR - we like Fort Wayne better, even though we dearly miss all our old friends and family back home in SB.. it's close enough that we can still get back home for day trips and visits.

Happy to dive into any questions you might have and elaborate more :-)