as for living, well...the gateway area is pretty nice, although i'm not convinced that just tearing down the houses there is going to make the neighborhood any better. from my experiences there (i graduated in 2003), the places you would probably want to generally avoid are south of 12th ave east of high street forever (the chittenden area is historically notorious for spring riots, and the rest is rather high-crime...the really bad part is around indianola ave and summit street, from around 9th street almost all the way downtown.)
directly south of 11th ave between Neil and High street is sketchy, but it gets better the further south you get. generally, anything west of neil is nice (thats primarily where the allied med students live...if they live near campus at all). once you get south of 5th avenue, everything to the west of high street (and maybe a few blocks east of high as well) are considered to be pretty good areas.
up towards east campus, anything generally north of 16th is considered good real-estate, as far east as the railroad tracks and as far north as the eye can see. between 16th and 13th (north/south) and High and Summit (west/east) is 'fraternity row' if you will, and if you're looking to live the life of a 24/7 party animal thats heaven for you. lol.
up on north campus, you'd generally want to stick around north of norwich ave (another popular spring riot zone is between Neil and Tuttle Park on Norwich ave...the party that spawns the riots is called "norwich fest", as opposed to "chit fest" down on chittenden). you'd generally want to stay off of Neil on north campus because its kinda slummy, but anything uphill from neil (to the east) is pretty good too.
for your first year, living around campus is pretty cool...but for me it got kinda fatiguing hearing all of the police cars, the Columbus PD's "Air Cavalry" heli-units, and the fat chicks yelling "OMFG i'm SOOOO DRUNK" at 3:30am. nothing beats the Air-Cav units though...columbus PD has the largest urban law enforcement helicopter fleet in the nation...something like 22 choppers...they like to circle at about 125 feet with their spotlights and IR cameras to break up parties...lol. if you're close enough, you can actually feel the breeze from the blades on the ground. hehehe...but i digress.
if you're looking to live 'off campus', like driving distance (there is plenty of parking served by the Buckeye Lot Express bus service in the lots up near ), look on west side of the olentangy river. there's plenty of good living all the way from Grandview Heights and the scioto river to the south up to dublin or worthington to the north or even out west towards hilliard or just across the scioto river to the west. getting up towards the inner rim of I-270 is looking at between a 20-35 minute commute to campus if your coming from the north...but coming from the west just past the scioto river is no more than 10 minutes if you know the back roads. also, there is a nice neighborhood thats starting to develop just south of the city (directly south of I-70/71) called German Village or the brewery district. it can be a pain to get to campus from there (between 5-10 min or 45-50 min depending on traffic...lol) but its quite classy. its an old (like barely post-civil war in some parts) neighborhood thats doing the renniassance-thing. its getting pricy, but its still probably 'the' place to live in urban columbus.
