What's the best place to live in the US?

[Narz]

If you had to choose somewhere to live somewhere in US where would you choose (to Americans and non-Americans alike)?

Or it you live in US and love or hate where you live, why so?

 

[Samson]

If one takes "live" to mean "spend a couple of months between jobs" then I made this decision, and it was South Lake Tahoe 'cos:

First and formost it is the only place I have found in the US that you can go skiing without a car. There is a lift out of the centre of town, and if that is closed because of the weather there are buses to other ways up the mountain. Heavenly has some big downsides, but when a storm comes in and blocks the road I know nowhere else in the world that will hold powder all day on such steep lift served terrain.

"Cheap" accommodation. Last time I was there the Blackjack Inn was $200/week which is amazing. When I spent 2 months there there was an even cheaper and more cool hostel, but that has long gone.

Only a bus ride to San Francisco. Amtrak used to run a bus up there, so you could get there without a car and have a weekend in San Fran when your season pass had a blackout weekend.

It has casinos. I do not like them very much, but there is something about having an always on entertainment venue within walking distance. You do not need to be that good at poker to basically drink for free.

 

[amadeus]

If I were a small limited-liability corporation, I would live in Delaware. In all other cases, don’t know/no answer.

 

[Zardnaar]

Depends on income levels. Appalachia and Carolinas have appeal due to topography. Colorado has its appeal

Realistically go where the jobs are. Probably a state capital somewhere that's not LA, NYC or more than 500k maybe

 

[Gori the Grey]

Twin Cities, I think. Minneapolis has a symphony orchestra, St. Paul a famous chamber orchestra.

 

[Qactus]

I'd probably pick Boulder, Colorado. It allows for great outdoor activities all year round, has a nice altitude and 300 sunny days a year. And people seem to be relatively open-minded, so probably easier for me as a European to connect with.

 

[Ordnael]

Rural areas...hate to be surrounded by tall buildings.

 

[warpus]

Assuming I had an unlimited budget? The cities I liked most were Chicago and San Francisco.

I liked both of these for varying reasons. Chicago was a fun large city with amazing architecture, some modern, some older, great food, and seemingly decent public transit. I found Chicagoans very nice as well, although everyone else in the midwest was a grade A jerk with a negative amount of manners. So I'm not sure where that leaves me. The fact that Chicagoans lose their goddamn minds when you put ketchup on a hotdog is sort of a downer as well, but all I have to do is find mustard-coloured ketchup I guess. That must exist somewhere.

San Francisco was a great city that's semi-walkable, although the public transit was just crap. I really liked the neighbourhoods I walked through, they had character, and the surroundings were more or less pretty, with that big red bridge and the bays and surrounding hills and all that. I can't remember if you could see the hills, but I hiked one of them when I was in San Jose, and that's SF-adjacent. The one negative that I found is that I didn't see a large variety of restaurants on my walks. It was all either Italian or Mexican restaurants.. or Irish pubs with skeptical bouncers. I'm sure there was more out there, but I just didn't see any culinary diversity. The seafood was great though! By the wharf. I also had amazing sushi there, now that I think about it. So they DO have other restaurants there, but I guess you need to know how to find them.

Overall I think Chicago is a bit better fit for me in terms of a living situation. It really reminded me of Toronto, except the subways are all aboveground and the people are a bit more polite. And there's rivers running right through the city! Brilliant, I loved those. I didn't see as much diversity in the food scene as in Toronto, but that'd be tough to beat. It was more diverse and interesting than what I ran into in SF though. Overall I loved the food in Chicago. My favourite part though I think are all the parks right downtown and how walkable that part of the city is. That's something I need in the city I call my home. The one downside are all the gun-related deaths in the southern part of the city, IIRC. Does SF have a similar problem?

I also probably wouldn't mind living in NYC. I do like living in large urban spaces fit for pedestrians. Tokyo is a place I would move in a heartbeat, if everything else lined up... and New York is sort of a poor man's Tokyo. The subway situation is decent though.. and I did not run into a great variety of restaurants in Manhattan either, but I'm told I should have gone to Queens. So maybe I would enjoy living in the Queens part that's close enough to Manhattan? Coming to America warpus style? Am I way off on that? Is there a better part of NYC I'd prefer to live in?

Here are my great-city-to-call-my-home requirements:

- Walkable, with many spaces fit for pedestrians, incl. parks, parkettes, etc.
- Good or heck even decent public transit
- Urban spaces I can explore that have a great variety of shops and restaurants. I want to walk down a street and pass a Greek restaurant, then Nepali, then Thai, then Italian, Mexican, Peruvian, Polish, German, Japanese, and Vietnamese. All on one block. Which part of NYC has that? Does Chicago have that? I am going to guess SF doesn't?
- No parts of the city that are dangerous, no more than 10 gun-related deaths per year in the whole metro area. Does this rule out Chicago? How about NYC?
- Nearby national or state parks worth visiting for hiking/camping/relaxation purposes would be a big plus. Someplace 1-2 hours away where I could get away from the hustle and bustle of the large city.
- Cool architecture and essentially a city with character. So basically the opposite of Los Angeles.

There are probably cities I haven't visited yet I would consider. I've been told San Diego is a great city. Would it fit most if not all of my requirements?

Thinking about this even more.. I actually wouldn't mind living in Alaska. It seems like it fails all my requirements, but.. It's just so beautiful! Could I have a summer home in Alaska, on some mountain side, overlooking a lake and potentially a glacier? Someplace that only gets the non-violent bears wandering around? Or better yet, no bears? And when it wasn't summer I would live in a safe walkable urban area with great culinary diversity and solid public transit? That'd be ideal I think. And maybe like a tunnel connecting both of my homes with a futuristic vaccum-sealed 500 km/h transportation chamber.

I would also totally live in the white house, if they let me, and allowed me to rule the country as a dictator. I have some ideas that might not be very popular at first.. such as the creation of a task force to create mustard-coloured ketchup, if it does not exist. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. I would only live there if they allowed me to build a subway stop right at the white house though, that would only be accessible to me and members of my entourage. I don't want to have to drive everywhere, even if I had a chauffeur.

 

[Samson]

- No parts of the city that are dangerous, no more than 10 gun-related deaths per year in the whole metro area. Does this rule out Chicago? How about NYC?

I think you may have the wrong order of magnitude. From a very quick google, just in May 2022 in NYC there were 118 "citywide shooting incidents", 414 gun arrests and 45 murders. Here is a graph for Chicago:

Spoiler Homicide rate in Chicago :

The metro area has ~10 million, the city about quarter that. Constant death rate would be ~3,000 per year, but it is probably much less than that. Just the city is still ~750.

 

[warpus]

I think you may have the wrong order of magnitude. From a very quick google, just in May 2022 in NYC there were 118 "citywide shooting incidents", 414 gun arrests and 45 murders. Here is a graph for Chicago:

Murders.. damn! That's the exact thing I'm trying to avoid. Scratch Chicago and NYC off my list

 

[Remorseless1]

The thing about the US is its wide variety of geography, weather and population density. Want the tropics? Hawai'i, the Northern Marianas, or even Puedo Rico. Like beaches? The US has three large stretches of beaches -- East Coast, West Coast, and Gulf Coast. Major urban areas? All over, from humid Houston to cold Chicago, and from sunny LA to cloudy Boston. There's Denver, Phoenix, Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas, St. Louis, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Cleveland -- it's endless. Goid jobs and reasonable cost of living? Scratch cities like LA, NYC, San Francisco, but there's plenty of exciting, thriving cities that fit this, like Memphis, Indianapolis, Tulsa, and Kansas City. Want rural living with few neighbors? Alaska, the Dakotas, New Mexico, Nevada -- heck northern New York state and Eastern California are much more rural than people believe.

And while I know what people see on television or social media, the vast majority of Americans are really nice people who welcome visitors and new residents. Maybe not as much in NYC or LA, though, but still they're pretty cool.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

If you had to choose somewhere to live somewhere in US where would you choose (to Americans and non-Americans alike)?

Or it you live in US and love or hate where you live, why so?

I could try maybe remote Vermont or New Hampshire, but that's a wild guess. But my biggest demands are: not flat and good for hikes, lower humidity summers, vibrant falls, mild winters, not a big city (at least not an American one!).

 

[EgonSpengler]

If you're moving here 'blind' (e.g. you're not going to school or have a job lined up) and you're not rich, I'd suggest looking in some of the small-to-medium cities that you rarely hear about. Sort of the "3rd-division" of US cities, you might say. The "1st Division" would be the ones you always hear about: New York, L.A., Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Dallas, Houston, Washington DC, Atlanta, maybe some others. The "2nd Division" would be places like Boston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Portland OR, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nashville, etc. There are lots of low-profile places that have a lot to offer: Buffalo, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Albuquerque, Columbus, Oklahoma City, etc, etc, etc.

Then are small cities that I think are probably very livable. Just around here, we have places like Albany, New York; Portland, Maine; Providence, Rhode Island; Lowell, Massachusetts. A few months ago I heard the mayor of Erie, Pennsylvania (metro area pop. ~250,000) on the radio literally asking the Governor of Texas to send some migrants there, because businesses were looking for workers. (Of course, he didn't. Sending recent immigrants to Erie, PA wouldn't score any political points or make any headlines, especially after the mayor literally asked for them. It's not the job of Republican politicians to solve problems.) Definitely do your research, though. Some places might surprise you, for good or ill. For example, I read recently that the most difficult city in the US to find a place to live right now is... Worcester, Massachusetts. Where the [fudge] is Worcester, Massachusetts, you ask? It's commuting distance to Boston, is where it is, and as of a few months ago, it had the lowest rental vacancy rate in the entire country.

There are 336 municipalities in the US with populations of 100,000 or more. And that's (a) not counting the "metro area", just the municipalities themselves, and (b) just if you want to live in a city.

Murders.. damn! That's the exact thing I'm trying to avoid. Scratch Chicago and NYC off my list

The violence in Chicago, and many cities, is very dependent on the neighborhood. A few years ago, I saw that Japan had issued a 'travel advisory' for Boston for its citizens, but when I looked, they were referencing crime statistics from one particular neighborhood - which, to be clear, were alarmingly high, but a tourist would literally have to go out of their way to get into trouble there. I wouldn't get too worked up about either the overall numbers or the anecdotes about random violence on the subways, or wherever. Assuming one knows how to comport oneself in a city, you shouldn't have any problems in either place as a visitor.

If you're thinking about moving to somewhere in the US, you definitely need to research your target city by neighborhood and by metro area. Places like New York City and Los Angeles can in many ways be better understood as several cities, and a number of cities here are part of a "metro area" of several smaller cities and towns that function as one city. Also, the "effective size" of our cities is very flexible and can vary wildly. 10 miles in Los Angeles or Dallas and 10 miles in New York or Boston are not the same thing.

 

[Samson]

The "1st Division" would be the ones you always hear about: New York, L.A., Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Dallas, Houston, Washington DC, Atlanta, maybe some others. The "2nd Division" would be places like Boston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Portland OR, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nashville, etc.

I know such things are difficult, but Boston in second tier surprises me. I guess I am more familiar with the academic side, but I would have thought it much more culturally important than some on your top list judging from the media we get from you.

 

[Remorseless1]

I agree. I live in one of those mid-sized cities (population 110,000) which has a small but vibrant downtown, a major university, a diverse population and economy, and affordable housing. Plus, it's 15 minutes from Oklahoma City, less than three hours from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, and six hours to the Rocky Mountains.

 

[warpus]

The violence in Chicago, and many cities, is very dependent on the neighborhood.

I appreciate that, but just wouldn't want to live in a place where there are such crazy levels of violence happening in the same city or metro area. Even if I never venture to that part of town, it just wouldn't sit right with me to live in a place where something like that happens next door. Even if it's across a river, or what have you, who knows where the violence could come next? After all, there are likely no walls or political divisions blocking in the criminals to that part of town. We are all free to go as we please. If something like that is happening 10km or 15km away, on a regular basis, that's just too close to comfort for me. If you factor in that I might be moving there with loved ones, such as a partner or children, that raises even larger red flags for me.

It'd be fine for a visit, but just not a place to call home. Like, I'd visit Rio de Janeiro no problem, and would do research regarding which parts of town to stay away from, but I wouldn't want to live there. Someplace like Tokyo on the other hand, I could see that being my home, as it checks off many of the boxes for me, including a general lack of violent crime, virtually no matter where you go.

 

[Samson]

I appreciate that, but just wouldn't want to live in a place where there are such crazy levels of violence happening in the same city or metro area.

It does sound a bit crazy there, but your level of 10/year is a bit low. London UK had 112 homicides in the 2022/23 reporting year, and Toronto 73 in 2023.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I could try maybe remote Vermont or New Hampshire, but that's a wild guess. But my biggest demands are: not flat and good for hikes, lower humidity summers, vibrant falls, mild winters, not a big city (at least not an American one!).

New England is not famous for its mild winters, although with climate change..? Depending on which of those things you might be willing to compromise on, I also suggest giving the Appalachia region and the Pacific Northwest a look.

I know such things are difficult, but Boston in second tier surprises me. I guess I am more familiar with the academic side, but I would have thought it much more culturally important than some on your top list judging from the media we get from you.

Everything depends on what you're after, what you value, what you weight against other things. If academia is high on your list, Boston should probably be #1, not merely "in the 1st tier." On the other hand, Boston is not a good place to start a family. I just heard on the radio this morning that you need a salary of $200,000 to buy a median-priced home. The street I live on is all 3-decker apartment buildings that are going to condos, $4-500,000 for what realtors generously call 2 bedrooms. I see a lot of recent college grads, and some young couples with infants and toddlers, but there's not a single child over the age of 5 on my street. The handful of single-family homes are owned by retirees who bought their houses in the late '80s or early '90s. A 30-something guy I work with in the city recently bought a house with his wife 13 miles/21km away - they have an infant and a toddler - and now he's got a 2-hour drive to work, each way.

I agree. I live in one of those mid-sized cities (population 110,000) which has a small but vibrant downtown, a major university, a diverse population and economy, and affordable housing. Plus, it's 15 minutes from Oklahoma City, less than three hours from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, and six hours to the Rocky Mountains.

Yeah, I think there might be a couple-hundred of those places, depending on what a person is specifically looking for. Do you like jogging along a river? Jazz music? The ocean? A particular ethnic community? Taking the train to work? Pizza? Barbecue?

 

[Farm Boy]

Murders.. damn! That's the exact thing I'm trying to avoid. Scratch Chicago and NYC off my list

...but they're so polite! And the interstate worker drones don't chirp pleasantly enough and are probably ugly anyways.

I'll dream of picking southwest Wisconsin, dairy country. Rolling hills, all four seasons, maybe out near some Pennsylvania Dutch, better county fairs, like the food, etc.

 

[Samson]

Boston is not a good place to start a family. I just heard on the radio this morning that you need a salary of $200,000 to buy a median-priced home.

Yet you put San Fran on your top list, that has more dogs than children because everyone who is not a multi millionaire moves out when they need any space?