No. As someone who both have experienced both NYC and Boston urban living, I can tell you that Boston is no better than NYC. Sure there are a lot more schools i

No. As someone who both have experienced both NYC and Boston urban living, I can tell you that Boston is no better than NYC. Sure there are a lot more schools in Boston, it's only the arbitrary scale of judgement has changed but the intensity/consistency of judgement is still the same. Whereas in NY, yuppie culture surrounds either the high-finance/media-fashion/hipster type, Boston's culture is more on academic/engineering/townie-pride. In some sense, I prefer NYC because at least everyone's honest and at least it's a meritocracy of superficiality. You either gotta make six figures or have the American Apparel attitude and look to be in the group. In Boston, it's more like "of course, we are a open & accepting people," but "oh? you don't go to grad school at Harvard/MIT/BU? You are involved in software/allied health professions and don't have the holier-than-thou attitude? You are not WASP or a white-washed minority and don't drink the vegan-hippie-liberal ethos?" Haven't lived in Seattle/Portland extensively but my own superficial judgment of these two cities while traveling there, is that the latent vegan-hippie-liberal superficiality is even more rampant there.