Many good suggestions in this thread, but I would suggest looking into cities in the 100 000 - 150 000 range with a good university nearby if you want to try so

Many good suggestions in this thread, but I would suggest looking into cities in the 100 000 - 150 000 range with a good university nearby if you want to try something different from living with millions of people. I moved from my million person metropolitan area to Sundsvall, Sweden and it is very cheap (I pay about €600 for a two bedroom apartment in the absolute center of the city, I have no need for a car when it comes to day-to-day transportation) and the intellectual community is very vibrant here with meet-ups for software engineering and machine learning, as well as a maker space run by people with degrees in electrical engineering. Only problem? You climb in salary by switching jobs and small places are often dominated by a few players when it comes to tech. But, for people who are fine not climbing as fast as in a big city I can definitely recommend it.