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Yes, I mean by having lots of high-paying jobs. Speaking in the abstract, that means economic success. You're not wrong that high cost of living can often cance

Yes, I mean by having lots of high-paying jobs. Speaking in the abstract, that means economic success. You're not wrong that high cost of living can often cancel much of that out at the individual level though. > quality of living is considerably lower. See my other nearby comment for why this is a "it depends" thing. A lot of people would consider living in Kansas City to have lower "quality of life" than NYC even if it's less crowded and it's much easier to afford a house. Your comment itself illustrates the disconnect here: we have one side arguing that the other side is wrong in what they want, ala "Why don't more techies want to come here?? This is ridiculous!" "Well, because they want to live in places with X Y Z even if they're expensive and crowded." "Well, they should care more about A B C instead (because I do)."

dionidium 8y ago
> "Well, they should care more about A B C instead (because I do)." I'm guilty of this, but I think your formulation is a straw man. All I want to tell people is that they shouldn't reflexively rule out the middle of the country, because a lot of people really would be happier there. Not everybody, but some people. And the way (some people on) the coasts talk about the Midwest and the South is as though they're a complete and total non-starter that's out of consideration entirely. "Yeah, New York's expensive, but what am I going to do? Live in Cleveland? Obviously I can't do that!" I think that kind of talk convinces a lot of people who would be happier somewhere else that they shouldn't even bother looking into those places. And that's a tragedy of human flourishing. Edit to respond to one comment below: > I think you're dismissing people's issues too easily. On the contrary, I think you're inordinately focused on your own particular (and somewhat eccentric) issues. Most Americans prefer car ownership. You might think they're wrong to prefer this. I do, too! But, "I don't want to live somewhere where I have to own a car" isn't a mainstream American opinion.
- del82 8y ago
  I grew up in Michigan and moved to greater NYC after grad school, and I want to push back a bit against the idea that nobody on the coasts even considers the middle of the country. My spouse and I would love to move somewhere less expensive than NYC, but we just can't make it work. We're both in fairly specialized tech fields, and prioritize walkability, diversity, great schools and career growth opportunity. Outside of say Chicago, it's hard to come up with a place that checks those boxes.
  - dionidium 8y ago
    It would be pointless to try to speak to your particular situation, but I think a lot of people who think they can't get this or that thing out of, say, Nashville or Minneapolis, or whatever, are wrong. I don't mean to say their opinion is wrong. Live wherever you want! I mean to say that they have objectively false impressions about quantifiable aspects of those cities.
    - TulliusCicero 8y ago
      > I think a lot of people who think they can't get this or that thing out of, say, Nashville or Minneapolis, or whatever, are wrong. If a person values a thing, saying, "well [thing] exists in these other cities too, there's just a whole lot less of it there" is maybe not a super effective counterpoint. Like, I realize that basically every major city in the US does have public transit...technically. But pointing out that out is not useful when for most of those cities, said transit is slow, unreliable, sparse, and infrequent. I don't just want transit. I want good transit. I don't just want walkability in a few isolated neighborhoods. I want widespread walkability.
    - chuckgreenman 8y ago
      Minneapolis does have a growing tech field, and it is laid out in such a way that you can get out into the country quite quickly after the work day. However, unless your working in medical devices I wouldn't call it a hub like New York, Boston or the valley.
    - hoaw 8y ago
      I don't think that is generally people's concern. What people in bigger cities would want from smaller cities are things that are significantly better to offset the lesser verity and upside. If you to a large degree still have to deal with commuting, the housing market, education and health care (or whatever) it doesn't really do that. If these cities want to be competitive they have be attractive in their own right, not relative to a bigger city.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  I think you're dismissing people's issues too easily. I've lived in Alabama before, and heeellll no I wouldn't want to settle down there. This isn't the only problem I had with the area (I lived in several different parts), but it felt super, super hostile to not-driving. And I should know, I had to bike around a lot as a mormon missionary there. We didn't even bother checking transit, it was taken as a given that it would be too slow and sparse to be useful. My wife is even harder on this line than I am. We live in Munich now, and the biggest reason she doesn't want to come back to the US is that she doesn't want to go back to driving everywhere, and there are only a few cities where a family can reasonably and easily get away without a car.
- chuckgreenman 8y ago
  People prefer car ownership because car manufactures lobbied for laws that shaped most modern american cities around the car. However, New York is so dense that getting around without owning a car is the norm. Car ownership is a multi thousand dollar expense, every year. Many people would be happier with that cash in their pocket.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  No, I'm not. Firstly, I recognize this is just one factor. I focused on it because it's one I'm highly familiar with, not because it's the end-all be-all. I've already pointed this out in multiple comments. We could also talk about educational opportunities or tolerance/discrimination, but those things either aren't as clear cut or would be more contentious to discuss. Americans saying they prefer cars when you ask makes sense when you consider the other options are usually hilariously bad wherever they live, and where they've lived in the past, too. Give them an option where walking and biking and transit actually work, and suddenly many people find those options desirable. Just look at how many American tourists say they love the transit system in, say, Tokyo, when they visit. Americans mostly "love cars" because they've been given no other serious options. Lastly, while many people may not think of it in explicit terms, they may nonetheless enjoy some of the knock-on effects of urbanism, like a city "feeling more lively".
joey-bob 8y ago
In my experience, your fundamental assumption about what "techies" want is at least partially flawed. Not that no one in tech wants bike Lanes, public transit, and authentic South Indian cuisine. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people who work at FAANG consider these things important in their life. But there is still a large portion that truly don't care for all that. They live in the bay because if they can find an illegal $800/mo Airbnb they will make a lot of money, if they lose their job there is another close by, and that is where their close friends are. If there were an equal paying, less congested alternative to these tech hives, they would take it. This is, of course, generated from anecdotal evidence. Fundamentally, some people like true urbanism, and others just don't.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  You are not wrong, but I'm not saying this is the sole factor in city attractiveness here. It's just one factor. Other things equal, I think it's easier to attract top talent to cities with halfway decent urbanism than to cities that are more like giant suburbs. I focused on it in my original comment mostly just because it's an area I'm particularly familiar with, and it's an area where the cities that are supposedly "desperate" are hardly doing anything at all. (Not that I blame the local governments for that, really, I realize the local residents mostly want their cities to stay that way)
  - ardy42 8y ago
    > You are not wrong, but I'm not saying this is the sole factor in city attractiveness here. It's just one factor. Other things equal, I think it's easier to attract top talent to cities with halfway decent urbanism than to cities that are more like giant suburbs. I wonder if the real situation is that it's easier to attract young "top talent to cities with halfway decent urbanism than to cities that are more like giant suburbs." That's also tends to be kind of talent that's willing to work way more than is really good for them. The suburban lifestyle is more suited for established families and older "top talent."
    - TulliusCicero 8y ago
tjr225 8y ago
I have lived in West Michigan (Insanely Cheap), Kansas City (Kinda Cheap), and Seattle (Pretty Expensive). Thing is, renting a 900 sq foot apartment in any reasonably urban area has gotten pretty expensive anywhere. It was about 1000-1500$ in KC when I left. It's about 1600-2200 in Seattle. My salary jump from KC to Seattle more than makes up for the difference in rent. Other things may be slightly more expensive, but I don't really notice. Major difference is you can buy a house in Kansas City, but even that is starting to get expensive - at least in the areas that I would like to buy a house in. Even Grand Rapids, Michigan is having its own housing crisis. At least the salaries are already high in coastal towns. That said, I sometimes feel like I was saving up enough money to buy a house back in the midwest.
- hoaw 8y ago
  Ultimately affordable housing isn't a factor of price as such. There have always been very expensive parts of town. It is how abruptly the city ends. Once these smaller cities get expensive there it nowhere to go, the rest is suburb. 10 000 new people in NYC is almost a rounding error, while even 1000 people in a smaller city (with a small core) could be significant. This is also what San Francisco suffers from. It goes from city to essentially suburb extremely quick. While cities like New York, Paris and Tokyo just go on and on. Of course we only talk about those examples because they have developed that way over decades.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    >There have always been very expensive parts of town. Historically, yes. But I'd argue that there are a lot of US cities that got pretty hollowed out by white flight and other factors to the degree that there were essentially no desirable parts of town. What's happened is that any number of those cities now have a revitalized urban core (however small) and living in that small core with the dozen or so restaurants you can walk to, maybe some small markets, new condos, etc. is pricey. I've either worked in or spend a fair bit of time in a few of those places. The few dozen square blocks on gentrified core is pretty nice as a visitor but it's pretty small.
- amish_gangster 8y ago

dionidium 8y ago

> "Well, they should care more about A B C instead (because I do)." I'm guilty of this, but I think your formulation is a straw man. All I want to tell people is that they shouldn't reflexively rule out the middle of the country, because a lot of people really would be happier there. Not everybody, but some people. And the way (some people on) the coasts talk about the Midwest and the South is as though they're a complete and total non-starter that's out of consideration entirely. "Yeah, New York's expensive, but what am I going to do? Live in Cleveland? Obviously I can't do that!" I think that kind of talk convinces a lot of people who would be happier somewhere else that they shouldn't even bother looking into those places. And that's a tragedy of human flourishing. Edit to respond to one comment below: > I think you're dismissing people's issues too easily. On the contrary, I think you're inordinately focused on your own particular (and somewhat eccentric) issues. Most Americans prefer car ownership. You might think they're wrong to prefer this. I do, too! But, "I don't want to live somewhere where I have to own a car" isn't a mainstream American opinion.

del82 8y ago
I grew up in Michigan and moved to greater NYC after grad school, and I want to push back a bit against the idea that nobody on the coasts even considers the middle of the country. My spouse and I would love to move somewhere less expensive than NYC, but we just can't make it work. We're both in fairly specialized tech fields, and prioritize walkability, diversity, great schools and career growth opportunity. Outside of say Chicago, it's hard to come up with a place that checks those boxes.
- dionidium 8y ago
  It would be pointless to try to speak to your particular situation, but I think a lot of people who think they can't get this or that thing out of, say, Nashville or Minneapolis, or whatever, are wrong. I don't mean to say their opinion is wrong. Live wherever you want! I mean to say that they have objectively false impressions about quantifiable aspects of those cities.
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    > I think a lot of people who think they can't get this or that thing out of, say, Nashville or Minneapolis, or whatever, are wrong. If a person values a thing, saying, "well [thing] exists in these other cities too, there's just a whole lot less of it there" is maybe not a super effective counterpoint. Like, I realize that basically every major city in the US does have public transit...technically. But pointing out that out is not useful when for most of those cities, said transit is slow, unreliable, sparse, and infrequent. I don't just want transit. I want good transit. I don't just want walkability in a few isolated neighborhoods. I want widespread walkability.
  - chuckgreenman 8y ago
    Minneapolis does have a growing tech field, and it is laid out in such a way that you can get out into the country quite quickly after the work day. However, unless your working in medical devices I wouldn't call it a hub like New York, Boston or the valley.
  - hoaw 8y ago
    I don't think that is generally people's concern. What people in bigger cities would want from smaller cities are things that are significantly better to offset the lesser verity and upside. If you to a large degree still have to deal with commuting, the housing market, education and health care (or whatever) it doesn't really do that. If these cities want to be competitive they have be attractive in their own right, not relative to a bigger city.
TulliusCicero 8y ago
I think you're dismissing people's issues too easily. I've lived in Alabama before, and heeellll no I wouldn't want to settle down there. This isn't the only problem I had with the area (I lived in several different parts), but it felt super, super hostile to not-driving. And I should know, I had to bike around a lot as a mormon missionary there. We didn't even bother checking transit, it was taken as a given that it would be too slow and sparse to be useful. My wife is even harder on this line than I am. We live in Munich now, and the biggest reason she doesn't want to come back to the US is that she doesn't want to go back to driving everywhere, and there are only a few cities where a family can reasonably and easily get away without a car.
chuckgreenman 8y ago
People prefer car ownership because car manufactures lobbied for laws that shaped most modern american cities around the car. However, New York is so dense that getting around without owning a car is the norm. Car ownership is a multi thousand dollar expense, every year. Many people would be happier with that cash in their pocket.
TulliusCicero 8y ago
No, I'm not. Firstly, I recognize this is just one factor. I focused on it because it's one I'm highly familiar with, not because it's the end-all be-all. I've already pointed this out in multiple comments. We could also talk about educational opportunities or tolerance/discrimination, but those things either aren't as clear cut or would be more contentious to discuss. Americans saying they prefer cars when you ask makes sense when you consider the other options are usually hilariously bad wherever they live, and where they've lived in the past, too. Give them an option where walking and biking and transit actually work, and suddenly many people find those options desirable. Just look at how many American tourists say they love the transit system in, say, Tokyo, when they visit. Americans mostly "love cars" because they've been given no other serious options. Lastly, while many people may not think of it in explicit terms, they may nonetheless enjoy some of the knock-on effects of urbanism, like a city "feeling more lively".

joey-bob 8y ago

In my experience, your fundamental assumption about what "techies" want is at least partially flawed. Not that no one in tech wants bike Lanes, public transit, and authentic South Indian cuisine. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of people who work at FAANG consider these things important in their life. But there is still a large portion that truly don't care for all that. They live in the bay because if they can find an illegal $800/mo Airbnb they will make a lot of money, if they lose their job there is another close by, and that is where their close friends are. If there were an equal paying, less congested alternative to these tech hives, they would take it. This is, of course, generated from anecdotal evidence. Fundamentally, some people like true urbanism, and others just don't.

TulliusCicero 8y ago
You are not wrong, but I'm not saying this is the sole factor in city attractiveness here. It's just one factor. Other things equal, I think it's easier to attract top talent to cities with halfway decent urbanism than to cities that are more like giant suburbs. I focused on it in my original comment mostly just because it's an area I'm particularly familiar with, and it's an area where the cities that are supposedly "desperate" are hardly doing anything at all. (Not that I blame the local governments for that, really, I realize the local residents mostly want their cities to stay that way)
- ardy42 8y ago
  > You are not wrong, but I'm not saying this is the sole factor in city attractiveness here. It's just one factor. Other things equal, I think it's easier to attract top talent to cities with halfway decent urbanism than to cities that are more like giant suburbs. I wonder if the real situation is that it's easier to attract young "top talent to cities with halfway decent urbanism than to cities that are more like giant suburbs." That's also tends to be kind of talent that's willing to work way more than is really good for them. The suburban lifestyle is more suited for established families and older "top talent."
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago

tjr225 8y ago

I have lived in West Michigan (Insanely Cheap), Kansas City (Kinda Cheap), and Seattle (Pretty Expensive). Thing is, renting a 900 sq foot apartment in any reasonably urban area has gotten pretty expensive anywhere. It was about 1000-1500$ in KC when I left. It's about 1600-2200 in Seattle. My salary jump from KC to Seattle more than makes up for the difference in rent. Other things may be slightly more expensive, but I don't really notice. Major difference is you can buy a house in Kansas City, but even that is starting to get expensive - at least in the areas that I would like to buy a house in. Even Grand Rapids, Michigan is having its own housing crisis. At least the salaries are already high in coastal towns. That said, I sometimes feel like I was saving up enough money to buy a house back in the midwest.

hoaw 8y ago
Ultimately affordable housing isn't a factor of price as such. There have always been very expensive parts of town. It is how abruptly the city ends. Once these smaller cities get expensive there it nowhere to go, the rest is suburb. 10 000 new people in NYC is almost a rounding error, while even 1000 people in a smaller city (with a small core) could be significant. This is also what San Francisco suffers from. It goes from city to essentially suburb extremely quick. While cities like New York, Paris and Tokyo just go on and on. Of course we only talk about those examples because they have developed that way over decades.
- ghaff 8y ago
  >There have always been very expensive parts of town. Historically, yes. But I'd argue that there are a lot of US cities that got pretty hollowed out by white flight and other factors to the degree that there were essentially no desirable parts of town. What's happened is that any number of those cities now have a revitalized urban core (however small) and living in that small core with the dozen or so restaurants you can walk to, maybe some small markets, new condos, etc. is pricey. I've either worked in or spend a fair bit of time in a few of those places. The few dozen square blocks on gentrified core is pretty nice as a visitor but it's pretty small.
amish_gangster 8y ago