But are you praising the "culture" of an area while your yearly "culture" itinerary is that you went to an art museum and a mid-list concert?
Are you really using the "culture" of your area, or is it just a rationalization to stay where you are?
I would consider it a successful outcome of this message if those of you who live in a "cultural" area resolve to take better advantage of it in the future. I'm not trying to say the "culture" stuff is useless. I'm just saying that people's words and actions seem divergent here, and the worst case outcome in terms of bang-for-the-buck is to pay to live in a high-culture area, and then not use it.
I think that people obey fashion when it comes to living addresses just as much as they obey fashion when it comes to clothing, cars, and so on. No one likes to say that they living in a suburb of a Midwest city, even if that's actually the best decision they could make with their living circumstances.
As somebody who recently moved to the city centre, from a 1hr away suburb I believe this is very much true. My move was motivated in part by the reactions I would get from people when I told them where I lived. I'm glad I moved downtown as I'm closer to work and all the city amenities are never more than a half-hour away, but occasionally I have mixed feelings about my decision as my disposable income has gone down considerably and I'm not putting away into my savings as much as I'd like to.
Yet, at the same time, I yearn to live inside the city.
I'm not fully thought out on this, but somehow I think it's ultimately a status thing. The cool people live in the city, so I want to live in the city.
Sure I would love to live in one of the leafy old neighborhoods in Portland, but we can get there in less than 30 minutes on the weekends and I don't stress over voluntarily driving into the city midweek once in a while. It would be nice to be a bit less car dependent, but having two cars in our family is more a choice of convenience than a necessity.
I do think there is a split between married (with or without kids) and single people. My wife was gone for a couple weeks last month and it got pretty quiet in the evenings. I can see why single people would prefer the city.
Also, people live in big cities for a variety of reasons. One the biggest ones is finding better jobs. If his current job is not paying enough to live by, I think that living in Chicago offers a lot more opportunities for him to get a job that does.
I love museums, but I go once or twice a year. Same with live sports. It doesn't really justify living in a place. Live music is great, although admittedly I don't do that as much as I used to.
One of my favorite cultural activities? Traveling to experience another cultural. Nothing's quite as conducive to that as a low cost of living when I'm not traveling.
It depends on which museum you're talking about. The Museum of Modern Art in Houston generally has month long exhibitions which I love. There is a Museum of Art in Austin which has even more regular events, based on different themes etc. So I definitely do visit museums more than once a year :)
That's kind of a treadmill, though. There's no real point to moving somewhere chasing a better job if any increase in salary is going to be eaten up by extra taxes and living expenses. I could get a job with a substantially higher salary if I moved to SF, but at the end of the month I'd have less money.
Likewise, I live in a culture-free area, but between work and kids and numerous easily affordable vacations to cultural areas, I have no time to go out drinking (which is usually all people mean by "culture" anyway). If, suddenly on the commute home, an art museum fell onto the interstate, I'd merely have to detour around it, I have a little league practice to get to tonight.
I find it ironic that a childhood friend lives in Chicago but can't afford to do anything but scrape by, but as an outsider I can trivially afford to visit and do more in his own hometown than he can afford to do! He does have a much cooler address than I do.