The rest of that paragraph says: > beyond a select few, similarly expensive places.

Nobody's putting Boston and NYC on the list of cheap places to live, any more than SF.

That said, someone in a different part of this thread brought up Chicago, which seems plausible! Though I haven't been there enough to know if that's true! (Though when I visited, their transit definitely was very good).

I lived in Chicago for five years without a vehicle. It's very doable, the train pretty much goes everywhere.