It depends on who you are.

Consider someone who likes walking to work, groceries, and everything they need; hates driving and owning a car; loves having top caliber arts and entertainment; feels more alive living in a place where people are on the street; and enjoy an evening walking bar to bar drinking with friends and not having to worry about a DUI on the way home, cities offer a lot.

That is Boston, Manhattan, and SF in this country.

(Oh, and I can hold my husband's hand in the city without getting weird stares. That's not possible in many parts of the country.)

SF has top quality arts & entertainment? I'm from New Orleans so I'm spoiled, but the live music scene in SF is the pits. Stern Grove is cool, but it's only during a short time of the year. The SF ballet is excellent, but most other A&E things fall way, way short of other US cities.

And Philadelphia. And Portland ME. Even Burlington VT. The list goes on. All of these places have lower costs of living than NY, SF and Boston.

Also: Austin, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Seattle, etc.

Some things I like about a few of those: Pittsburgh is the 2nd-safest major U.S. city for pedestrians (after Boston) [1], is nice and compact, and a beautiful setting in a valley at the intersection of two rivers. Chicago has one of two 24-hour rapid-transit systems in North America (NYC is the other one), a beautiful lakefront, great deal of ethnic diversity, and is possibly the best American city for skyscrapers (NYC is the only other contender). Atlanta is walkable/bikeable if you live in the city, has the 3rd-largest gay population in the U.S. (after SF and NYC), and is one of the leading centers of Black American culture.

Overall imo there are lots of interesting urban places to live, the main issue is just making sure to live in the actual city rather than the suburbs, if you want a city lifestyle.

[1] http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/documents/dangerous-by-des...

> , the main issue is just making sure to live in the actual city rather than the suburbs, if you want a city lifestyle.

Yeah but then your cost of living shoots up. I mean, I've priced Austin real estate. If I want to buy 2BR apartment in downtown Austin (the closest analogy to where I currently live in Brooklyn) I'm looking at half-million dollar properties. Which is fine for an NYC boy like me, it's what I'm used to, but then why am I moving again?

Hey, someone else who remembers that First Portland exists and is pretty great!

How much time have you actually spent in SF?

As an SF Bay Area resident since 2009, there's no better place if you want a career in tech.

Yes, you can still have a great career outside of SF but it's a lot easier here.

I have lived and worked in 4 US cities and the best engineers are here. The selection of good jobs is immense. If you are a decent engineer, you have so many choices.

A couple days for a conference.

From what I've read in this topic and elsewhere, the cost of living is very high.

I'd rather not live in a city with as much of a chance of an earthquake as SF has. Living in a known disaster area just seems kinda off...

Then there's just personal preference.

I live in a city of less that 200K, and I find it to be larger than I like. The other day I hit stop and go traffic in a larger city, and found myself wondering why anyone would subject themselves to that on a regular basis. Or subject themselves to crowded mass transit systems, those crowds are a big part of why I use my car instead in my city.

And so on...

The train system around NYC makes it practical to live in more idyllic locales than the heart of the concrete jungle. There are plenty of quaint towns built around LIRR and NJ Transit stations.

It sounds like you've found a big part of the appeal. People go where the jobs are, after all.

"nobody goes there anymore it's too crowded"

Huge tech community, almost perfect weather (it's not San Diego, but it's close), fairly liberal politics, diverse culture (means tons of interesting and fun cultural activities, and lots of interesting places to eat that you don't get somewhere that isn't a larger city).

You may not agree with or value those things, but a lot of tech people do.

San Francisco weather is not even remotely close to San Diego... It's significantly colder, foggier and windier, particularly in the summer. The high/low in June/July/August is comparable to December/January/February in San Diego.

Which is great, because San Diego is too hot & sunny.

You don't think similar proportions of people in other fields would also like diverse culture?

Nope. Tech workers trend more liberal, more well-travelled and so on (I'm sure you can find negative ways to frame the differences as well). The cultural differences are real.

Rather, tech workers in San Francisco trend more liberal. This is because the city generally trends liberal; it's not specific to tech workers. Outside of that bubble, tech workers are the same as anyone else.

The largest single employer of tech workers in the world is probably the US military, and those tech workers definitely don't trend liberal.

I'm sure they might; I don't know. I'm talking about tech people.