It's a popular subject, rating living cities and towns. Demographics usually entail median home prices, average income, crime statistics, average education, and ages.
Subjective lists change every so often and the media gets a lot of milage from the same subject.
From the experience of my travel and living in different places, I am starting to take a contrarian view on these assumptions. It seems to me that a person with average means and intellect can live like a king amongst the "deplorables".
How do you interpret those lists of where the living is grand?
Farm_or wrote:How do you interpret those lists of where the living is grand?
When it's ranked by states according to some objective measurement, it's a useful starting point. When it's ranked by cities, well, a mere 20 cities is too small of a list to be useful except for knowing where I wouldn't want to live.
I agree that these lists are of marginal use, although the ones with specific metrics are better because they are customizable to individual tastes. So "best place overall" is much less informative than "best walking score".
Most people actually live where they live based on the following factors:
-- Proximity to work (although often just "close enough" based on (mis)perceived time/money values in housing)
-- Proximity to family or close friends
-- Where I've always been (may be related to 1 and 2)
-- Where I have enough room for all the stuff I have accumulated
We should be more discerning about where we choose to live and why, but mostly we're not. I'm just as guilty as many.
+'s Cheap college. Sidewalks everywhere. 200+ miles of hiking outside Yellowstone. Kayaking & rafting on two or more rivers, 100+ miles of 2-5 difficulty MTB, craft breweies, 3+ languages taught 5+ spoken, world class skiing within an hour, airport to anywhere west of the Mississippi. Free busing. Unknown number but fly-fishing shops to pretty popular. Any job starts at $11/hr ,and unemployment is 4%.
- 's housing is TIGHT. while rooms cost $400-600 it might take 2 months to find one. Renting a house triple both, do it both 6 months earlier. A condo starts at $250k. Food is shit, I was surprised. It's two sentences of shit. Dating: The people are beautiful, seriously, the Walmart customers are more beautiful than average town folk. Why is this a negative? It's a reflection of myself. I am here to be hedonistic and not really following my dream. I mean I LIKE hiking, do I wake up at 6 am to be at at lake at 7 am to hear the ice crackle. Nope. People are intense here . Snowplowing, 30 miles in either direction shuts down, we get 7 feet of snow in the valley. 20+ in the mountains.
I cycle toured Montana. 400 miles in five days. Loved it. Agree about the beautiful people. Especially the event host who was half Sioux?, she was gorgeous.
Only that the gnarly winters are unacceptable for my cold blooded DW. The first thing she looks for is average temperature and amount of snowfall.
- 's Food is shit, I was surprised. It's two sentences of shit.
In one of our trips through Montana, DH and I stayed at a motel in Hamilton. We asked the front desk attendant (there's probably an actual word for this job) if there was a Chinese restaurant in town. He allowed that there was one and gave us directions. We went there and had a positively vile meal featuring heavily battered, deep fried prawns with bright red sauce. We ate very little and returned to the motel, where the attendant asked how our dinner was. "Not great," I admitted. He replied, "When in Montana...eat beef."
Dragline wrote:
Most people actually live where they live based on the following factors:
-- Proximity to work (although often just "close enough" based on (mis)perceived time/money values in housing)
-- Proximity to family or close friends
-- Where I've always been (may be related to 1 and 2)
-- Where I have enough room for all the stuff I have accumulated
My DH often asks, when seeing news reports of tornados in in the midwest, "Why would anyone live there?" I think for some it's related to employment or housing costs, but family and a sense of belonging are a huge factor. I grew up in a place where most were surrounded by extended family and multi-generational history. Not that they always got along, but they still belonged. Sailing off to be alone in a place with some nebulously-defined quality of life isn't for everyone.
I escaped the midwest. For many reasons, although I still have fond memories and go back to visit from time to time. I only saw a couple tornadoes in 18 years there, though -- and they usually are not very big. Note that like in most parts of the country, there is a huge difference between living in a city there and in one of the smaller towns.
Most of my family lives in Montana now. Which is a good reason not to live too close. Although the Missoula area is a pretty nice place, especially in the summer. Just about anywhere is the western half of the state has more beautiful scenery than most places in the US. Except for perhaps the Berkeley Pit in Butte, "the most polluted lake in the country". (Took one of my kids on an interesting road trip from Missoula to Yellowstone a couple summers ago.)
My parents used to live between Victor and Hamilton. Chinese food is definitely NOT the way to go there!
I have lived in the Midwest for 30 years and have only ever seen funnel clouds once. Never an actual tornado. Like anything, media hype makes it seem worse than it is. Winter is a much more compelling reason to move.
FWIW we think the same thing about east coasters/southerners and hurricanes.
