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Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

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Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#871

Post by baby »

tptacek wrote: post #785
baby wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived there for a while and there were a lot of deal breakers for me: * security: you feel unsafe in most of the city, past a certain hour and you can't walk nor take the public transit (actually even during the day, the public transit is filled with crazy people). I could never take walks around my place when I was living there. A lot of poverty. * no real life: there is the loop, but it's mostly offices and it…

It's a big city. There is big city crime. Your nightlife thing is pretty weird. The Loop is Chicago's business district. It is dead after business hours. Don't be there. Wicker Park and Logan Square are neighborhoods, not single streets. There's also Lakeview, Avondale, Pilsen, Andersonville, and a bunch of others I'm forgetting. Maybe the argument is that together these neighborhoods constitute a pretty decent night…

> It's a big city. There is big city crime.

Compare that to London or Beijing where you feel safe at all time. Being a big city is not an excuse for feeling unsafe.

> Wicker Park and Logan Square are neighborhoods, not single streets

After one or two streets there is not much to see. Again I'm comparing this to european cities/asian cities where you can walk for hours in lively old centers/districts.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#872

Post by czbond »

kpennell wrote: post #775
myth_buster wrote: post #765

Greater Boulder Area, CO. _If you can survive the winter_ - It's college town with good departments (talks and other activities). - Decent startup scene - Some research orgs exist (NCAR/NREL) - Local incubator - Options to pursue an active life

I lived in Boulder from September 2014-July 2015. I lived in Denver for 7 months after that and then moved to Oakland, California after that. Boulder is the most frustrating and disappointing place I’ve lived. I tried so many different things to make friends, date, build community, or simply have a good night out but just couldn’t make it work there. For a place with such a good reputation around the western US, it w…

I agree here. Dallas,TX transplant to Denver. Boulder seems to be where you get either: college students, families with some money, and pretty introverted "doing my own thing with my own small group" older singles.

On the flipside, there is nothing intellectual about Denver..... great people, love the outdoors, but having intellectual conversations not involving Broncos or Rockies doesn't happen.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#873

Post by baby »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #717
baby wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who travels a lot, I really couldn't see anything I liked in Vienna. Not sure what people see in this city.

Unless you say what you were looking for then your comment is just "I don't like it", which is not helpful.

I look for food, people, bars, atmosphere.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#874

Post by walamaking »

pintablex wrote: post #867

Supprised no one mentioned Singapore yet. Lived there a couple of years. Huge tech and business scene in Asia, everyone speaks English, they welcome foreign talent, cheaper local food than most of western Europe, average residential Internet connection is about 7 times faster than the US according to speedtest.net, one page easy tax filing (no huge personal tax filing industry like H&R block), and you can rent a room…

People I know who have left Singapore tend to say it's a suffocating little place though. Not to mention how conformist everyone is.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#875

Post by PortlandNerd »

Portland, Maine

Yes, there's another Portland out there and it hits way above it's weight. If you are an outdoorsy person who likes to nerd, live well and actually have a pay check left over - I strongly recommend a visit out here. In my early 30's and spent my 20's living in Boston, London and NYC.

I'd need a salary of +$500K to ever consider leaving Portland.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#876

Post by tptacek »

baby wrote: post #871
tptacek wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a big city. There is big city crime. Your nightlife thing is pretty weird. The Loop is Chicago's business district. It is dead after business hours. Don't be there. Wicker Park and Logan Square are neighborhoods, not single streets. There's also Lakeview, Avondale, Pilsen, Andersonville, and a bunch of others I'm forgetting. Maybe the argument is that together these neighborhoods constitute a pretty decent night…

> It's a big city. There is big city crime. Compare that to London or Beijing where you feel safe at all time. Being a big city is not an excuse for feeling unsafe. > Wicker Park and Logan Square are neighborhoods, not single streets After one or two streets there is not much to see. Again I'm comparing this to european cities/asian cities where you can walk for hours in lively old centers/districts.

I'm not going to compare it to London or Beijing, but while I wouldn't move to Chicago from San Francisco to get away from crime, for most people, a move from SF to Chicago wouldn't be a move into significantly more crime either.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#877

Post by [deleted] »

lumos_42 wrote: post #479
sandGorgon wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, except New Delhi. Bigger roads, much better infrastructure/subway system. We actually have close to 7-8 world class universities in the city (IITD, AIIMS, NSIT, DCE, IIITD, etc). Rentals are also cheaper.

Delhi is not really an intellectual city. Also, forget Delhi if you're a girl.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#878

Post by webninja »

anonlilcoward wrote: post #214

Bangalore,India: Rent price : 200$/month for a 1000sqft apartment. Bangalore is often called the silicon valley of India, filled with software professionals. Majority of the city's inhabitants are migrants from other parts of the country and almost everyone communicates in English. The living expenses for a couple is not more than 600-700$/month including rent for a decent lifestyle. The city has a good pub culture a…

Air quality is pretty rough in certain parts of Bangalore but the low cost of living is hard to beat.

Source: I’ve been there.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#879

Post by mindcrime »

sudosteph wrote: post #864
cbames89 wrote: post #708

I'd highly recommend the triangle area in North Carolina. In Raleigh, there are a large number of tech companies, RHE, Cisco, IBM, Unreal Engine, just to name a few. It has the second highest % of computer science PhDs, and it's home to NC State, Duke University, and UNC. It's also a cultural hotspot for Blues creativity. Many of the best contemporary blues artists are located here in the triangle. The cost of living…

NC really is something special, and not just the triangle either. While it doesn't really have any place with a real big city vibe (and I'm saying that as a Charlotte native), there are awesome small towns and older cities all over and roads to connect to it all. The melting pot thing is true too, almost none of my NC friends have parents from there. I think the trick is to pick any place with a college (and there ar…

and then there's even Carolina beach near Wilmington for beach fans, which is at least cheaper than some other beaches.

Wilmington is a fun place in many ways. I grew up nearby (Holden Beach) and went to UNC-W and worked in Wilmington for many years. The area has a lot going for it, but in the end, I left for the Triangle region back in 2000 just because there were more business/career opportunities in the Triangle.

I think the tech scene in Wilmington has improved over the last 7 or 8 years, but at least up through 2000 (when I left) it was kind of a backwater from a tech standpoint. Programming jobs were few and far between and there weren't all the user groups and tech events and things you get here in the Triangle.

Anyway, I'd encourage anybody considering Wilmington to really research the job scene and see what's going on in their industry there, before committing.

Re: Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere?

#880

Post by mcguire »

kccqzy wrote: post #835
mindcrime wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agreed. The Triangle hits a good "sweet spot" in terms of cost of living, business/career opportunity, culture, food, entertainment, etc. And we're conveniently located about 2-3 hours from beaches (depending on which beach you want to hit), or about 3.5-5 hours from mountains (depending, again, on exactly where you want to go). One thing I really like about this area is that for a moderately sized urban area…

> And we're conveniently located about 2-3 hours from beaches (depending on which beach you want to hit), or about 3.5-5 hours from mountains (depending, again, on exactly where you want to go). This sentence really makes me rethink how much time some people routinely spend on the road. I live in Santa Monica where's it's minutes away from beaches and about half an hour away from mountains. If I just want to go there…

I've never been to Santa Monica, but the times I've been in California, I've never been able to get anywhere by vehicle in minutes. :-)
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