Coming late to suggest something that may be a bit more from left field, Canberra - Australia.
Canberra is a small city in Australia. Designed as the nations capital it has a number of unusual characteristics such as strong town planning from its inception, high average income, low unemployment and good traffic. It is socially progressive compared to Australia and environmentally conscious.
60% of Canberra's population above 35 have at least one degree. The city has multiple significant universities, including the Australian National University - commonly ranked the best in Australia and 20th in the world by the QS rankings. The city has to actively work to recruit sufficient tradespeople.
The city is intermixed with the environment. It follows a multiple city center design which means you can be traveling down the highway in the middle of the city and not be able to see any buildings. There is considerable natural parkland throughout the city. Further afield it is two hours to the snow fields and two hours to the beach towns.
Living costs are reasonable, significantly less than the bay area, but not as low as a rural town. Canberra has ranked well in world livability reports in recent years. Being a small city there is also more choice in the costs incurred, living in the outer suburbs or outside the city significantly reduces rent but is still a very reasonable commute.
The tech industry is small but highly skilled and well paid. Most work is focused around government and military, through direct employment and service providers. Security and cloud migration work is in particular demand at the moment. The open source community is also strongly represented with groups such as IBM's OzLabs.