I tend to agree with those who believe that your immediate community of associates to have a much larger effect on your personal outlook than the defining characteristic of the your city of residence as a whole (although certainly each major city has one).
For example, I went to college at the University of Virginia, where the career prospects of most graduates reside in DC. As a programmer destined for DC, the message was loud and clear: "Be a defense contractor." For my friends who were not in engineering, the message was equally clear to them: "Be a lawyer."
But personally I never really cared much for success as defined through local conventions, mostly because I got bored too easily, so I spent half my college years as a cartoonist. Around the drawing board, the message I got was : "Be funny." Granted, our school is mostly known for successful lawyers and politicians, but we do have Tina Fey as well.
When I did hang out with the CS kids, it was almost exclusively with the computer graphics guys, and from them the message was: "Make photorealistic real-time applications." (As opposed to "Be a defense contractor.")
After graduation I moved to New York as a software engineer at a very large financial firm, and again I mostly managed to avoid the "Get rich" attitude prevalent in NYC by working with a small group of engaged CS folks some of whom were also start-up founders.
In none of the above situations was my local sub-group larger than a dozen individuals tops. Majority ambition can rarely ever suffocate sub-communities. The real danger is that a small community is vulnerable from disintegrating at any time. For example, all the previously mentioned clusters eventually dispersed, from graduation and corporate turnover and they are never immediately replaceable. In a place like Cambridge or Palo Alto, I suspect this would not be such a major risk.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: if your city's message as listed by pg is incompatible with what you want in life, don't freak out.