Overrated Cities: 10 U.S. Metro Areas That Give You the Least City for Your Dollar 

His tone and the fact that he has a city planning channel where he constantly crunches numbers makes me think that he has autism. I could be completely wrong though

@@deanrichard1770 well you know what they say, “high-functioning autism leads to a calming and dry vocal tone that fits extraordinarily well on a RU-vid channel centered around urban planning”

@@deanrichard1770 an old saying of the trosvoltian guard

"Rule #1 of this channel is keep the host entertained"

He’s the most inviting boring person in america

Could you send me the article? I want to read it.

That’s terrible to hear as I love going to Ventura to bike along the boardwalk and to their newly “car free” downtown. Ventura needs more bikes not less!

But there is a train! lol. I hear you though. Ventura, I.E., and OC need more transit that can connect to LA's systems. The 405 Express Lanes should have been an LRT.

@@renaes2807 prefer if it was an express busway. No one wants to wait for a bus or train in the middle of a freeway. It's dangerous because of all the noise and air pollution. I'd like a system of park and ride express buses that utilize the freeway system.

Literally all the new housing projects in Ventura and Oxnard are extremely unaffordable. The vast majority of young adults move away after turning 18 because it's so expensive, and that leaves a bunch of old ppl and children, which causes more young adults to move away. I was born in Ventura and I'm currently renting a room off Craigslist because that's the only affordable housing in the area. I'm probably going to move away in a few years (I'm 28).

And you can easily visit NYC or DC for a day trip or a weekend.

Yea Philly! It's very underrated, but also has it's legitimate issues such as trash and violent crime. Regardless it does have everything you need including great medical facilities, and access to parks. I haven't had to own a car since I moved here almost 20 years ago, and I'm less than a 15 minute ride away from wooded areas where I can forget I'm even in the city. On top of that, the diversity is amazing, there's an outdoor SE Asian market every year that feels like you're in another country, and the variety of food in general is pretty great. As a final bonus, real estate is much more affordable. I currently own a small row home that's fully paid off. With no debt and no kids, living in a bikable city, I feel like a free man :)

I live in Philly and I agree. However I will caution people that Philly is going up in price.

@@AB-wf8ek AB, are there areas of Philly you would recommend more for people without cars?

@@TheGhanafuo If you plan on buying a house, being close to a big box store is handy. I live in West Passyunk which has a HD and supermarket within a 5 minute bike ride. There's similar area on the east side of town along Columbus Blvd. and NE in Port Richmond. Otherwise public transportation is really accessible in most areas. If you're just looking for places to live, there's Northern Liberties, Fishtown, Art Museum, Brewerytown, Queens Village, etc. Being close to Rittenhouse park, or the Schuylkill River Trail is nice to consider. Also being close to a public pool is nice in the summers as well. I like going to O'Connor pool myself.

Considering Gold just got elected, I believe ACHD has a progressive majority at this point.

Boise has no dedicated bike lanes? Tell me you don't actually live in Boise without saying you don't actually live in Boise.

​@@jeffsalmans Of course Boise has SOME dedicated bike lanes, mainly downtown and in the immediate surrounding area. There are many arterial roads with no biking infrastructure, either separate or part of the road. I don't really consider a shoulder on a 35-55 MPH road to be a dedicated bike lane.

@@jim3318 OK, since Boise doesn't have as many dedicated bike lanes as you wish it did, and because you don't approve of some of them, that equals "no dedicated bike lanes." Got it.

@@jeffsalmans My original comment implies that on my commute, which includes Eagle Road, there are no dedicated bike lanes or bus routes, which there aren't. Feel free to read it again. No need to nit-pick. Have a nice day.

If Reddit was a person it would be this guy.

@@rumi2059😂😂

I was going to say exactly this. Usually richie rich cities don't house their wage slaves in the city. There's usually little public housing settlements on the outskirts, complete with a gas station, a liquor store, a grocery store or two, and a goodwill. Public transit will often carry the slaves back and forth, but I've seen they often still have to walk a good distance to reach the bus, for no reason other than screw them I guess. There's a number of cities I considered moving to until I saw the system they set up to further screw the poor. That needs to stop.

Yeah I figure service workers are supercommuting in? Or maybe the distance isn't that far.

@@CityNerd Transit agencies in and around resort towns often have a pretty broad bus network (for a rural community at least) which are in part funded by the resorts in the area because a lot of the seasonal workforce the resorts rely on don't have cars, or are living inside vans that are bad at being commuter vehicles. Those routes can range pretty long (I'm actually surprised that Glenwood made your list, because I had long assumed there was a pretty large worker community there commuting to Aspen by bus, 40ish miles away). But yeah the situation in mountain towns is pretty bad; this past summer, I was talking to a raft guide and someone asked him how many people were living out of vans. He replied that almost all the guides were, but at least the owners let them move their vans into the parking lot overnight. Some of the larger resort companies will try to buy or build worker housing, but it's never enough and politically expensive (as an example, the town of Vail is currently trying to eminent domain some land Vail Resorts is trying to build worker housing on), so often people are crowding into apartments, living from vans. The towns themselves will put affordable housing in their master plans and such, but then most years will report that little or none was built and not really try to do anything about it, because in all these areas, hostility from (rich) homeowners is high and the seasonal workers generally have more pressing things to do than show up in City Hall. At least in Colorado, it seems to have really come to a head, and some towns have at least started cracking down on short term rentals and may have to do a lot more to maintain an actual service industy

Used to live there and work on the mountain. I had to share a motel room with a crazy person all winter because there is such a housing shortage. Doesn’t stop them having huge parking lots that were never full.

For Jackson, people commute in from Idaho. It’s 35 minutes over the pass to Victor.

Yeah, Jackson’s situation is absolutely brutal by any standard. I check in on it occasionally and am stunned to see exclusively 1M+ listings.

This is a theme in many states, including parts of Washington State and Vermont where workers are priced out of homes. The San Juan Islands in Washington State was one example where the workers lived in tents during the summer so that the tourists rented the homes. I don't know if that's still the case. I hope not. Langley, on Whidbey Island, Washington had trouble keeping workers in their shops and restaurants because there weren't enough affordable rentals. And people from Seattle were scooping up second homes. People from Seattle make more money than people on Whidbey.

Wow. Thanks for sharing. How sad.

Move. It's not the only pretty place in this big country..

also the biotech and tech companies over there

I'm a Boston native and I think you're right. The problem is when so many yuppies (for lack of a better word) want to move into the city who come from money, it drives up the prices that ultimately forces the locals out. Combine that with Boston's laughable attempt (if any at all) of rent control and there's a reason Boston is like the third most gentrified city in America.

Eh... I think that's just one part of the Boston area though. I think the bigger issue is that Massachusetts is the second most overregulated real estate sector in the Northeast after Vermont, whereas Pennsylvania, as the least overregulated, responds quickly and efficiently to new market demand.

My first thoughts for Boston over Philly is crime and jobs. Any metric like salary per capita, amount of jobs, amount of white collar jobs, GDP etc. have all got to favor Boston despite the fact that the Philly area is actually significantly bigger.

It's 100% the far broader slice of very highly compensated people in Boston vs Philly. It's the very same reason San Jose is on the list. If you are having trouble growing as a city, either by regulatory or geography reasons, ultimately rent is a slow auction. Said auctions are driven by how big the slices of high earners are. Most people making that kind of money in metro areas are serving residents, so they are pretty stable: It's not as if some metro areas can be 10% doctors. However, you absolutely can get to those levels with tech sector jobs. At that point, the best locations take two tech jobs to afford, and everyone else has to move further out. Boston might not have quite as high a percentage of those jobs as San Jose, but it's still a lot, so prices go through the roof.

Go to your local town or city meetings. They should be public. We got a tunnel for our bike path under the regional highway done and a big park starting right now with some (artificial) lakes Being built for paddling. Also we just need to reset tge whole government system to a Parliamentary/Council style government with Jeffersonian/van der Houyt proportional representation

The big thing is sending emails to city council members and planning commissioners. This is the easiest next step, the harder thing is to get like-minded individuals in your city and create a noisy coalition. It is hard, takes time, and ends up primarily pushing back on NIMBYs also, NIMBYism is not always bad, Jane Jacobs was kinda a NIMBY but it can be and having those nuanced conversations takes forever.

I actually think nowadays it is less that powerful industries are in the way, but rather that city governments are set in their ways and don't know any better. Its our job to show up to city council meetings to advocate for urbanism.

Advocate for small walkable businesses, and fixing stroads. Don't make things seem like a zero-sum game, as improving streets and eliminating stroads helps both drivers and non drivers. For how to relate to people, I say don't scare people away from your message by making it too political, Strong towns although very conservative tends to be very apolitical in most of their articles, Understand that many people want good urbanism on their own terms even if it goes against your values - IE rejecting diversity(Ethnic enclaves like chinatowns), rejecting tolerance, rejecting immigrants etc. Another thing to do would be to ask for less infrastructure to be built, as too much infrastructure has gotten us into this mess of stroads.

Looking for bridges to MAGA folks rather than shitting on them should help. We are all in favor of small businesses, safety, good schools, and good infrastructure, there is nothing inherently anti-urban about these values, they are actually very pro-urban, in contrast to the libtard policies that have promoted chaos and social breakdown over the last decade or so. Think about it. As much as I love this channel and think that CityNerd is fun and, yeah, hot :-) in many ways, his politics are actually counterproductive wrt his stated urbanist goals.

Yeah... San Jose is more justifiable because incomes are so high. My city in California also has high rents, but much lower salaries, so there's a huge affordability gap. Median income would have been a useful input here.

Imo California is moving in the right direction, but currently mostly has shitty cities for the price you pay. It does have a couple of exceptions, such as downtown San Diego and downtown SF.

Redlands and Riverside are underrated, but according to his video, overrated. I tend to disagree. San Diego, also underrated.

why do you live there? whats your lifestyle that makes the costs worth it

He should definitely do a video on California and all the crazy housing policies they have. I love visiting CA and get jealous of the beauty and outdoor activities, but then I look at rent prices.

Imagine paying NYC-like prices for a small mountain town, for lower-Midwest wages

@@peskypigeonxthey just said they were paying 250 a month.

@@hastyscorpion « Average rent around that time there was $1500 for a 1br ».

I think when people describe it as being complicated they are mostly talking about the tabulation, not necessarily the ranking the candidates.

ppl say its too complicated if they stand to lose, ie conservatives

Literal schoolchildren can do it smh

and STAR voting is even easier

"But it's not fair if the person with the most votes loses" seems like a common bad argument against it

Well said. Boston is much cleaner than Philly (although that depends on where you are) and because it's a bit smaller doesn't feel like it has as many "big city problems." That's mostly just perception thought.

It's actually not that uniquely historic. The largest collection of colonial era buildings in an American city is actually in Charleston, SC, and Philadelphia is at least as historic as Boston even if it does have a bizarrely modern downtown. In general, East Coast cities just tend to be more historic.

I would point out also that the blue collarness doesn't make Philly more affordable, rather, being more affordable makes Philly more blue collar. Boston is a white collar city because the blue collar have gradually been driven out; nothing is driving white collar people out of Philly, in fact there's a great deal to drive them in.

@@alexanderfretheim5720 that and the fact that Philly is less densely populated than Boston. Philly has more room to spread out and that brings down the cost of living.

@@alexanderfretheim5720 In America and Canada. Halifax NS is like that.

Connecticuter??? In school we were told Connecutian. Or just be normal and say Nutmegger. You'll get questions instead of looks...😉

@@c.a.mcmullen7674 In all honesty I don’t recall being told the proper demonym so I just referred to Wikipedia. Although I’ve heard nutmegger before but I wanted something official. Thanks for the insight though

I grew up in LA and definitely noticed the nice days a lot more once I moved to Colorado. Even more now that I'm in in CT. One thing that's inverted tho is appreciation for rain. I used to love rain as a kid, I'd be sad when the clouds cleared up, because it was a special occasion. Now I hate rain lol

I live in Chicago but just spent several months in San Jose for work and I experienced something very similar. Everyone I met LOVED the weather in CA but thought I was a little wack for liking Chicago. Like yeah, it gets so cold your face hurts but suck it up. You learn to really appreciate that beautiful weather when it happens for only a few months out of the year. It's like the whole city is celebrating. I did realize that no matter where you live, you'll always feel most comfortable wherever you call home. To me, the Californians are the crazy ones but everyone there loved it since many of them had spent most, if not all, of their life there.

Ha, to each their own but I am in the opposite boat. Born and raised in CA but currently in NY. God, the weather is so awful it hurts. Like over half the year I don't want to be outside. I miss California terribly. The one weather thing I'll give the northeast credit for though is great Fall weather, especially with the leaves. September - November is the only time I thoroughly enjoy being here lol

Here's the thing. When you are raised in California you get used to being outside. I moved to the Midwest and the amount of time spent indoors was torturous. I garden. I hike. I ride a motorcycle. I can't give up the things I love for several months out of the year.

@@mjwbulich Yup, totally agree!

Yep, as a former CT resident, I knew immediately that is what happened here. Bridgeport itself is avoided like the plague while the rich suburbs of Southwest CT (which are notorious for wealthy families who don't want to live in NYC or Long Island) got lumped in.

This is a very good point. Some areas of Greenwich have median household incomes of >150k and average incomes of $700k (!!!!).

I had to look it up too. Was initially shocked to see it on this list. Bridgeport is a pretty misleading standard-bearer for the entirely of Fairfield Country haha

OK, yeah I probably should've taken the time to fully explain what constituted the MSA.

Yeah and that's really a nonsense metro area. I think the only reason the government classifies SW CT as a metro is metros are supposed to end at state lines and correspond to counties. It would make more sense to call those rich places part of NYC metro and Bridgeport itself part of the New Haven metro, which is largely a rust belt region.

Of the states that I have visited (41) Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have the worst roads

​@@AdamSmith-gs2dv Well.... The only roads I want are Railroads.

That's a pretty anti urbanist topic for an urbanist focused channel.... I wouldn't hold your breath.

@@thetrainguy1 exactly.

Haha, this is pretty good

also its really only super expensive if you decide to live in back bay or something like theres other places in boston

I agree about Boston but let’s put mountains in quotes. Those are hills my boy. The only mountains in this country are out west

@@MrJahka Granted the mountains out west are larger than those in the East, the White Mountains of New Hampshire are still mountains and they afford us with all the activities that mountains afford anyone, no matter how large or small their size relative to other mountains.

​@@stevens4641It's expensive everywhere expect the historically black neighborhoods. But it's a world class city. It warrants the price to an extent. Would rather live in Boston than NYC as an Australian.

And great sports, and besides good universities the town school systems are great. And good jobs in a multitude of sectors.

Urbanism isnt "political". What he is talking about is to import woke politics into this space so you can foul-up this arena like that gutter philosophy has done in other places.

Political "nutrality" always comes at the cost of others at the very least. It's a pity more people don't understand that.

"You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you." --Leon Trotsky (sometimes bad people say wise things)

Even Switzerland is coming to that realization.

Politically neutral might be something that does not exist, once it affects more than 2 people. I mean, there might be such a thing somewhere, but I certainly haven't found it.

eh philly deserves its crime reputation. their crime stats are bad, not st louis or memphis bad but still pretty bad

As an addition to the last point Boston's vacancy rates for apartments are sub 0.5%. There just straight up isn't remotely enough housing. Part of this is the insane amount of colleges that don't house all of their students in college owned housing (~15 universities if you don't even include Cambridge or other neighboring cities & towns)

Not sure about Philly, but Boston has pretty dim policies when it comes to supply of new housing

As a Pittsburgh guy.. Fuck Philadelphia. Also boston is interesting because it is an organic city and not a boring grid, generally people like organic cities more, with a few exceptions like Kyoto, Sapporo, Beijing, and a few others which are as popular as more similarly sized organic options

@@UserName-ts3sp You won't hear that on Fox "news" though 🙄

As someone who lives near Hennepin and Lyndale, two streets undergoing similar downsizing, I agree. Actually, what we need to do is drag Ray out here to see what the Twin Cities are *really* like. Or maybe not ... do we want him to tell the world how good things are here?

Hey Liz Cademy and John Incha ... I'm strongly considering a move back to MSP after 20+ years away. Do you have any tips/resources that you care to share? (I'm most interested in info about 'hoods like W. 7th and bicycle/transit infrastructure.)

@@uffitze First off if you haven’t been in the twin cities for 20 years you’re in for a shock. It’s changed so much. Bike infrastructure is fantastic and Minneapolis actually has electric bikes everywhere you can rent for the day which is nice. Even the suburbs are investing a lot into bikes and walkways. Public transport is a lot better but still not perfect as for the hoods avoid the Philips as always, and north east. Other than that it’a very street dependent with hoods. Definitely more crime than usual but nowhere near places like Milwaukee or the 90s

I haven’t heard about this yet. I hope they do it and can’t wait to check it out.

@@uffitze I don't know a lot of specifics about West 7th, but I know they're building tons of housing in that neighborhood right now. They're also looking into placing a streetcar (I believe it's going to use the same type of rail as the light rail system) connecting the airport to downtown Saint Paul going right through that neighborhood. Granted that's years away from happening but still cool it's being considered.

Moved to boi two years ago. Leaving soon. Super over rated

@@Edgar-th1zk What’s boi?

It's time to revisit the Brookline annexation debate

@@RacksonRacksonRibss boise

@@Edgar-th1zk Oh lol

I assume they also still play the UT/OU game there around the state fair.

I live in pvd and it's honestly crazy to me that not more of the Boston people have ended up down here might be a good thing considering how much they can drive up the price but it's ridiculous how close it is and for a pretty big city still

And Greater Boston-Cambridge may have only one Ivy League school (Harvard), but there are a few other "second rate" schools in the area: MIT, Tufts, and BU, to name only three. Add top quality medical institutions and the Rte 128 corridor (a.k.a. Silicon Valley East) and it's not surprising that housing prices are sky high.

Providence offers a lot of what Boston has

Also, Boston has no rent control.

@@lizcademy4809 On the whole Phila is about on par school-wise imo. UPenn/Wharton, Swarthmore, Haverford, Villanova, Temple, Drexel, La Salle, St Joe’s, Bryn Mawr. …Or at least certainly don’t ‘heavily’ favor Boston. And PennMedicine can swing with any medical program in Boston. I visit both cities frequently and enjoy both. My girlfriend lives in Cambridge and I definitely feel it’s overrated.

this is up to your local government.

Are you from Taylor?

Must be Waco or Temple/Belton

If walmart moves in a few miles away... nothing really can save you, the town will be gutted of all retail and no longer be walkable.

This!!!!

What personality??? 😅

Cities like New York and San Francisco and Chicago are losing many residents due to the bad policies of Democrats. I live in Florida and talk to them all the time. Please vote for better Democrats than you have in there now.

They could allow immediate upzoning and high density high-rise residential buildings, but I bet a bunch of house-huggers will come out and whine about destroying their "western history"

@@davedoe6445 yup you've got that exactly right.

Knoxville used to be cheap though. My guess is it's probably a supply shock: they didn't have that much housing supply, and a whole bunch of people moved in at once. Tennessee tends to have pretty cheap construction costs though, so I would say a house in Knoxville right now is probably the worst real estate investment you could make, as that 400K property will probably be worth 200K in just a few years.

@@alexanderfretheim5720 Also, we are about to have a major labor contraction. Discovery bought Scripps TV (HGTV, Food Network, etc.) and then bought Warner Brothers. Knoxville ran all of Scripps backend. WB/Discovery is selling their building and the layoffs are on the horizon. Meanwhile, Cineworld, which owns Regal, has filed for bankruptcy (in Texas, 🤷‍♀️) so Regal corporate jobs are probably gone. Their new campus/tower/whatever looks pretty empty. That's going to be a white elephant on the South Knoxville Waterfront. Maybe we can knock it over for another five over. (I'm Team Five Over, BTW. They're often ugly, but they still look better than the surface lots they replace.)

@@HarryLovesRuth Well that explains why the developers aren't expanding the supply. Such foreboding actually increases living costs in the short run, because (especially when most predictable) it removes most of the incentive to expand the housing supply and leads to monopolistic behavior from current owners. Of course, in the long run, prices fall.

Idaho is a mostly under the radar semi-autocratic state, celebrating reactionary politics. Another state I'm not living in. I'll stick to Colorado.

@@GoGreen1977 Do you guys ever get tired of lying?

Thousand Oaks really doesn't & I am sure that what brings it down. That & Thousand Oaks being 100° in the summer with a mall that has an awful parking lot to cross to enter when coming from the REI/Total Wine next to it.

Oxnard - which is along the California coast - has incredible weather. Aside from that, not so great

From Oceanside to Desert? Interesting.

The median and mean incomes do seem to allign with that.

Eh... I'd say you're putting the cart before the horse. It's more true that Boston has gradually lost its industrial sector due to no longer having a blue collar workforce that can afford to live there. In particular, I helped Lockheed Martin shut down their Boston area facility. Philly has plenty of draws for high-tech industry, including close proximity to FOUR Ivy League Schools (UPenn, Cornell, Columbia & Princeton), including both of the Ivy League Schools most associated with hard science and America's greatest business school. Likewise, Boston used to be well-known as a precision manufacturing hub for things like tightly calibrated specialized bearings, sensor systems and telescopes, because of its great tradition of craftsmanship. Now, it's a real estate disaster that threatens national security with how they've let the NIMBY's screw everything up.

there is nowhere in the nation that is like San Jose in terms of "expensive" when it comes to suburbs, except other parts of coastal California and Seattle. San Jose suburbs are so much more expensive than EVERY CITY'S east of California.

@@RobertMJohnson Yes and to me, that makes it the most expensive city of all because living in the city versus the suburbs is a choice, but in SJ, there is no choice. There is basically nothing for you if you're poor unless the government gives you a handout.

@@alexanderfretheim5720 I wouldn’t call Cornell within close proximity to Philly but otherwise agree with you comment. 👍🏻

I don’t think there is an “extra” 10k. Philly is discounted 10k due to all the crime and corruption.

also thank you for vindicating me in my eternal fight with my dad about phish

The ski town politics in Colorado are absolutely insane.

Having spent a couple days using RTD in Denver I found it good downtown and not so good at the edges. The cost was expensive! It seemed that they are sinking all the money into the rail system on 16th Street. The homeless and open pot smoking rivals San Francisco where I live. Felt right at home!

If I remember right, Roaring Fork is the highest ridership "rural" (under 50K population) transit provider in the nation. Well at least it was when I had to research such things in grad school!

​@@dianethulin1700 RTD certainly has major flaws, and I find it disappointing for somewhere the size of the Denver metropolitan area. The high transit fares are a major issue (Denver is one of the most expensive systems in the US) and frequency on some lines/routes is also a problem. I still consider RTD to be a step above RFTA because it is a significantly more complex system that still works well. RFTA is a very simple system, mostly consisting of a few long distance routes between mountain towns. Other than within Aspen, RFTA pretty much only goes through the main downtown corridor of towns with a handful of stops there, the bulk of its service being to park and rides. RFTA is a system designed to have people drive to it and then take it for the last bit of their journey to avoid having to park in a mountain town. RFTA does not adequately serve the (admittedly few and far between) more affordable housing areas in that region. RTD obviously can't do anything about marijuana or homeless people around Denver, and for its flaws, RTD does quite a lot right. It has constructed lots of regional heavy rail in recent years, and has done so affordably. It constructed the A line to Denver International Airport for $52 million per mile, which is *incredibly* cheap for an entirely new heavy rail corridor in the US, especially considering a decent portion of the line near the airport runs on an elevated viaduct. RTD is not very well funded but it still maintains good coverage of the region and runs heavily utilized commuter bus services to nearby cities such as Boulder and Longmont. RTD had plans to build a rail link to Boulder and Longmont, but those plans originally planned on sharing an existing underutilized rail corridor owned by BNSF, and BNSF (in a long pattern of being hostile to passenger services) raised their fees for using the corridor dramatically after the rail initiative passed a general vote, causing the originally estimated $461 million cost to jump to $1.7 billion. That project got put on hold, and lots of people still blame RTD for that rail link not happening, despite the bulk of the blame falling on BNSF. In the meantime, the funding from that tax was used to build out the A, B, G, and N commuter rail lines. The absence of the Northwest rail line has made funding harder to secure in recent years, and some politicians certainly don't help (for instance Richard O’Keefe is currently running for the spot of RTD district director and he has openly stated he intends to gut RTD funding by opposing taxes to fund RTD and by refunding decades of previously paid taxes which have already been used to build out the commuter rail network). Despite all this, RTD has still maintained good service overall and is an effective way to get around the Denver region.

All of these are ski towns or near ski towns. There is a housing crisis in every resort/ski town in Colorado. I live Steamboat Springs (similar population to Glenwood Springs) and I feel the community here is at least working on solutions. In the last few years, we have built 3 new high density apartment buildings all dedicated to and restricted for local workers. Of course these fill up fast and there is still a huge housing shortage. Also a free bus system, with busses going as far as Craig, 40 miles west.

It's funny you say this, I was just talking to a friend earlier today about how (besides the obvious architecture difference) some Pittsburgh neighborhoods really remind me of some German neighborhoods. I spent some time dating a German girl in my early 20's and she absolutely adores Pittsburgh.

It’s too isolated. You’re stuck there

I feel the same way, The rest of america really sucks compared to here, If I leave the Pittsburgh area, I am moving to Asia, or out into the woods as the rest of urban america is worse than what I have here.

Looking to moving to Pittsburgh soon! ^_^

@@ccosephvv That's the biggest problem I have with Pittsburgh is that it's a nice city on its own but it's isolated from other cities and destinations. Unless if you count Cleveland of course.

I live in Boise and visited NYC last month. Stayed in Brooklyn. Had a great time. A friend living in Queens had very similar rent to me.

@@brucemastorovich4478 Queens is now becoming another "it" place. There was a travel magazine, forget which, that declared Ridgewood, Queens among the top 10 "coolest neighborhoods" in the world. IN THE WORLD. I was, like, I've been to Ridgewood. I've been to great rooftop parties there, and the bars are really nifty. But one of the coolest neighborhoods in the world? I'm spoiled for a great deal of choice here in NYC. Now that I find that places like Lakeland, Oxnard, Boise and Stockton have similar rents, there is absolutely no reason to move.

A lot of it has to do with the housing stock in these cities. In Boise and similar places, a much larger percentage of renters are paying for a single-family home with a yard and a garage, or a newer, more spacious apartment with in-unit laundry, parking, and building amenities, whereas in places like Brooklyn, a much larger percentage of the population is living small, old walk-up apartments with no in-unit laundry, amenities, or parking and far fewer are getting access to a private outdoor space for their money.

Brooklyn has so many fantastic neighborhoods.

@@CityNerd My God, yes! I went on a date about two weeks ago. And I just decided that this date should consist of us walking through a neighborhood by the East River I just have never bothered to go to. It's maybe a 20-minute walk from my apartment, all through very pleasant locales. I discovered so many new things! It's so weird to be a tourist in your own city a mere half a mile away. This keeps happening in Brooklyn and NYC constantly, and I've barely scratched the surface (I get into comfortable ruts). I can keep doing this for years!

For economic reasons, the S. Korean government promoted a culture of frugal living and sort of forced low consumption from the eighties into the nineties. This helped put resources into exports and more quickly build their economy. Will be interesting to see if this changes as the children of that time start becoming less influential.

I've been living in S. Korea for the past decade (and coincidentally born and raised in the #1 city on CityNerd's list) and I do quite enjoy the car-free lifestlye. It's definitely part of the reason I stay. I mean you basically have the whole country at your fingertips even without a car. However, Seoul has pretty high housing prices too if you're living anywhere of consequence. Let's not get that twisted. Especially for the family dwellings, they'll definitely get more value living in Oxnard than in Seoul.

Sadly not all S. Korean cities are as car free as their northern cousins, particularly south east. If you are interested in how car industry and lobbying affect development, just a look at these places shows you how corrosive they can be. For instance, only until very recently places like Gwangju got a subway. As for these other cities, crickets, probably not in a decade. However, the one cool thing I found about Korea is that almost 95% there was a path where you'd like it to be when walking, even if it's just a little dirt path across a small alley. Contrast to almost anywhere outside the semi-liveable cities in the U.S. and it's 95% a fence, a wall or a giant st road, highway exactly in the place you don't need them to be to block you and turn a simple 1 minute walk into a 20 minute go-around nightmare. Can't blame people for choosing more walking oriented cities.

Yup, that really seems like the solution. No shortage of young people in the world that will exchange free housing and a ski pass for some labor! Densification and affordable dorm style housing only spurs the economy forward!

Canmore ab is getting more like whistler too

@@NSS1022 If you are young and can ski that is. I don't do either...

Park city, Utah has a worker/affordability problem big time. But Heber, Utah that’s on your list it’s fairly close to more affordablish neighborhood, well at least 20ish minutes from cheaper places

Yeah, I'd like further analysis on mountain towns as well. Growing up so close to the mountains, I'm not sure I could live in a place without them!

Hi neighbor. I’m over the heat. But I do love how much is available in LA. One community is as interesting as the next. We have mountains, we have oceans, we have concrete. Love all the diversity and all the great food that comes with it.

Living here without a car and thinking I should do something similar lol

Oxnard born and raised too, brotha. I live overseas now and last time I was back, I was shocked at how much things costed. I couldn't really understand how people afforded it. Still beautiful as ever, though.

Surprised to see Heber on the list. I used to live in SLC and back in the 1980s Heber was just a sleepy farm town in the middle of nowhere.

It’s pretty close to Park City, and must be a lot less expensive comparatively. I assume it serves as housing for a lot of the workers there.

@@kmayer303 eh, not really. both are very expensive, at least Park City has... Well, a city. Salt Lake County is much more affordable for people on a service worker salary, though that's increasingly out of reach.

definitely the reason why IE is on this list. On the surface it's absolutely insane that the IE would be so expensive relative to the amenities it provides; like, who chooses to live there given the prices? The answer is people who were recently priced out of LA but still need to or want to be close enough to family and friends who are still in LA.

but isn't that his point here, that it's fictional to think that living in the Inland Empire means you have reasonable and practical access to LA. you might as well look somewhere cheaper and accept that you're only gonna visit LA once or twice a year.

@@perfectallycromulent yeah, I mean I'd concede it might not be completely logical on the part of many people. But let's face it, picking up and moving to another part of the country can be scary for people. And on the surface, seeing a home or apartment "just" 50 miles away from the city where you were probably paying almost double, and you could fight through the annoying commute if needed in a pinch to see family, might seem initially appealing to people. Basically, you might be right, but the other point of this video is that clearly people don't behave like logical economic actors and that the efficient market hypothesis is, at the very least, flawed.

If you have a family emergency you will drop everything. I live ~60 mi from my aging parents in socal for this reason. It has never been more than 2 hours drive for me.

Hey at least you have the orange blossom festival, cheers form San Diego.

Someone had to say it. And thanks so much!

Was the housing provided by her company or did she pay rent? Pick one.

​@@Clandestinemonkey owened and subusizied by the resort obvously

Boston almost making this list, and being the 2nd worst in terms of affordability for the minimum wage (see CityNerd's "12 Cities..." recent vid), really hurts. Boston also has subway that is getting worse and slower each year, which is also making traffic worse, and it's further increasing the price as it limits how far you can live away from your job without spending 2 hours on a train or car each way. I don't really have much for redeeming Boston qualities either. Extremely segregated, night life is closed at midnight, feels like the city caters to big business and colleges and not the average citizen. Went to a pizza festival there this past summer, it was fenced into a tiny area downtown and was so crowded it was absolutely miserable inside that tiny fenced area. The city just doesn't have enough space or housing, the zoning is nonsensical, and it's not worth even half the price in my opinion

Also, include Des Moines, IA; being that Des Moines is to the south of Minneapolis, Des Moines also received inspiration to create their own skywalks too. Skywalks are so underrated.

Pedway systems is the term you are looking for. Chicago has one. Toronto and Montreal have extensive ones. Etc.

And Des Moines. One can live and walk all over the downtown without going outside.

@@tylerkochman1007 Pedway naming sounds gross. Skywalk being in the second level makes more sense and sounds more modern. Just because Chicago has some, doesn't mean it has an extensive network.

@@Electrodexify not all such systems are exclusively elevated though. Toronto and Montreal’s are nearly entirely underground

When did you rent an 1800 2 bed right next to Fenway? Because rents have increased a ton over the past 5 or 10 years. The 2-bed I live in costs more than that, and is several miles outside the city center (though still on one of the subway lines). I think all of the Zillow numbers are based on the whole metro area not just the center city.

@@Dogod2 I'm with you, a studio for less than 1500 was rare 2016 when I was in college in the area

When you look at the sea of red counties the thing to keep in mind that AREA doesn't represent population. The downside is that sea of low-population "red states" still get TWO US Senators. THAT'S the problem. The tail wags the dog.

Why do people still think it's only the Republicans that do it? Look at the Illinois house map, they drew a thin district that slices through the middle of the state to connect Metro East, Springfield, and Chicago just so they could isolate the red rural vote. Same goes for the old District 5 in Florida, another district horribly gerrymandered to benefit the Democrats by connecting Jacksonville and Tallahassee with a thin blue district, it even has pin wheels at the ends!