
Find a new city - mantesso
http://austinkleon.com/2016/08/03/find-a-new-city/
======
rpazyaquian
This jumped out at me:

> “I’m trans, so I need to live somewhere progressive so I feel safe day-to-
> day and don’t feel like I’m going to get beat up for using the wrong
> restroom.”

This is a pretty damn good reason to live somewhere like Seattle or Boston,
and a pretty damn good reason not to live somewhere like (edit:) North
Carolina or Tennessee or Georgia. The reality is that many of us are limited
by not wanting to live in a city or state that basically wants us dead. The
fact that tech companies tend to be clustered around progressive, blue areas
is a major advantage.

It's easy to say "just move to the middle of nowhere!" if you're privileged
enough to not worry about these things. But some of us kind of want to keep
our asses safe and, honestly, alive.

~~~
nostromo
Have you actually spent time in Raleigh or Atlanta? The idea that trans people
are getting murdered in the street is just not correct.

I'm gay and I've spent a lot of fun nights in Boise, Idaho because a gay
friend of mine lives there with her wife. We always have a blast. She has a
great career in Boise and I don't think she's experienced more homophobia
there than when she lived in New York City. (I know she had at least one bad
experience in NYC as she was cat-called once right before I met her and her
then girlfriend.)

I think a lot of coastal elites have no idea what they're talking about when
they speak about the extreme danger of being different in middle-America.

~~~
rpazyaquian
The difference is that North Carolina has HB2 and Massachusetts does not.
Cities are great and all, but don't forget that state and federal laws take
precedent over city ordinances.

~~~
dgacmu
Building on this, see, for example: [http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-
maps/non_discrimination_laws](http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-
maps/non_discrimination_laws)

(Note the states with little warning triangles, indicating that the state has
passed legislation that _prevents_ cities or other municipalities from
enacting their own non-discrimination rules.)

------
SandersAK
Many New York artists talk about NYC as if it was cheap but it is simply not
true. There is no other place in the US that concentrates so many different
types of people. Patti Smith, David Byrne etc all benefitted from there being
billionaires, millionaires, celebrities, thespians, high profile doctors,
lawyers, and more than a century of civic dedication to arts and culture.
There is a shared communal love and support for creative things in NY. Like
all cities that grow, gentrification happens. But if you think the LES or east
village was cheap in the 80s it's because you were white and middle class.
When this author speaks he's talking to white middle class liberal arts types
(like me!) and bemoaning the fact that getting direct access to world class
culture isn't "cheap anymore" when the reality is if you want that in NY now
you move to crown heights. And there will be some myopic look back in 25 years
saying the same shit about that place too.

Ask Patti Smith what happened to the Puerto Ricans who lived there before her.
Was it too cheap for them?

~~~
jrochkind1
I think you make a good point that 'cheap' is very relative to your means and
access, and the LES may not have been cheap for _everyone_ even in the 80s.
Definitely important to remember.

But I'm inclined to believe Smith that it was cheap for her and people like
her in a way present-day NYC isn't, for similar people today. I guess we could
try to look up rent statistics over time etc.

> if you want that in NY now you move to crown heights.

Pretty sure Crown Heights ain't affordable anymore either. (idle googling
suggests median Crown Heights studio apartment price today is $2000. Yeah.
"Studio" means "one room (usually very small) apartment" in U.S. rental
listings, not something cool like 'giant warehouse an artist can make into an
art studio', heh.)

Maybe somewhere I haven't heard of (cause I don't live in NYC) in Queens or
the Bronx? I don't know if you'd have the same access to culture and money
living in some far-off non-subway-served part of the Bronx though.

I think Manhattan in the 80s really was kind of unusual in being cheap _and_
still a place with lots of money floating around and cultural institutions.
This is unusual. It was sort of a mid-point on the re-organization of American
urban geography, with NYC being a special case as usual as the biggest city in
the U.S.

~~~
dionidium
_> idle googling suggests median Crown Heights studio apartment price today is
$2000._

It's not quite _that_ bad. Here are some actual listings for one-bedrooms in
Crown Heights that rent between $1500-1700:

[https://www.padmapper.com/listings/17067721.-1-bedroom-1-bat...](https://www.padmapper.com/listings/17067721.-1-bedroom-1-bathroom-
apartment-at-240-schenectady-avenue-new-york-ny-11213)

[https://www.padmapper.com/listings/17206256.-1-bedroom-1-bat...](https://www.padmapper.com/listings/17206256.-1-bedroom-1-bathroom-
apartment-at-49-herkimer-st-new-york-ny-11216)

[https://www.padmapper.com/listings/17246561.-1-bedroom-1-bat...](https://www.padmapper.com/listings/17246561.-1-bedroom-1-bathroom-
apartment-at-256-hancock-st-new-york-ny-11216)

But everything is relative. Those apartments would rent for around $700-800 in
my city.

~~~
anamoulous
I don't think it's worth splitting hairs on Crown Heights real estate prices
being exorbitant. They are. I moved here two years ago right when the 2nd wave
of gentrifiers flooded the area. It's stark.

You might be able to get a 1500-1700 if you _compete_ for one because
landlords are beginning to mobilize crappy housing stock (like these
apartments).

~~~
dionidium
Plus, let's not forget that $1500 is still _a lot of money_ to most people.

~~~
compiler-guy
Especially if you are working as a server in a small restaurant or the floor
of a small music shop, which is how starving artists survive while trying to
build a career.

All the focus on absolute cost misses the income side of the equation, which
hasn't kept up with the cost side.

------
ryandrake
I used to live in Nowhere, Florida, and would move back in a heartbeat, but
from an employment standpoint it became too risky. Most places outside of The
Usual Tech Hubs are one-horse towns when it comes to tech employment, major
opportunity risk.

If you're a software engineer and live in the Bay Area and suddenly lose your
job, depending on the economy you're probably in for a 1-6 month job search at
local companies where you can show up for an interview at any moment's notice.
If you're a software engineer and live in flyover country and suddenly lose
your job, you better plan on moving somewhere else. Interviewing involves 2-5
hour plane trips all over the country, and then when you finally find
something, you need to negotiate relocation costs or fork over $5-10K to move.
The prospect of repeating that cycle is pretty unpleasant.

So we put up with 2 hour commutes, tiny homes, and sky-high cost of living,
because that's where the companies are.

~~~
bradleyjg
> If you're a software engineer

I don't think the article is aimed at you or me. It's aimed at young people
that want to be artists, musicians, writers, and so on. They don't need to be
near tech hubs. He argues it is better for them to create their own new
bohemian art communities than fight the high cost of living in NYC and SF.

That said, I think there's a case to be made for e.g. the Bronx that he
ignores in favor of something like Poughkeepsie.

~~~
alexhutcheson
> That said, I think there's a case to be made for e.g. the Bronx that he
> ignores in favor of something like Poughkeepsie.

Housing isn't the only cost that drives people out of NYC. For many, if not
most, it's actually the school systems that make people move.

Yes, you can get an excellent education in NYC public schools, but it requires
you to work the system (applications at every step of the way), and there is
considerable risk of not getting into a great school. Even assuming your child
does get into one of the great high schools, they might have a ridiculous
commute every day getting to/from work.

This explains why when you cross the city line from the Bronx into Westchester
County, home prices shoot up. Anywhere with good schools within a reasonable
commute of NYC is going to cost you $$$$.

That's why I'd be fairly pessimistic about the case for the Bronx - it might
be a pretty solid option for unattached twentysomethings, but the cost of
living for a typical middle-aged engineer is going to be no cheaper than it
would be for a company in Manhattan (although they may have an easier commute
to the Bronx).

~~~
bradleyjg
> it might be a pretty solid option for unattached twentysomethings, but the
> cost of living for a typical middle-aged engineer

Again, I think the article is aimed at twenty-something would-be artists,
writers, musicians and so on. Not middle-aged engineers (like me).

I get that it was posted on hacker news and people are going to try to apply
it to their own lives, but in this case it really doesn't translate all that
well.

------
abetusk
For those looking for cheap cities to live, I've found Zillow's data [1] on
mortgage price to income ratio data [2] interesting.

Some choice datapoints:

    
    
        San Francisco, CA 9.1817795575535
        Boston, MA        4.9264239374417
        New York, NY      5.5458400782590
        Detroit, MI       2.22905530728586
        St. Louis, MO     2.4588523706753
    

I think the national average is around 3.1 and around 3.0 is considered
"healthy" (your mortgage costs about 3x your yearly income).

[1]
[http://www.zillow.com/research/data/](http://www.zillow.com/research/data/)

[2]
[http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/Affordability_...](http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/Affordability_Wide_2016Q1_Public.csv)

~~~
JoshTriplett
Interesting to see how much Portland spiked in the last decade, from ~3 to
>5\. I wonder how much of the surrounding area that includes? I've seen
housing prices skyrocket in Portland, but much less so in surrounding areas.
(They've still increased, but I'd hypothesize that they haven't increased
nearly as much as within Portland. I'd love to see separated data to check
that hypothesis, though.)

~~~
abetusk
It looks like they're using a metro region. If you take a look at their
"county crosswalk" [1] data that might give more information about it. For
example NYC is "MetroRegionID_Zillow" 394913 that has a corresponding
"RegionID" in the price to income dataset.

[1]
[http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/CountyCrossWal...](http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/CountyCrossWalk_Zillow.csv)

------
anateus
Tech is here because the money for tech is here. It started with the US Gov't
putting money into military bases and later Lockheed and other mil
contractors. During and after WWII tax regulations changed in such a way that
VC become more and more profitable, and the industry grew alongside the talent
pool that was being drawn in.

This created a feedback loop of talent and money. But the money is the primary
driver here.

It's why if you're an entertainer you go to LA (often after NYC), or go to NYC
for finance.

Going somewhere cheap and being in a garage in a vacuum does nothing for you
if the climate that allows something like the Homebrew Computer Club (or an
underground music club, etc.) to exist isn't there in place _already_. As much
as it has done, the internet hasn't wholly replaced that aspect of things yet.

~~~
uola
I think you're kind of right, but I feel the comparison with LA/NYC is
slightly weird. SV is the leader in the consumer web space (and some other
areas). If you're into hardware, games or electronic music the choice of SV is
far less obvious. It could/would make sense to go to China, Germany or Sweden
instead.

One problem is that everyone is so busy to copy SV that they fail to invent
their own scene. Probably a result of having to justify yourself to investors.
But it really seem like the window in which subcultures can flourish has
become much smaller.

------
mkolodny
I love the sentiment. Silicon Valley and NYC became what they are because of
people hacking on things in garages / shitty apartments. Now those shitty
apartments cost $2,000/month. The equivalent of those places, where things
like Apple started, isn't Silicon Valley and NYC. It's places like Detroit. Or
wherever people doing cool things decide to move and congregate.

Then again, it is still possible to live cheaply in NYC. My friend lives in
Bed Stuy, Brooklyn for $450/month. And there's value in living in or near
where the community is already strong. You just have to move out a bit further
and live a bit grungier.

~~~
Apocryphon
Detroit is an actual city with deep history. It may be in decline, but it
still seems like to have more going on, or at least the potential to have more
going on, than small towns. There's likely a lot of other second- or even
third-tier cities that are overlooked, but are still more interesting to live
in than a town in "Northeast Ohio."

Austin, Portland, Boulder are becoming the new NY/SF because of the process of
saturation. We just need to find the next Austins and Portlands.

~~~
rmason
Though primarily my Detroit friends are entrepreneurs or engineers working for
them I've noticed that there has been a wholesale movement of artists to the
city.

Though in the last five years it's gotten kind of pricey in the downtown area
I keep discovering clusters of artists out in the neighborhoods in my travels
in the city.

[https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/new-york-i-love-you-
but-i...](https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/new-york-i-love-you-but-its-time-
to-move-to-detroit)

Buildings are really cheap though you've got to restore them yourself. Tax
valuations though are set at pre-recession values. But if you get a lawyer
they can be lowered sometimes up to 75%.

I'm starting to see others following the clusters of artists and slowly these
neighborhoods are in the beginning stages of gentrification.

~~~
danvasquez29
downtown Detroit is in a weird state right now where it's bounced back enough
and gotten enough hype that it's gentrifying, but the development efforts
haven't quite finished fast enough to catch up to demand.

My rent from 2013-2015 went up 35% and I eventually moved to a suburb. I tried
to buy a place and even when I convinced myself to overpay would be beat out
by a better all-cash offer within 24 hours of a place going on sale. It's nuts
here right now.

3 years ago it was a great place to move in cheapish and be around a
burgeoning scene, right now it's expensive as hell, and in 2 years will
probably be back to being able to support that student/new grad/bootstrapping
entrepreneur scene. We need more housing to come online, and it's being built,
just not done yet.

------
bufordsharkley
This idea that cities reach a point of maximum growth, become unaffordable,
and should be abandoned by potential newcomers: this is currently true, but
it's a broken system, and it's time we look at ways we can improve it.

When a city becomes unaffordable, when rents skyrocket-- those expenses are
someone else's windfalls. When people expect the value of real estate to rise
and rise indefinitely-- those windfalls are someone else's expenses.

I've come to believe that so much of these structural problems are essentially
reducible to issues of land-use (property/land taxes), but there is so little
focus at present on reforming this.

~~~
forgotuser
I think Community Land Trusts are a great example of the sort of thing people
should be looking into as an alternative to the current model. Don't see
people talking about them much.

The basic idea is that a nonprofit purchases the land in a community and holds
it in perpetuity. It _rents_ the land long-term to residents (and for the most
part, they're required to be residents), instead of selling it. It's still
possible for residents to purchase homes- they just won't own the land they're
sitting on top of. That way, you avoid speculation and skyrocketing land
prices. Many CLTs also designate some proportion of the land as "low-income",
and set accordingly lower rents for those residents.

~~~
bufordsharkley
I've wanted to look more into CLTs, but haven't yet--

What's stopping CLTs from existing today? Is it merely the novelty and
relative complication of the CLT? Or is there policy that makes them
impractical?

~~~
forgotuser
They do exist! There are, I believe, currently a few hundred in the US.
They're just spreading very, very slowly. I imagine the main issue is a
combination of lack of public awareness + the difficulty of acquiring land +
lack of public policy to accommodate the weird structure.

~~~
bufordsharkley
Ah, interesting. I'm familiar with some of the historical land trusts
(Fairhope, Arden), but not the contemporary ones... I really need to learn
more.

I suppose they're mainly helpful for _before_ when a housing market reaches
the breaking point. That is, before the land is unaffordable.

Are people trying CLTs in Detroit? It seems a natural place to experiment with
it.

------
startupdiscuss
This view ignores the benefits of the large cities.

The rents are high for a reason. You want to go there. And not just for the
cultural opportunities. Most people want good jobs.

You can't have everyone starting startups, or working remotely.

To put it another way, almost everything important and interesting you do will
require other people.

~~~
RussianCow
> You can't have everyone starting startups, or working remotely.

Not everyone, but let's face it, a HUGE number of existing in-office jobs
could be fairly easily made remote, which would cut down on the appeal of
large cities. I think if even 10% of all currently in-office jobs became
remote, you would see a significant movement away from the big cities.

~~~
rpazyaquian
Definitively this. Most in-office jobs involve using a computer a lot for data
crunching or whatever, or it requires a lot of meetings that you can have just
as well over Skype or Google Hangouts. Even meeting with clients can be done
remotely, and there are technical solutions for transferring and handing off
documentation and the like.

The only things that absolutely _require_ on-site are things that deal
explicitly with the site itself: construction, custodial services and
maintenance, hosting parties 'n shit, whatever. The average 9-to-5 pencil
pusher job, on the other hand, has no reason not to be remote.

I firmly believe that the modern concept of the "office" will change
drastically enough in the coming years that an office will no longer be a
physical place, but a state of being - "in the office" now becomes "in
job/work mode". We as employees just need to push for this change, now that
commutes are getting dumber and dumber. In places like Boston, anyway.

------
fowkswe
For people looking for that 70s NYC like experience, with proximity to NYC, I
HIGHLY suggest checking out the Albany / Troy area.

Both are gritty little cities with a bunch of interesting people living there
doing interesting shit, all for next to nothing. You can rent a townhouse for
under a thousand / month. Shit, you can BUY a gorgeous 19th century townhouse
for under a 100k - the same thing that would be 3 million in the Brooklyn
where Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe lived.

I'm not going to go on about how much there is to offer there, because I could
do that for paragraphs. You should just go check it out for yourself.

~~~
beamatronic
Isn't Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute around there?

~~~
SegFaultx64
Yep, there is also a pretty decent tech scene driven by a couple of local
successes (mostly RPI affiliated):

Apprenda Commerce Hub Vicarious Visions etc...

------
brandur
I really enjoyed this article. I think that if there's one thing that's going
to gut the creativity and character of our cities it's going to be hugely
increasing rents and housing prices that we're seeing in almost all major
urban centers.

> Young folks: Forget New York City. Forget San Francisco. Forget Austin,
> Texas. Stay out of debt, live somewhere cheap, make something happen

> This is pretty much what I was trying to say a few days ago, when I posted a
> series of Tweets that I thought were fairly uncontroversial, not to mention
> unoriginal:

A little off topic, but it's sort of a sign of the state of Twitter today that
an unoffensive, positive, and fairly thoughtful tweet like this one is enough
to set off the Twitter hate machine (I think that's what he's implying
happened here). Many users seem to be put in a concerted effort to read other
people's comments as uncharitably as they possibly can.

~~~
Semiapies
Well, in the first place, contrast the staccato proclamation of the tweet with
the article leading up to that tweet. Twitter is a terrible way to try to
communicate anything that needs explanation.

In the second place, Austin and especially SF do have locals with well-known
and even organized hostility towards newcomers.

------
alaskamiller
Everywhere is just a buncha kids trying to make it, until they do, then others
want in, so they get there, copy everything, until they crowd others out,
repeat the process.

Find a new game server.

------
st3v3r
While cost of rent is lower in nowheresville, the network effects are much,
much lower too. There is definitely a benefit to living somewhere that has a
thriving community around whatever it is you're doing (software, tech, art,
etc). Having only a small community runs the risk of stagnation.

------
sawthat
This is a good article, in particular the first point that the "super star"
cities were affordable places to live from the late 60s through the early 90s
if you didn't mind a pretty gritty situation. However, I don't think you can
recreate that situation easily in an affordable rust belt city.

The reason those cities were affordable at that time was white flight. The
wealthy and middle class white population was moving to the suburbs, causing
demand for housing to fall dramatically reducing costs (as well as the tax
base, causing decay, increasing white flight). However the businesses that
drove those cities did not leave. San Francisco was still a financial hub on
the west cost. New York was still the center of finance and business for the
entire country. So you had a place were creative people could gather and live
affordably as well as an economy that produced enough excess to support the
artists and musicians. (a struggling rust belt city doesn't have that many
coffee shops and no local money to buy art and pay cover charges and clubs)

I guess what I'm saying is that those times are gone. There are cities where
artists artists "are creating their own scene". New Orleans springs to mind,
but those cities are getting expensive fast because there just isn't the huge
excess of housing there was during white flight.

------
examancer
Come to Omaha! Lots of talk about how you can't find jobs or culture in small
places, and talk of how the big cities are expensive for a reason. That may be
true if you're trying to be an actor, but Omaha has a thriving tech scene,
extremely low unemployment, and one of the lowest costs of living of any major
metro area. It's safe, LGBT friendly, family friendly, great schools, and the
people are nice and laid back.

There is a sweet spot between too big and expensive and too small and
isolated. I have lived in NYC and there is nothing I'm missing in Omaha.
Although the scale is obviously much different everything I want is within
reach, and usually takes a lot less time to get to. Public transportation
sucks, but it really is a great city otherwise and has some things NYC doesn't
(better beers, and steaks that are better and actually affordable).

There are others within this sweet spot. Minneapolis, the less expensive bits
of Denver, Kansas City, and others I am less familiar with. Omaha is pretty
much the cheapest of the cities I consider acceptable, but I encourage all of
you to find your sweet spot city if you want to live well or cheap.

------
Bjorkbat
This really resonates with my choice to live in Albuquerque, NM.

Maybe San Francisco, New York, Austin, etc, are better, but (almost)
everything those cities have we have too, just in fewer quantities, or more
grounded, or both.

I would argue we have a certain cultural richness not found in cities
dominated by exposed brick and a 1920s rough aesthetic complemented by modern
accessories.

For starters, the state is home to 20+ separate nations that predate the
United States.

~~~
petropolisful
I've been considering a move from PDX to ABQ this year, for reasons of
geography and social culture; however the job market here has completely
spoiled me and I haven't followed up on many job leads over there. It does not
seem to be exactly what one could remotely consider a tech hub, which is
actually part of the draw for me, honestly.

------
Mz
He has a decent point. He is, perhaps, not saying it very well. It generally
doesn't work to use imperatives, like "Find a new city." His point might go
over better if it were framed more like 'Artistic youth need a new option."

I totally get where he is coming from when he says you just need to move to
someplace cheap. I am a big fan of doing what is within my means, regardless
of whatever is going on in the world. But you have to be careful with how you
frame such thoughts. Framing in a way that can be read as "It is your fault
your life sucks" instead of "It sucks that places like New York and San
Francisco aren't what they were a few decades ago. But maybe the piece within
your hands is picking a new place to live that meets your needs better."

------
arbuge
I agree with the sentiment of that tweet mentioned in the article, except that
Austin isn't really comparable to NYC or SF in terms of living expenses.
Perhaps more expensive than the average American city these days, but
definitely not in the stratosphere like those other two.

------
mathattack
There's a difference between attracting artists, and attracting engineers.
Both thrive in communities surrounded by like minded people. The difference is
entry level artists can't live in high priced cities, so they _must_ find new
habitats. Otherwise art goes back to a hobby for the idle rich. Engineers can
get by (if not save a ton) on entry level jobs in places like Silicon Valley
or SF. It just takes a willingness to have roommates.

I left Manhattan because you had to be in a hedge fund to have a good life.
For all the talk of Silicon Valley being expensive, you don't need to add
private school costs to a $6K rent.

~~~
wwwdonohue
_I left Manhattan because you had to be in a hedge fund to have a good life.
For all the talk of Silicon Valley being expensive, you don 't need to add
private school costs to a $6K rent._

Manhattan vs. Silicon Valley isn't exactly a fair comparison.

~~~
mathattack
My point is that engineers aren't priced out of Silicon Valley like artists
are of New York City.

------
wrsh07
I definitely understand the need for a progressive city -- I grew up in the
midwest in a place that was decidedly not.

But Paul Graham gave a talk about how Pittsburgh could be the next startup
city [1]. And price factors in for both artists and entrepreneurs.

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/pgh.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/pgh.html)

~~~
st3v3r
If that's true, then why isn't PG holding Y Combinators in those other cities?
I mean, he's the one running it; he should (relatively) easily be able to set
one up wherever he wants.

~~~
mooreds
Techstars (am I even allowed to post about them here ;) ) has franchised to
different cities:
[http://www.techstars.com/programs/](http://www.techstars.com/programs/)

------
drops
Depends on the field and type of work.

If you work from home then sure, the location doesn't matter much. But for
more traditional occupations (pretty much anything other than creative work or
location-independent business), big cities are better because they offer more
opportunities and often higher paying jobs.

------
orasis
I used to live in Fargo, North Dakota, and might suggest that as an affordable
town that embraces weirdos.

------
bsparker
Cleveland is a great city

~~~
SegFaultx64
Cleveland is fine if you are reasonably well off. Like many run down urban
areas it is currently going through a substantial revival (driven mostly by
"hipsters" opening vegan restraunts and the like.)

I can only imagine it would be miserable to be truly poor in Cleveland,
especially as it continues to gentrify.

