The Venn Diagram of Sunny Weather, Urbanism, and Affordability
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- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2024
- In consulting, it's often said, when working on scope, schedule and budget with a client: "Good, fast, and cheap: pick two." I think about good weather, good urbanism, and reasonably housing prices the same way -- it's very hard, maybe impossible, to get all three.
Thanks again to Dwellsy for providing data for the analysis I did in this video. I received no promotional consideration for mentioning them in the video or here in the description, but the site is worth checking out if you're apartment hunting! Check it out at dwellsy.com/
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Previous CityNerd Videos Referenced:
Affordable Urbanism by Zip Code: • 10 Affordable Zip Code...
Small City Urbanism You Can Afford: • Is "Small City Urbanis...
Walkable Cities You Can Afford: • 10 Walkable US Cities ...
The 10 Most Undervalued US Cities: • Affordable Cities: 10 ...
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Resources:
FiveThirtyEight's article on Pareton-optimal single-game NBA stat lines: fivethirtyeigh...
"Urbanism Score" ratings pulled from Walk Score: www.walkscore....
Weather data from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.o...
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Images
Oakland Fox Theater By George Kelly - Flickr: Fox Oakland before Sonic Youth gig, CC BY 2.0, commons.wikime...
Thumbnail: By Garrett from Salt Lake City - Salt Lake City, August 2012, CC BY 2.0, commons.wikime...
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CityNerd background: Caipirinha in Hawaii by Carmen María and Edu Espinal (RUclips music library)
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![Would You Fall for It? [ST08]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n94-_yE4IeU/mqdefault.jpg)
Loving unbearable heat has become a reoccuring issue with this Mr Nerd guy I think he's paid by Big Sun
He lived in Portland, sunny is high on the priority list
To be fair, consciously moving to an artificially irrigated desert city like Vegas or Phoenix is basically a climate war crime. So some cultural deemphasizing of "sunny weather" should probably happen in urbanist circles. There's a reason why pre-artificial water supply and air conditioning no one wanted to live in those places and everyone was completely fine with Chicago and Pittsburg weather.
We’ll he specifically constrained himself to places less than 90° highs and that matched San Diego most of the year. So he’s clearly not just choosing sunny at the exclusion of mild temperatures.
I bet he endorses solar power too
@@TohaBgood2this needs to be understood by more people and is very much not. The Sunbelt (with all it's "low taxes" and "growth") will rather quickly become a no go zone by 2050.
I think a better measure for weather would have been the number of months where the weather isn't unbearable (what is unbearable weather of course differs from person to person, but extreme heat and extreme cold I think would qualify).
Is there any city in the US (excluding Alaska) which has unbearable cold?
@@Kjeleman If unbearable means you can't sleep outside without freezing to death then yes, there are hundreds.
Give any cities in North or South Dakota, or Montana a try. Cold, but also major windchill. @@Kjeleman
@@Kjeleman Ever hear of the Great Lakes region? New England? Northern Great Plains? Half of the country's area has unbearable cold.
@@KjelemanIdk, I'm in the continental US but up north. It gets cold enough my eyes freeze shut when I'm trying to walk outside. You have to squeeze them really hard to melt the ice and get your eyes open. Last winter wasn't too bad for temperatures but we still had a cold spell where Celsius and Fahrenheit were nearly the same: -34C and -37F iirc.
As someone who lived in the Tampa Bay Area most of my life up til ‘22, it’s nice to see Tampa, St Pete and Sarasota mentioned in a mostly positive light, but for people searching for “San Diego” weather you’re much more likely to live through Wet-Bulb weather
Yeah, I was gonna say that despite what the Fahrenheit gauge says about any cities in Florida, it's the humidity that will absolutely brutalize you. An 85 in 50% humidity and an 85 in 98% humidity might as well be the difference between earth and the surface of the sun
@@DuncanAdkins Yeeeep. Which is why in FL the "temperature" isn't what you look at, it's the *heat index,* which is usually 15-20 degrees higher than the temperature would indicate.
St. Pete is far and away better than Tampa, especially in terms of heat. The cross peninsula breezes are amazing throughout the area while inland Tampa is just a stifling heck hole of concrete and stale air. Of course, this all changes in Tampa by wealth. Get rich and you get a breeze, get poor and you're gonna die.
@@JoeNunyabidness That's cause the rich parts of town have *trees.* I was soft-evicted (my landlord was already parading future residents through my home before even sending me the renewal notice, which was an extra $700 a month, so I moved back in with my mother) from Tampa back in June and moved back to St. Pete. The place I left? Had trees. St. Pete? No trees. No amount of crossbreeze in St. Pete makes up for the fact that the entire place has been almost completely paved over, save for the strip that's downtown. Even checking the weather maps show's Tampa as anywhere from 5-8 degrees cooler than St. Pete is.
I'm all about wet bulb, can't be worse than Miami in July
I must be blessed by the strange preference of enjoying bad weather. Makes the decision of where to live a lot easier.
Living in Los Angeles, I love the rain and think our "perfect weather" is overblown. I haven't lived in a place where it's inconveniently awful (like torrential rain or snow every year), but I would love to live in a place that's cooler and has more weather variety. The bigger issue for me is weather on a short term basis, like hot and humid one day and cold and dry the same week, I can deal with consistency.
Not so much anymore everyone’s weather sucks at some point
@@blores95 agreed. I lived in Oakland CA and I missed thunderstorms. Nice to have them being in CT now
I lived in Phoenix 35 years so I guess I got enough sun. I don't mind cloudy days at all.
^ same
I love it when CityNerd gets geeky and technical and pulls out interesting, non-intuitive results from some complicated analysis. Go, you Geek!
Living up to his name.
Times like these I'm grateful to be a person who loves cold weather and hates the heat. There must be at least five of us, right?
Dozens of us! DOZENS!
I am the exact same, give me avg temps below 10C
I'm English and if I can see the sky for more than half the year, I don't like it.
Agree, I could never live in a place with oppressive, suffocating humidity, like Florida
@@JohnFromAccountingwell all the English people who do like to see the sky now live in Spain, no?
“There are only two things I can't stand in this world: People who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch.” Nigel Powers
😂
Such a good line
That comment made me do a spit take with my tea. He's right though they're a handful. You learn to love it when you live there.
Couldn't agree more.
"Dutch Hater!" Goldmember
Most engaging Pareto efficiency lecture I’ve ever seen 😄
As a committed New Yorker, I continue to remain baffled at how it is a broadly-accepted, apparently self-evident truth that having abundant sunny weather is just obviously desirable. I have lived in such places, and find the consistent sunny warmth to be repetitive, bland, and irritating. A variation of weather throughout the year, including overcast, rainy, cold and not-generally-sunny climate provides for different experiences of the outdoors, opportunity for different sartorial options, and provides a natural rhythm to the passage of the year. Keep me out of those perpetually sunny places!
im puertorrican and the hot summer weather is quite exhausting, especially when you work from home and have no air conditioner. Can't wait till November when it gets very nice, especially in the mountains.
Cope
Preach! I was born in NYC but now live in San Antonio, and this relentless sunny, 100°+ weather is destroying my soul. I need to get back to the Northeast/Mid Atlantic ASAP!
Same but for original York.
I envy California weather not because of the sunny heat but because I live in alabama and from May to September it is so suffocatingly hot and humid I never want to leave my apartment even to walk to the grocery store
I feel like the weather being too cold is better for walking/biking than weather being too hot. If its cold, you can always bundle up, get snow tires, whatever. If its too hot, you gotta just bring lots of water and hope you don't die of heat stroke. Maybe this is my northern new england showing, but extreme cold seems a lot safer than extreme hot.
It does, trust me , saying I love walking is an understatement , but not when it’s 125 f outside with the Arabian desert’s sun directly above your head
It's more functional to be too cold but definitely not more comfortable imo. Cold is draining for many people
I prefer being hot. You go around Atlanta in the summer and people are outside everywhere. Go out in the winter and outside is dead. No people sitting at the park, cafes, or anywhere.
Heat kills more Americans in an average year than any other extreme weather.
Lol I love the cold too. I’ve lived in New Hampshire! Maybe northern New England messes with our internal thermostats. When I go to Phoenix and people are sitting outdoors at a restaurant in 110 degree weather, I don’t know how I’m the same species as them. (Edit for spelling)
I lived without a car in ABQ for 2 years. Cycling there is actually pretty nice compared to other placed I have lived due to all the protected and dedicated bike paths. Transit was reliable enough that if I needed it in a pinch it worked. That said, this only applied east of the Rio Grande. On the West side it is much tougher to get around on a bike safely. Overall, I enjoyed my time there a lot more than I expected.
It’s so wild that it’s like two different cities. I live about a mile west of the Rio Grande and I’m completely car free. Whenever I need to do anything I always travel East even if west would be closer and more convenient. Heading west is almost suicidal by bike. The speed limits are too fast, dedicated bike paths are almost non existent and don’t get me started on the raised trucks and people riding illegal side by sides way too fast
I live in Portland. We have friends who keep moving there. The bike network looks pretty good. How is the civic life tho? Downtown looks like it could use some help but over by NMU looks pretty good
Went to ABQ a few months ago, and enjoyed the area around UNM. One thing about transit - the buses are free, and are clean. The express bus stopping at the UNM campus was not even close to being on time.
I couldn't imagine watching your videos DESPITE the extensive methodology sections. The methodology is what sets City Nerd apart and what keeps me coming back every Wednesday!
Also, to avoid having cities like Las Vegas show up on this list, maybe a better method for the weather calculation would be the deviation from ideal (75-80 highs and 50-55 lows) for each individual month and create an average across the year. That way you wouldn’t get insanely hot summers with winters that happen to mirror California weather for 4 months, and would instead have a mix of cities both hotter and colder than ideal that still have the most “pleasant” temperatures year round
I was just getting ready to type up this comment, and I'm glad someone else is on the same page. I would also argue that you can't have a weather metric that is trying to quantify 'pleasant' without taking into account humidity. 90 degrees in Florida and 90 degrees in California are not even remotely the same thing.
Not all cities in California have the same weather. SF is very different than SD and LA, for example.
Now I want to see a video where we optimize by Cheesecake Factory restaurants per capita and walk score (gotta burn off the cheesecake somehow) 😅
Tampa has a few Cheesecake factories, but not very walkable many months of the year.
There's no amount of walking that can do that
As you’ve talked about in other videos, neighborhood granularity helps as well. Even in cities with overall poor urbanism scores, there are neighborhoods that score well on these metrics (especially in proximity to universities)
Yeah, I didn't wanna regurgitate all that, but if the walk score for an entire city is 50, that means it probably has a balance of 75s and 25s (and stuff in between). The 75s are usually more expensive, but you can find value.
The issue is, though, that in the walkable neighborhoods the houses are the most expensive typically in that city.
@@MeganJones-q2m Always a challenge. One thing I might do is pick a few things I need to be in walking distance of (eg, grocery store & a park), and accept that I'll have to drive for the rest. And neighborhoods mostly occupied by university students tend to have good bus service & walkability at somewhat affordable prices, though it may not be the right vibe for an older adult or a family. Then your final option is to be on an early wave of gentrification, move into an "up and coming" neighborhood that hasn't gone full yuppie yet but is along transit lines and has at least one grocery store. There's always tradeoffs if you don't have a high budget.
Mid-westerner here, I personally love the snow, winter, having a real fall, and all 4 seasons!
i like them, just not all in one day.
I just took a 6-month hiatus from Brooklyn to live in Salt Lake City and have enjoyed it much more than I anticipated. SLC is a very progressive city in a predominantly conservative state. People in SLC have immense civic pride and the city continues to do great things to improve itself, my current favorite being the new bike path and road diet on 9th South. Since living here I've been telling friends who don't live here to stay on their toes because within 10 years Salt Lake City might be one of the best cities in the country. Decent transit, pretty good cycling infrastructure with great improvements underway, great restaurants and walkable pockets of neighborhoods, and a lot of great weather. Needless to say I predicted it as your top for this list and was very pleased to find my prediction to be correct.
I won’t take issue that SLC may be a nice city but it’s still subject to Utah law and that’s too far right. The same can be said about cities in FL,TX and other ruby red states. Unless you’re a far right leaning person,it’s not going ti be a good fit.
Until the toxic wind kicks up in a decade or less.
salt lake city is a very fecked up place to live
get out while you can
serious question, aren't you afraid it won't end well there, with no water et all?
@absurdstuff You're right. SLC is definitely on the right path in terms of urbanism. There are challenges, such as the conservative state government's gerrymandering away of SLC's influence on the state. Still, the state is changing and at some point the scales will start to tip. Also, I get that City Nerd had to draw the line somewhere, but I think it's unfair to say that SLC gets only 3 months of good weather. Summer nights in SLC are glorious, but spring and autumn are quite nice too (if unpredictable). And Utah's winters are so good that the state's official tourist slogan for many years was "Greatest snow on earth" - promoting Utah's excellent winter sports opportunities. Easy access to the mountains is something that gives SLC an edge over its Rocky Mountain sister Denver.
I have lived in Salt Lake City without a car. It's doable....takes a little work and planning, but the UTA is comprehensive enough and the airport connection is unbeatable.
Moved downtown a month ago without a car. 100% doable and I maybe use Uber once per week? Other than that, walk, bike and train
@@646464mario that's great. I did it while living in Sugar House. Once I moved to Millcreek, I had to buy a car.
Hi City Nerd, love the videos. As someone who is having to deal with 105 degree feel like in Tampa currently I can tell you that this is one of the most car centric cities I have been in. No one walks around here, they will even move from one side of a strip mall to the other side using their car. With the heat and sun even at night (when the temp is still over 90) no one is walking around. This weather pattern remains from late May until November (we might get one cold front in October but the heat comes back quickly). Same for Sarasota minus one or two streets in downtown. I wouldn't put central Florida on any good urbanism list. SAD happens during the summer when the days are longest and you are stuck inside because of the heat. Keep making the videos as I still very much enjoy them and I search out my own personal urban utopia (its not in Florida)
Hey, the youngsters like to party down in Y'bor City and tend to do bar crawls for a few years. Granted, there are many who spend a lot of time staying out of the heat. Yes, many cars. Not much walkability.
Yep, lol, the urbanism is atrocious and the local politicians (especially in counties like Manatee) are largely in bed with real estate developers. Ybor is pretty cool like the last person said, but it’s a drop of urbanism in a sea of sprawl. There are people working on things like urban inequality and environmental justice! We’re just outnumbered by real estate and droves of people driving the worst kind of sprawl
I have relocated from Florida to Philly, partially on the advertising of Mr. Nerd and Alan Fisher, and I don't care if there are 3 months of bone-chilling winter weather, it's worth the tradeoff to be somewhere that you can walk more than 10 feet in the summer without sweating thru your shirt. Add the great urbanism on top of that and Philly absolutely clears any city in FL
@@DuncanAdkins No kidding. I'm leaving FL and moving to Philly myself soon. The folks who want to get heatstroke in January and want to drive 30 minutes to go 2 miles can keep Florida.
@DuncanAdkins I'm originally from the Philly area and had to move to Lehigh Acres, FL. ...and that's what got me interested in urban planning
Albuquerque has great weather imo. I really did this analysis myself when moving away from the PNW and i think Burque has pretty amazing weather 3/4 of the time. Summer can be hot, this year especially, but the low 90s average in the desert summer is far more pleasant than you might think. The worst weather here imo is the spring actually. Temperatures are great but the wind and dust is extreme. Winters can be chilly but its dry and sunny 90% of the time. Perfectly pleasant.
100%. there are a few reasons why ABQ is not high up on my shortlist of places to move (employment mostly) but I’ve always thought it would be a solid option in another life!! Same with Spokane or Reno. Coming from Tucson, I have a soft spot for high-desert sagebrush cities that are just a little grungy around the edges.
calling Abq 'a little grungy around the edges' is being very kind, in reality its quite a crime infested mess and urban wasteland.
One important aspect of the Sun Belt is it wasn't really habitable without air conditioning, in particular central A/C. Lived in a few places in the South without A/C and yeah there's a reason people only visited Florida in the Northeast's winter. But since Sun Belt didn't prosper until central air became cheap, development didn't occur until well into the era of car dependency.
As someone from san diego and lived in many other US cities no other place has it's weather except LA and even LA feels hotter in the summer and when you take into account humidity and other aspects the weather is truly one of a kind there it's amazing!
Shhhhhhhh!!! Come on, dude! We had a deal to keep this quiet! Did you miss the meeting or something?!
@@TohaBgood2 I think San Diego recently became less affordable than San Francisco in terms of housing so the secret is EXTREMELY out. :((
@@danweinstock4972 Well, SF is still almost 2x more expensive. We've loving the media frenzy that Fox News has raised and some of us are starting to hope that we might even be able to buy housing here at some point. But San Diego is still a bargain compared to the Bay Area.
And yes, "the secret" such as it was is indeed _extremely_ out. San Diego weather is literally perfect year round and it's surprisingly still much cheaper than both SF and LA. The only thing that's keeping it from becoming insanely expensive is the relative dearth of very high paying jobs. But this is also changing and the prices are already leveling out with at least LA. The folks down there need to brace for impact. If I were there I'd be rushing to buy anything at all livable pronto.
I agree it is hotter in LA.
Seems like it rains more up in LA as well.
@@danweinstock4972 Lol that is not remotely true. I check housing prices periodically and SD is not so bad. It has become more expensive than Seattle but it's nowhere near SF.
I passed through SLC on a highly inefficient road trip from Seattle to Ensenada Baja in June, and was honestly blown away by the urbanism and vibe of SLC and Ogden as well.
When I first moved to Tampa in 2017 I was very skeptical. All I could think of were strodes, shopping centers, and 5 min red lights. We settled a mile north of downtown and have been impressed so far. The city has re-focused on its core with development along the water and a much more urban-friendly design. The Riverwalk is a fantastic asset not just for sightseeing but also for moving through the city. The new Water Street development prioritizes sidewalks and outdoor spaces over parking and cars. Bike lanes are being added everywhere and walkability is improving. Outside of the core, Tampa is still as bad as the rest of Florida, but there's definitely a move to improve things.
I’m okay with cloudier weather. I’d rather have green with grey skies than beige with blue skies. The latter can be depressing too.
Also - snow with blue or grey skies is pretty and I can always add on layers. I just hate driving in it (all the better to have public transit).
Give me the Granite hills covered in dead brush in San Diego any day over the 8 months of soul crushing gloomy skies of Seattle.
I don't like the dessert either.
@@DiogenesOfCaI find grey days soothing and never ending sunshine and dead vegetation depressing. That said,SD is a fine city to visit.
As someone who's from Tampa and about to move out of state, I've definitely seen it improve on urbanism in the last decade and a half. But rent keeps rising (new law passed by the state is prob gonna make things worse) and this July and August have been absolutely brutal in the heat+humidity department. And, living in Tampa means living in Florida. I'm escaping while I still can.
As a former Tampa resident as well I completely agree. If you could take Tampa out of Florida it’d be perfect.
As someone who recently moved to US and Florida in particular I’m
wondering what is exactly wrong with Florida? Everyone says Florida = bad but I’ve never heard a clear explanations on why except for humidity.
@@nzagorsky weather wise theres hurricanes, but a lot of the Florida = bad comes from stereotypes abt the people that live there, since its full of rich people, retirees, and is known for the "Florida man" memes of people doing crazy things (which is happening everywhere, but Florida actually has a law saying its in the public's interest for arrest records to be public info, which is a good thing. most places dont do this though, so thats what leads to "Florida Man")
@@cassinipaniniyou forgot probably the biggest reason, politics.
@@cjuice9039 yeahhhhh 😭 Florida's not exactly unique in that though, that whole general region is..... not welcoming 😅
Four seasons in Albuquerque and the zero fare bus program were some of the reasons I'm settling down here and living car-free. Although the amount of tweakers is comparable to Portland and they do sleep on the bus... Oh and the rail trail is being built this year too!
Rail trail should be completed by 2027. As someone who lives downtown, I’m super excited for it. The lack of bike lanes in downtown is hilariously bad.
Even the "extreme" heat wave this summer wasn't awful...15 degrees lower than Phoenix.
agree with most everything, but would argue the street situation is worse in portland. and (hopefully) abq is arguably doing more to address it. (tho still not, say, anywhere-in-europe level)
I don’t think I’ve ever see Albuquerque and Austin compared but here it is! Makes me want to check out Albuquerque a little closer. Being an Austin resident I have to say that extreme temps have to factor into this analysis. While 6 months out of the year here are comfortable (Oct-April), the 4 months of the summer are absolutely brutal. I feel like other cities suffer a similar fate but in opposite ways.
Thanks for the Albuquerque shout out! Actually saw you in the city a few months ago and was gonna stop and get your autograph (official recognizable celebrity status! ) but was on my way out and didn't want to bother you. We're not a perfect city by any means, but have a lot of good things going and continue to try to add to that list. We're also in the midst of streamlining our transit line and adding more affordable housing options along the line. Hopefully this improves our transit score in the future, but also recognize our roots as a post-war car-centric city. Thanks for all you do in bringing thought provoking content to the masses.I really enjoy your videos.
“Dutch people have terrible personalities.” Hahaha! From now on urbanists can safely assume all irrational Dutch critiques are really a veiled shot at the Supreme Leader Urban Dutch Emperor himself, Not Just Bikes.
But he's really Canadian.....
@@massvt3821converts make the fiercest zealots
Nah, Jason's fine, I just don't know how he can stand hanging out with those people. Just kidding, I actually met a half-pleasant Dutch person once
CityNerd,
New viewer to your content. I appreciate the methodical process you use and explain in your videos instead of most "Top 10" creators out there that give zero context.
I may be speaking from a biased perspective because it would seem that the U.S. Air Force (especially commissioned officers and academy grads) are obsessed with Colorado. However, I'm struggling to see much love from your channel for urbanism in that state. I know that Denver (and Boulder) suffers from insane housing affordability problems but Colorado has many urban areas that are very walkable, bikeable, and some (Denver) have decent transit. Not to mention (considering your Weather, Urbanism, Affordability Venn Diagram) most of Colorado sees 300+ days of sunshine a year. Even cold winter months don't keep Coloradans (is that what they call themselves?) from being outside. Honestly, I think Colorado might deserve a dedicated analysis.
Thanks!
Albuquerque? Vegas? Yikes! Have you even been paying attention to the weather reports this summer . . . and the last couple of decades? No waaaay.
As an Austinite, I must tell you that the weather here is anything but okay. It's uninhabitable for three months of the year, and weather here can be highly unpredictable in winter. And it's expensive as fuck, but at least there's a big push to invest in transit right now.
As general Philip Henry Sheridan once said, " if I owned Texas and Hell, I'd rent Texas and live in Hell."
Even with good urbanism my home state would still be an unruly place to live considering both our temperature extremes and extreme weather. When you can get both hurricane and tornado destruction, wildfires and droughts, months of 100° summers and thunder sleet in the winter, it's not exactly hospitable. Land is still pretty cheap, if you can afford to not really have any social programs to speak of. It's kind of funny that we're kind of the opposite of urbanism as a state, except, I ain't laughing.
Just a warning for east coasters: they don't have weather on the west coast. Moving from New Hampshire to metro Portland, OR, one of the most striking things has been how dull the climate is. There are two seasons here: hot and dry, wet and cool (not cold; it's rarely below freezing here unless you're up in the mountains). Within those two seasons, 95% percent of your days are going to be sunny or cloudy, respectively. I never thought I'd get bored of "nice" weather, but 3 years later, I'd kill to actually NEED to look at my phone to know what the weather's going to be like in mid-summer. I'll grant that it's nice not to feel like you're in a sauna whenever you go out during the summer months, but man, I'd kill to be surprised by what the sky's doing from on a regular basis. I suppose that's acclimatization for you (pardon the pun).
And here I am in the northeast upset about how I have to look at the weather forecast everyday to plan how much time I can spend outside. Wanting variety is great until you only get 3 months of proper summer and most of it is rainy where you can't be outside.
I like the south because 3/4 of the year is perfect, we get 4 seasons but winter isn’t miserable, and it rains a lot but it’s in short storms instead of all day mist.
Eh, whiIe do enjoy sometimes visiting my folks in the Midwest for the summer thunderstorms, I do love being able to bike everywhere mostly carefree in the summers here in Seattle. The other day I was surprised when it started to spit a bit (the forecast had said a bit of rain earlier in the day, so I did have some rain coverings in my backpack which is good because I was carrying electronics in my basket, lol), but not having surprise torrential downpours is wonderful actually.
in south florida i have to look at the forecast every 30 minutes to figure whether or not i can take my dog for a walk without us both dying of heatstroke or being struck by lightning
@@dbclass2969 winter here in the south it can definitely rain all day and be overcast a lot. Here in Nashville it's often damp and grey starting in Mid November and gets quite depressing.
Agree. Left LA for SLC and the infrastructure is amazing. The city is on a grid and it has bike lanes, bus routes, brts, light rail, commuter rail, government run rideshare, bike share and escooters and two brand new airports!
I lived in Salt Lake while in grad school and I can say its definitely a hidden gem if you can learn to live with the local drama. The inner city is surprisingly diverse with a great counter-cultuer arts scene, its got functional regional rail (except on Sundays), and reliable sunny weather for 3 months straight every year. Basically, SLC is everything you think Denver is, but better, more affordable without legal weed and plus the LDS Church. Life is all about trade offs and I was satisfied with this one.
You forgot winter inversion. Worst part of living in SLC, and you don't have that in Denver.
I have spent a lot of time in both cities because I have family in both. Was just in SLC last month. I would say you're generally right but also Denver is a lot bigger and has a more walkable downtown that I find to be more lively.
Yes. Move to Spain. Friends moved there from San Francisco, they literally have all 3. It's as cheap to live there as it is in some car dependent hellhole here in the US.
I really appreciate how much CityNerd gets into the tools he uses and how he uses them. Since watching this channel, I've found myself using several of the tools for practical purposes.
Bonus, I define ideal weather through completely different criteria that this video. Knowing how he optimized was interesting to me. For example, I am no good at living in warm climates. I've tried and failed. I require at least 3 months in the 0 to 32 F range. I would prefer to minimize the number of days in the -30 to -60 F range. I would want to maximize for the number of days in 40 to 60 F range.
Me, too.
Yes, I too have been inspired by his methodology and have made a spreadsheet comparing different places to live that includes an urbanism score
I’m curious what this list would look like if you swapped out “sunny” with “nature”. What are the places with good urbanism, affordable, and easy access to nature, state parks, hiking trails, etc? Not sure how that would be quantified exactly
Salt Lake would take the cake again!
Roanoke VA😁😁😁
Spokane, WA
Yeah, this would just make Salt Lake even more of a number 1.
Being right up against the mountains is a cheat code for outdoor recreation.
2:32 I sort of understand where CityNerd is coming from but to me calling timestamps "spoiler comments" is as absurd as calling the table of contents for a nonfiction book a "spoiler". I actually really appreciate it when people leave those comments because it makes it so much more convenient to come back to the video later and reference specific moments without having to waste time skipping through the video to find the part I'm looking for. For people who want to use the information provided in these videos as something more than entertainment, timestamps are incredibly useful. If it bothers you when other people leave their own comments (people who I presume are only trying to be helpful, by the way), please consider putting some of your own in the video description. That way people who don't want to be "spoiled" won't have to see them, but people who find them helpful for navigating re-watches can still utilize them.
Wanting people to appreciate the methodology is the reason he tells himself, not the real reason. Hint: it’s the same reason some university professors refuse to put lecture notes online.
That income scaling is a big point to make. Yes, some incomes will increase when moving to these areas, but most people will not see an increase that balances out the increased cost of living. The reason we really see these high average salaries is because there's more pay for higher end/more skilled careers. If you're a software developer with years of experience, you'll probably see great pay. However, like you said, a school teacher won't have that same experience. In my current career field, I wouldn't make anymore money by moving to California.
For sure any conversation about the cost of California is always coupled with income scaling. The household of 4 I grew up in made around $50k and that never increased more than a couple thousand since 2000. And I knew many families in similar situations.
Actually school teachers make a lot more in Socal due to being in a union. Its software that doesn't scale because you can work from home and live anywhere.
I feel like a lot of us want the opposite of what we grew up with weather-wise. I grew up in Southern California, and when I experienced seasons the first time, I knew I'd never go back. I may be an outlier, but one of the reasons I live in New York now is that I get excited by the changing seasons. I can do without the gross summers, of course, but the rest of the year is worth it for me. Yes, I'm one of those freaks who actually loves the cold.
Me too! I love the cold, but New York City is too big for me
I'd love to live up North for the political climate and to escape the coming ravages of climate change but I am miserable in cold weather. I actually tolerate heat quite well. I'm in a conundrum for sure.
I'm the opposite, I grew up in Minnesota and I love the cold and snow. I live in Honolulu now (for grad school) where it's warm year-round, and I miss Minnesota weather (but I miss the bikeability, walkability, and affordability of the twin cities far more than I miss the snow).
The thing about seasons is, there's more than 4. Sure you could argue that Southern California has 2, but SLC and Albuquerque definitely have four seasons: they just happen to be a different 4 seasons than the 4 you get east of the Mississippi.
Whatever. @@Hup.
Nice to see my town get some love here - I think your analysis sums it up pretty well. The access to nature here in Salt Lake is fantastic, and the urbanism is acceptable in the central cities of all three cities you mentioned. There’s a lot of suburban sprawl around those three cities, but there’s also a lot of energy around making the infrastructure better in each place. I’m cautiously optimistic for the future of the area.
I don’t know, I moved from Michigan to Vancouver, and while affordability is definitely the downside (and to me still worth it for the fantastic urbanism in comparison!), the weather doesn’t bother me at all! Everyone warned me about the winter and how awful it is, but grey gloomy skies are certainly the norm in Michigan in the winter, and I would pick grey and gloomy and 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit over grey and gloomy and -10 degrees Fahrenheit every damn day. I love walking around in February in just a light waterproof jacket!
And the summer here is so lovely (minus the heat waves we’ve been having lately that make not having AC suck), beautiful sun and 75 with a light breeze every day for four months? Awesome!
Vancouverite here; I even like the rain. It feels homey and domestic and unpretentious and undemanding. When you want to go out for a walk, you just bring an umbrella.
@@robertcartwright4374, do you all use umbrellas up there on the regular? Seattle has basically the same weather and most people scorn them. Haha. I'll often still use them since I don't want my backpack to get wet, but I'm definitely in the minority.
Otherwise, totally agree about liking the rain. It often feels like a hug when I'm having a bad day.
@@emma70707 Hmm... I use umbrellas, and I do see them around, but they definitely aren't as popular as they used to be. A ball cap and the hood on a Goretex jacket makes a pretty good replacement, and you don't have the bother of carrying (and remembering!) the blessed umbrella!
Is the downtown of Vancouver suffering the same effects of homelessness and lack of funding for social services like San Francisco, Portland, or Seattle is in the USA? I remember visiting 20 years ago and it was quite pleasant.
@@eddihaskell Depends where you go; Downtown Eastside is pretty bad, with some spillover into Gastown and Chinatown, but downtown is mostly unaffected, I think. I live in New Westminster, which is part of Vancouver Metro but 20 km from downtown, and I visit only infrequently.
Outside US: Lisbon, Georgetown (Malaysia), Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Changsha, Chongqing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Nanjing, Shanghai, Beirut, Guanajuato, Cuzco, Istanbul, Barcelona, Athens, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Jaisalmer
YAY! Finally Spokane makes a list. As a resident I'd its really underrated. The outdoor opportunities are fantastic and the city is really consistently upping its game :)
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Dallas. Yeah, it’s pretty hot for a few months in the summer, and sometimes it gets very cold in the winter for about two months but it’s not Chicago cold or Phoenix hot (even though this summer has been worse than ever). Dallas has a decent public transit that it continues to expand (light rail - bus - tram/trolleys), and some nice walkable neighborhoods (Bishop Arts, Uptown, West End, etc). Also, rail that takes you to the DFW Airport, the 2nd busiest in the world. Also, a train that connects with Fort Worth. A possible bullet train that will connect it with Houston. And finally a very diverse city. A lot of work to do still but people tend to dismiss it. I just visited a week ago, and from far it’s starting to look more like Chicago. You should visit it.
Watching this video really opened my eyes to how much my ideal weather differs from most people lol, I consider San Diego too hot & uncomfortable. Anything above 70s Fahrenheit I dislike 😅
I see a lot of this sentiment in these comments and less like mine so I figured I'd chime in as someone who's living in San Diego. I do envy people who actually enjoy what I consider bad weather or what most consider varied weather, but it's not for me. It would certainly be easier on my wallet 😅 but for me San Diego is worth it 100%.
Grew up in Tampa. The weather is acceptable in the autumn and winter, but in the summer it's quite impossible to stay outside with the combination of bugs, heat, and humidity. And I'm amazed that Tampa met the threshold for urbanism. I'm not aware of any substantial public transit in the area, and I've never heard of anyone biking to get anywhere in Tampa. It can actually take 15-20 minutes to get from a suburban house to a highway.
I'd be interested in a video on the Tampa Bay Area, and in general, metro areas that are a patchwork of multiple medium sized cities as opposed to metro areas that are focused around a single large city. My impression is that the former tends to have less amenities and less effective urban design.
I can't speak for Tampa, but St Pete and Sarasota both seem to have done a reasonably good job at building dense housing downtown, turning them from dead "central business districts" into actual livable neighborhoods with 24/7 activity. The rest of each city is pretty much straight garbage from an urbanism perspective, but those down towns go a long way to make those gulf coast cities stand out. Those downtowns probably benefit from a lot more activity by being a magnet for people on the suburban fringes, since there aren't as many enjoyable neighborhood commercial streets as in a city like Portland or SF. Everyone HAS to go downtown to have that walkable "on the town" experience, so the streets are disproportionately lively for cities that small.
Haha yeah, look at how much of a mess the LANTA bus system - which got 15 minute headways for the first time anywhere on the system this year, and only where two major routes run together - is despite the cores of Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton all being more than dense and walkable enough to support good service
But when you compare Tampa to other areas of the US - where the winter and snow keeps people inside, as does the humidity in the summer - Tampa seems pretty nice.
If I can be outdoors 8-9 months of the year, I'm happy.
I do like the neighborhood around Berns Steakhouse on Howard. Although those houses were selling at Seattle prices.
Tampa, Orlando, and Vegas. All of which I'm surprised qualified under these criteria for want of a modicum of urbanism but also weather is kinda hellacious.
in north america people are hugely obsessed with weather (so much so if it rains they don't even get into their car to go outside). europe has cities with best urbanism and more rain and snow. but people walk and bike even in snowy winter. amricans are addicted to their car and finding a excuse to not-improving the city is their fun time.
As a Utahn its awesome to hear Ogden and Provo mentioned on your channel!
Provo is getting more pleasant by the day. The city really is trying to make the downtown to farmers market as walkable as possible, encouraging cars to go around rather than through main street
I appreciate the Spokane mention and comparing it to Idaho is apt.
I'm curiosity over the similarity between Spokane, Fresno, Salt Lake City and Albuquerque.
I got major deja vu when you showed the street view of Howard Ave in Tampa, I used to live in the apartment building that was in this video and went down this street all the time. A big reason why I left this area recently was because in about 5 years, rent went up about $1,000 and it was no longer affordable (It wasn't terribly cheap to begin with, either). This specific part of Tampa is definitely walkable, but it is NOT affordable. The affordable parts of Tampa pretty much all require cars (unless you're okay with waiting for buses that could be 10, 15 or more minutes late in 95 degree weather). But as you said yourself - maybe that's the tradeoff some folks are willing to make for sunshine and warm weather.
Thiss
Every single part of tampa has had their rents go up at least 50% which has just destroyed communities
Conveniently some of us love the cold and snow! Even here in Pittsburgh, with climate change we barely get any snow anymore. The summers are almost too hot for me at this point. I'll never live further south than here!
The background you give on analysis is what originally made me subscribe. It's really fun to see your "Methods" section each time.
Being sunny is something ( LA, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro ) and being the hottest place in the Middle East is something else ( i’m talking about Kuwait City exclusively )
Temperature in here reached 52 Celsius ( 125.6 Fahrenheit ) this summer, and unlike Dubai or Doha Kuwait isn’t humid until late summer, which means the temperatures here fluctuates so much between seasons ( -2~ in the winter and 52~ in the summer )
“ It was so hot in Kuwait last summer that birds dropped dead from the sky. “ NBS news
Which is why most of the population has given up on modern sustainable urbanism ( pedestrian paths, cycling lanes, metros etc. )
Come do a SLC video. It's really changed, largely for the better, over the last 20 years. I just wish they'd get UTA bus/TRAX/FrontRunner service to increase in frequency. It is getting easier every year to live in SLC without a car. Caveat: if you really like exploring the mountains we have, you will probably need to own a car, or a friend with one. I do a lot of hiking and camping, and that renders me required to own a vehicle, effectively. But for those that don't, car-free is getting pretty widely attainable here.
Woo SLC! I bike and take trax here and it’s not bad! Downtown area is disappointingly small and we are still subject to the missing middle housing problem, but there are workarounds. I’d love to see a video dedicated to slc
Another shoutout to Albuquerque. I love it! I can't believe you didn't mention possibly the best bus route in the country when discussing the poor transit score though.
What's the best bus route?
San Diego weather isn't just Downtown/Harbor/Airport weather. It can be 75 and cloudy at the beach and 95 clear and hot 20 miles inland at the foothills. Or go into the mile high mountains for snow or 100 degree + temperatures in the desert if that is what you want. The county has the most diverse weather in the U.S.
True enough, but anywhere along the coast of California there tends to be rapid climate change as you go inland. In the Bay Area you can ride the subway for less than an hour and go from 65 to 95.
Anything west of 1-15 is way cooler than the east part.
I prefer East County as I hate coastal eddies and those 3pm clouds that roll in off the ocean all summer.
For weather I would put the range of comfortable weather between 60-80 F for daily highs. I just came back from LA and it was unbearably hot last week with temps pushing the high 90s.
Bay Area school teacher here! Pay....sort of scales, but not enough. I definitely make more than most (as a 10 year teacher with a Masters and some continuing education credits, I can earn about 110k in my district), but to get those salaries you generally need to teach in wealthier suburbs (i.e. no urbanism). And then, to afford rent or a mortgage, you generally need to be commuting to these wealthier suburbs from lower income suburbs by car, which isn't particularly urbanist (BART exists but generally isn't near schools, and it's expensive af). Teachers I know who teach AND live in the more urbanist cities like SF or Berkeley struggle considerably more with affordability, and/or are considerably more likely to be in a shared housing situation. Those who comfortably live in the area often are getting help from parents in the area or are partnered with someone with considerably higher income (tech, finance). Obviously there are exceptions to this, but these are general trends I've noticed from growing up here and now teaching here.
Never apologize for explaining a methodology! It's the most important part of the resultant list (SF resident here advocating for more housing, it's an uphill battle)
ABQ (more reliably Santa Fe for that matter) have such good potential, there's just not a whole lot of anything out there. Santa Fe has been one of my favorite places to visit and their downtown area is surprisingly dense. They even have an Amtrak stop!
The downside is New Mexico is one of the rare blue states that's very poor. "Affordable" comes with a lot of asterisks attached to it.
@@maxpowr90 I lived in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. I found it expensive and HOT! Currently live in San Francisco and able to afford it with no car. Yes salary is higher
@@maxpowr90 Yep prices are cheap which is good news for tourists but you can't find a good paying job out there unless you work oil and gas in the southeast of the state. I looked at moving to either ABQ or Santa Fe but they just didn't have enough job opportunities. That area isn't close enough to other major metros to have good connections and there's not enough population growth to spur demand for industry.
@@matthewshultz8762I think population growth is coming as more and more people move out of red states and choose a more affordable blue one. There's honestly more to see and do than people think. I wouldn't be surprised if the Albuquerque-Santa Fe metro become a sleeper boom(ish) town in the next few years.
I'm not going to count on the Southwest Chief (Amtrak) to be a selling point of Albuquerque, but there is hope for downtown. I'm not really seeing the needed improvements made in the suburbs though. Bike lanes on the roads are neglected making bikes vulnerable to flat tires.
A major concern of mine is how much longer hot air ballooning can last in Albuquerque. They keep building the suburban sprawl. All of the places hot air balloons could take off and land at are disappearing very quickly. After the end of the COVID lockdowns, suddenly the empty spaces started being developed. Now the hot air balloons are pretty much only able to fly in Rio Rancho which has even worse suburban sprawl. It's going to be nigh impossible to host Balloon Fiesta here if the city keeps building the way it is now.
I lived in SD and LA for 15 years before moving to Vegas. You really can’t compare the weather just on temperature. You can enjoy the outdoors for 10 months in Vegas. I never thought I’d say it but it’s actually better than SoCal because of the sunshine and lack of gloomy & damp skies that persist the majority of the year there.
It really does seem impossible to have all 3 in the US unfortunately. I live in Sarasota at the moment, and I decided that I wanted nice climate, walkability, and affordability too (Great video topic!)... so I'm leaving the country and moving to Spain. I had job offers in other cities in Florida.. but Tampa + Orlando urbanism is absolutely horrible, and Miami is crazy expensive AND has bad (although slightly better) urbanism. Maybe San Juan would be the best bet if I come back?
Several Spanish cities wold completely dominate this list on all three dimensions
And you are still leaving out cuisine ;)…
I'm with you! Looking to move out of the country like the Not Just Bike's RUclipsr. I'll definitely look into Spain but I'm curious what else is out there and affordable worldwide.
Agreed! Have you considered doing a similar video but including cities abroad? @@CityNerd
so much healthier food!@@mariosalgadovinter8749
As one who has lived in both cities as well as others, includining Mr. Delahanty's Seattle -and who knows still others- I can't disagree with City Nerd in his assessment of Chicago and Philadelphia -but his statistics-centered criteria at best undervalue the importance of the cultural environment and one's priorities in that dimension in determining the livability and overall desirability of a place. But who, really, is perfect? And, more to the point, where is the perfect place, for whom and why? That said, Bravo, Mr. D. for your work and your example.
I feel like Coastal California is one of the few places in the US where year-round warm weather actually means nice weather. Florida is too humid, and Arizona is too dry. Frankly, the only city in Arizona where I think I'd enjoy the weather is Flagstaff.
As someone who lived in Az for 15 years I enjoy the dryness, I think it’s more of the summer heat that makes it unpleasant
@@angellacanforait’s 73 and sunny in Santa Monica right now. And it was chilly enough to consider a sweatshirt with shorts and the grey was for like a few hours each morning. LA is still amazing weather.
@@angellacanfora just move inland a bit if you want sun and warmth. Pasadena for example.
@@tim1724inland and it gets too hot, like often 100+. However coastal has more comfortable weather, however extremely expensive and often foggy
Gotta say my favorite thing about the three Utah cities is that they all connect via the FrontRunner train which runs from Ogden down to Provo and hits several towns along the way. We went to go visit family in Provo and when we arrived at SLC airport, we took the tram to the train station and then the train all the way down to Provo. Cost about an hour and $10
So much for your Dutch audience! 😄
And his unsigned musical artist audience! 😿
I'm American and lived in The Netherlands for two years. "Polite" is not a term one would use to describe many Dutch people. "Direct and honest", perhaps. One stereotype which is true -- if you go out to eat with Dutch friends, they calculate who owes what more often than not. It drove me crazy.
I was never really affected by winters or cloudy days, but after living in the Netherlands for a while and seeing gray skies for the many months during the winter (except for a few hours of blue that entire period), it wore on me.
Love this channel, and I think most of us Dutch people can take (sarcastic) criticism. As long as you don't beat around the bush...
1. Tampa/Sarasota
2. Albuquerque/Las Vegas
Honorable mentions:
1. Orlando
2. Fresno
3. Salt Lake City
I just moved to Salt Lake last month and can confirm sunniness and decent urbanism for an American city. One thing I really do like about this city is that better urbanism is an actual conversation here in the city… constantly talking about better infrastructure for cyclists, pedestrians as well as expanded rail. I think if it stays on this trajectory, there is a bright future here.
And while SLC may not be as diverse as some other big cities, the talk about how there is none here is grossly exaggerated. There is a decent amount in downtown.
downtowns are usually more diverse than suburbs though, and Utah has it's fair share of suburbs. I'm in Ogden, and while I'm glad they just built a BRT right across from my window here, I'm always surprised more people don't understand the history of how the rail was taken out of the street here. SLC saved their street car, but even Ogden used to have a street car in the 1920's. thinking "wow, i can't wait until Ogden has proper light rail, just like it did over a century ago!" makes me far more pessimistic than most people, yet more educated than others. most people really don't understand how far the car actually put us behind. as Oscar wilde put it "the best of the poor are ungrateful."
@@ethanstump what you’re describing about Ogden losing rail is literally what happened to almost every other city in the US though. The best we can do is reverse it and reintroduce rail and I think Utah is currently doing it better than most.
I always say SLC is like any "normal" city. Provo/Utah County on the other hand . . . Oof. What a weird valley. Perfectly lovely folks, but good lord, churches and white folk as far as the eye can see, haha. Going from Orem to my condo in the Avenues feels like an exotic adventure to the big city.
if you a normal person you gonna find out why salt lake city sucks as a place to live within the next two years
soon will be a toxic wasteland due to climate change
This is gonna be helpful for fellow SAD sufferers. Bitter cold weather has always done a number on my mental health, and despite what you might hear in the urbanist community, millions of Americans feel the same way. While I wouldn’t say you can have a perfect mix of the three, you can get close enough, even without moving to Florida or California.
If you can afford , it get a big Infrared light …..it helped me tremendously.
I suffer from the reverse, Summer SAD and I have the misfortune of living in a very sunny & warm CA city. Grey & drizzly is soul soothing to me.
I get that too. I used to live in Arizona and would have nightmares about the looming summer and now that I live up north I dread the winters. Life is hard to dial in for sure.@@manmasher
Look into the southeastern states too. Off the top of my head places like Roanoke VA, Norfolk VA, Chattanooga TN, Huntsville AL, Richmond VA etc are all affordable, have very walkable/urbanist neighborhoods, are surprisingly culturally quirky and open to outsiders, and most importantly of all them have just under two thirds of days of the year being sunny. Out of all of them, Charleston SC is probably the best place to look at, but it’s not exactly as affordable as other places. It’s amazing though.
Never thought I'd see the day Tampa or St. Pete win a category on this channel. Hell yeah!
Great weather all year long, great walkability, great public transportation, great food, great cultural activity, and mainly great urbanism and the most affordable prices : Guadalajara, Mexico
I have unorthodox views of “good weather.” For me, it’s relatively low disaster risk, good air quality, limited risk of lethal wet bulb events(>95F), and sunny days. Minneapolis has good weather in my book, as does (a few miles inland of) the Acela corridor. Atlanta would be acceptable too.
Florida and Texas have truly horrible weather. California doesn’t rank well either. 70 and sunny isn’t enjoyable when the sky is orange.
Chicago still scores poorly here - it is perhaps the most vulnerable city in the US to heat deaths, and they’re vulnerable to derechos and tornadoes too.
I can’t do the whole 6 months of never seeing the sun that they get in Seattle and Buffalo. It’s very depressing.
@CityNerd: I'm from Europe and been living in f***ing PHX for thelast 5 years (soon moving outta here tho). I was totally affected by "UNseasonal effective disorder". The perpetual sunshine and monotonous blue skies drove me crazy, even (or especially?) during the more pleasent winter months. It's like being in Antarctica and getting snow madness.
Luckily I don't want sunny weather anymore. Had enough of that in Phoenix to last a lifetime.
Your description of the seattle weather pretty much concludes how it is here in Germany especially in Cities like Hamburg or Kiel. :D
Many years ago, I gave a talk in SLC, and had a very nice lunch in its downtown at a restaurant that featured a gay pride flag. I also had sushi at a place called Ichiban, where the chef told me she was the first American woman to be a Toyko-trained Itamae. I have been fond of the place ever since, and much to my surprise, I am pretty sure I could happily live there. The biggest downside is the air quality.
I moved to Utah in 1996 and lived in an adjacent state through 2019. SLC proper has always been way different than the state. The local culture kept folks away until a few years ago. It was damn cheap before that. No city has the backdrop it has, but pollution is an issue. Mining, refineries and growing numbers of cars are all in the valley. Inversions in the winter are terrible, they are so bad they have trouble landing planes sometimes. Overall the weather is pretty good, dry and equal times being too cold and hot. Utah one of the best outdoor states but I think you really need a car to access it. The airport can get you to the west coast cities very quickly. I would live there.
Nearly life long SLC resident here. It's a great place. But the politics and overwhelming majority religious preferences make it a hard sell IMO. Not to mention climate change affecting the water level of the lake is turning it into an inevitable arsenic bomb making the SLC valley soon to be uninhabitable.
@@Mage017 How is Sugerhouse these days? Retail came in and took a lot of the local charm away. It was always an area we used to visit.
@@tlister67 I'm car free here in Ogden, above SLC. if you had an electric bike, that and taking the bus would get you to a number of natural places. the switch to electric would do wonders for Utah, but then might lead to a dip in affordability. 😤
@@tlister67 Sugar House has undergone a lot of change in the past decade or so. Definitely a lot more chains and a lot less local quirk, but also denser and more urbanist. I notice a lot of these big developments start with chains and franchises and stabilize to a better mix of local businesses as leases turn over. I think it will be amazing again in another decade.
It’s nice being in San Diego, and it gave me and my wife a great chuckle to see Months of San Diego Weather as a data point.
I think it would better to do a more specific topic, like best cities for outdoor recreation, or beaches or whatever. Just using temperature alone is silly since humid Florida weather is very different than San Diego weather. Kinda hard to make this since different people have different opinions of ideal weather. But sweating in the 100% humidity and 90 degree Florida isn’t ideal (I’ve lived there)There’s a reason everything has all the air conditioning there. I think a big thing for me is weather that is good for outdoor recreation year around. I live in the Bay Area which is perfect for that but grew up in the northeast. The problem with the area of the northeast where I grew up is it doesn’t snow anymore enough to ski so it’s just cold, muddy and brown for 6 months of the year. I would consider living somewhere with snowy winter and real mountains but having perfect cycling weather all year in the bay is hard to beat.
Humidity makes a huge difference - signed, a Southerner.
Used to drive a car with no AC and the only working window was the SUNROOF. Let me tell you, having to open the car door at stoplights to avoid heat stroke had me on deaths door a few times. The problem with humidity is you cant sweat to cool down, so you can actually get heat stroke at much lower temps than out west, and you wont even realize it most of the time.
I love that Tampa made the list, but I live in the very walkable part of Tampa, and it's been too hot to step outside for months. In the winter, I walk to work most days and often to dinner or the park everyday, but June-Sept is nearly impossible. As someone who loves walking, I really do mean it's deadly to be outside right now. Thank you for considering us, though. Love your channel and spreadsheets!
Totally agree. I lived in Tampa and St Pete. It’s just too hot to be outside. And when you are it’s normal to go home and crash from being exhausted from the heat.
Geographer/Urban Designer here 🙋♀I work for an organization that increases urban tree canopy and green space. Love your videos!
How dare you describe Austin so accurately! Though "humid" only seems appropriate when you compare it to Albuquerque.
As someone who grew up in Salt Lake City and now lives in Denver, kind of surprised Denver didn’t show up on the list. Must have exceeded the $2/sqft limit. It’s more expensive than SLC, but has a much better urban core, and similar climate.
Salt Lake appears fairly regularly on these lists in a positive light. Denver rarely.
Salt Lake has a significantly better transit network in general. Denver wouldn't win even if it was the same cost as SLC.
Denver has a much more erratic climate spring and fall than Salt Lake, though few winter inversions ("the brown cloud") and periodic warm flashes at 60-70F are nice - but those come between polar cold fronts (and low temps SLC might never see) and the very few "average days". But decent urbanism, if one can afford those areas or corridors, plus so much outdoor recreation choice.
No, really though, the weather isn't that bad in a lot of the places that have some up on the "affordable/walkable" videos. It beats the ever-warming sunbelt in my opinion
Crazy to see Tampa and Sarasota mentioned in a slightly positive sense here. As someone who’s lived in the area my whole life, I’m intimately familiar with their problems, but they have their redeeming qualities. Both places have at least one place that does Argentinian food, which is an important metric in my book! The issues involve sprawl, the awful state legislature and governor, and the weather. The sun and heat are enticing to northerners, but it wears you down. Florida also has a terribly quickly increasing cost of living because it’s basically run by awful housing developers, lol
Currently moving out of Sarasota. Most areas saw double the cost of living and housing in recent years. Sarasota had triple. That fixer upper for 200k in 2019 is now 600k with nothing done.
Plus as you said the legislature. Doesn't help that Sarasota was in 2015, seen as an up and coming nice progressive area, and is now filled with idiotic anti-science, healthcare threatening, people that will tell you the weather is fine while the heat index is pushed to 120 degrees.
@@13igtyme. Wishing you well wherever you end up moving!
Argentinian, mmmmm
As someone who's been suffering through Dallas summers for 30+ years, I cannot believe peeople have continually moved to Texas over the past decade.
I moved only a couple hundred miles north of DFW after spending but 3 summers in Fort Worth. While they are enjoying the 105+ temps this week, it's a breezy mid 80s with rainstorms up here. There's a tradeoff of moving into tornado alley, mainly the monsoon season, but getting out of the oppressive summer heat was worth it. People also fail to mention that winters in north Texas are just as miserable as the rest of the plains, just without the snow. Cold and brutal winds make that 40F low temp feel like 25F.
Well at least you don’t have to shovel heat
I don’t think a city having seasons is a bad thing I think it’s a good thing
You're right 1000%
this though
SEASONS all. The way!
You can have seasons without the sun hibernating in the winter like in Pittsburgh.
@@Tradley to me, the break from excessive sunlight is one of the best things about colder months.
But I like my cold winter! You, and other urban commentators, think the world ends if it snows. The changer seasons are a real joy. I live in a very walkable area of Detroit. Winter is great. Put on a coat and get out.
"Sunny, good urbanism, and affordable" exists in Europe and Latin America, but not the United States.
Portland native. The weather just beat the hell out of me. Every winter I swore would be my last. I ended up in Savannah. Being IN Savannah isn't bad. It would be rough to live without a car entirely but you don't need one that often. The portion of the city that would meet your criteria for good urbanism is too small. But, it does exist.
The PNW gloom is relentless. Winter was easier for me in places that were colder and snowier, but at least had sunny winter days (midwest, NYC). It's also not acknowledged often enough how much further north Portland and Seattle are than most of the US - it's not just the cloud cover, but how short the days are.
I split my weeks between Savannah and Charleston for work. I always wondered what citynerd would think of these two towns (I always assumed they were too small to meet their criteria for most of the videos)
@@loganbryck Just for reference:
The California-Oregon border is north of southernmost Canada.
I visited Savannah with an in-shape friend from Spain one August a few years ago, and he could not believe how hot and humid the weather was. He literally could not walk outside for more than a few minutes. When he asked me how I could tolerate it, I said "I grew up like this in New York City without Air conditioning, you get used to it". He could not believe New York could get like this at times in the summer.
@@danielcarroll3358 Yup! No one believes it. You can be in California and north of Ontario, Canada!
As someone who had lived in SD for a good while the weather is overrated. May gray and June gloom are a thing and the warm days get a little to warm for my liking. SF (city proper since microclimates are a factor) has enough warm sunny days and the fog keeps temperatures in a tight band. The cost of living is higher but worth the premium - not to mention if you stay in the same place for a while the rent control will keep rent below market rate after a few years.
I’ve spent time in Orlando and tampa and I’m going to put Orlando ahead. I knew people who lived carfree in Orlando it’s doable. Sunrail is nice. Don’t have to run from hurricanes.
To save some money. Live in the old central part of sanford florida about 40 minute train ride from downtown Orlando.
There’s also Gainesville. A decent size college down with a decent bus and bike network. And more arts and culture than a city of its size would suggest. Remarkably affordable too. Plenty of high paying jobs fields.
I think it’s a disservice to not mention Sacramento. It has a decent walkable downtown, bus, and lightrail. It is quite a bit more affordable than the Bay Area and cheaper than Denver. Summers are hot but the nights cool down. The rest of the year is quite mild.
Not related to the video but I found your account a few days ago from Tik tok comments saying they preferred your optimism to NJB’s attitude, and I’ve binged almost all of your videos😂
I had to laugh when you said Chicago and Philadelphia are the defaults. Lol. I live in Chicago. I have a rwo bedroom apartment in a good neighborhood for $1,400.00. I'm on a corner street with buses on each street, and I'm three blocks away from a train line. Got rid of the car.
As someone who loves harsh winters, the Midwest is perfect for me. I don't ever see myself living in a US city other than Chicago or Minneapolis because I don't ever wanna live without a real winter.
Minneapolis resident who just got back from Vegas - I would MUCH MUCH rather deal with the cold for 4 months than that heat for 4+ months
Quite right. A harsh (as in cold) winter often comes with plenty of sunshine. Which is nice, and in my book beats drizzly rain and 48 F all winter long.
100% agreement, especially about those two specific cities..
Minor gripe, but as someone who wants sunniness but doesn't care about (low) temperatures, felt a little faked out by the video. Where I live currently (Edmonton) is very sunny, affordable, and has fantastic late springs/summers/early falls, but utterly fails any minimum-temperature criteria
Sunny could also really suck depending on where you are. The kind that's super humid and where your face and eyes are drenched in sweat is the worst. Even the colder places out there can have some great summers too.
I like a good middle ground where it's just right and maybe it snows every once in a while.