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It's hard to see how Seattle and Denver are on the "underrated" when every list seems to include them as places to be. My vote would go to rust belt cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo. They have a cheaper cost of living and emerging opportunities for infill projects and renovations. A lot of millennials like urban living and activities nearby, but they also gravitate to locations with a strong sense of place.
Is Atlanta really marketed that much anymore? I mean, it had a ton of hype in the 90s and early 2000s, but since then...I don't know....on the latest stats, Atlanta is one of the lowest cities for growing it's educated millennial base. Part of it could be a relatively bad economy(unemployment is pretty high), but still...I just don't see the hype for Atlanta like it used to have. I wouldn't cal it underrated, but certainly not overrated.
That's fair, it's certainly doesn't have the hype that Seattle and Portland and Boston and San Francisco have.
To be clear, I don't think all the cities I listed are overrated necessarily, just that there are several other cities that are just as good (if not better) than many of those, that simply aren't part of the public consciousness.
I think the most underrated city for millennials is probably Buffalo. There seems to be a lot of happy 20- and 30-somethings.
"There seems to be"? What on earth does that mean?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawn.Davenport
with few college-aged kids running around.
There are quite a few of them "running around" -- Buffalo is a college town. There's the 40,000-student University of Buffalo, one of NY State's largest public universities, plus several smaller colleges in town. The U o f B campus is mostly in suburban Amherst, but many students live in Buffalo proper (for the relatively cheap rents) and are seen "running around" quite a lot.
Buffalo has more than its share of poverty and isolation; its city population is in decline, as is its metro population. There are not enough good jobs for any educational level. The Buffalo winters are very long and harsh. Buffalo is one of the top "Snow Capitals of North America" on any list, so you better LOVE the white stuff. Buffalo's big university does help, and housing costs are moderate compared to most Northeastern cities. And Buffalo has major sports teams. That's about all to recommend.
KC is awesome, I have lots of friends my age (20s) who live in KC.
I have family in KC who I visit every now and then. I also go there for work now that my company (headquartered in the MPLS area) has an office in KC. It's far from awesome. It's decent, but I wouldn't consider it a place to be for Millennials or someone just above that age range.
I'm a Millenial and live in Indianapolis. Moved here for work. It's cheap and there's enough to keep me busy, but it's extremely sprawled, lacks public transit, isn't scenic, has next to nothing within an hour of most of the metro for outdoor rec, and doesn't have any sense of urbanity that the stereotype seems to crave. Indiana is a very conservative state in flyover country - hardly what these lists tend to fetishize.
Move to Nashville, Austin or Phoenix way better cities for Millenials.
1. Seattle, WA
2. Charlotte, NC
3. Cleveland, OH
4. Atlanta, GA
5. Denver, CO
6. Kansas City, MO
7. Indianapolis, IN
8. Philadelphia, PA
9. Manchester, NH
10. Honolulu, HI
First of all, Seattle, Denver, and Honolulu are three of the most otherworldly cities in the US and hardly what I would call "underrated."
Charlotte doesn't really appeal to millennials -- it's very bland, very cookie-cutter, and very family-oriented. Unlike my recent previous home of Phoenix, for example, another city that's quite bland and cookie-cutter, Charlotte doesn't really have nice weather for most the year, spectacular scenery, a wide array of outdoor recreational opportunities, fun destinations within reasonable driving distance, or a part of town that's equivalent to Scottsdale, not to mention you have to deal with Bible Belt culture mixed with rude transplants from the Northeast. And it's worth mentioning that Charlotte as well as nearby Atlanta have a tendency to attract four different, although not mutually exclusive, types of people:
1. Materialistic people from the Northeast who want bigger, newer, cheaper housing
2. Black people who want more black culture
3. Runaway kids from fundamentalist families in extremely conservative small towns throughout the South
4. And the people who simply gave up on FL
And a lot of those Midwestern cities really leave a lot to be desired, too. Like, as if anyone really wants to live Cleveland, Indianapolis, or Kansas City? Most people who live in those cities were born there and live there because they have to, whether it be for family or work-related reasons, not because they want to.
Most of the transplants between the ages of, say, 22 and 35 that you meet in rapidly growing Sun Belt cities like Atlanta, Dallas, and Phoenix come from those very cities, and they all sing a similar tune -- too cold, too boring, too dilapidated, too crime-ridden, no one left in my hometown (especially those from rural areas), and so forth.
When I lived in Phoenix in particular, I noticed that the kids from the big Midwestern cities who moved to Phoenix rarely, if at all, complained about the lack of public transit or "cultural offerings" like the kids from coastal areas or Texas. Those Midwestern kids didn't seem to complain about the heat, either. They were just so gosh darn happy to be out of the frigid cold and in a warmer, sunnier, more positive environment with much more spectacular scenery. IMO, that speaks volumes of those cities.
I have family in KC who I visit every now and then. I also go there for work now that my company (headquartered in the MPLS area) has an office in KC. It's far from awesome. It's decent, but I wouldn't consider it a place to be for Millennials or someone just above that age range.
It's cheaper than Mpls, Seattle, Denver, Portland, Chicago, etc etc etc, it has a cool, large, and fast-developing downtown core, it has one of the best art museums I have ever been to and a good and growing scene to go with it, it's a college town, and it's a day's drive or less from Denver, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Louisville, Indianapolis, Nashville, Memphis, OKC, and DFW. It's essentially a Portland-sized version of Des Moines or Omaha, which are both also extremely smart choices for young people right now. I have been to and explored KC at least 10-15 times in the last six or seven years; there's obviously nothing comparable to Uptown or Pike Place Market or the Portland MAX, but it is a city with good amenities that is booming and affordable.
I would not hesitate to call Kansas City the most underrated city in the US (or at least one of the top three) - not the best by any means, but the most underrated.
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