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Pittsburgh? Our weather is cloudy, windy, and dreary for four months of the year from December through March; however, the other eight months or so tend to be glorious with plentiful sunshine and a lot of days in the 70's and 80's. Google, Apple, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft, and Disney all have a presence here. UBER has chosen Pittsburgh to develop and roll out its fleet of autonomous vehicles---they drive by me daily as I walk to my office. The trendiest parts of the city are becoming very expensive (by "flyover country" standards) due to the recent hype we've been receiving, but there are still plenty of areas where you can buy a nice home in a safe neighborhood for <$250,000. Our violent crime rate is high, but it's mostly young African-American males in the drug trade targeting other young African-American males in the drug trade in about 10 of the city's 90 neighborhoods.
The OP also wants a place with a lot of sunshine. That's not Indianapolis either.
I've found it to be mostly sunny here, even coming from Colorado. (It's sunny enough here to grow corn, after all.) There are more cloudy days, but it doesn't tend to stay cloudy for days on end.
Not sure if it's important to the OP, but very sunny places can be hot, dry and brown. You'll need a sprinkler system or hose to keep the yard green. Personally, I like the mix of sun and clouds in Indy--it's rainy enough to keep it lush and green, but not so cloudy that it's gloomy.
It would also be more affordable than Chicago. I'm not certain if that would on one income, although Chicago is probably king in the Midwest when it comes to startups.
An affordable tech job center is somewhat of an oxymoron these days. KC has some tech presence and was the pilot city for Google Fiber. It's affordable but scenery isn't that great and the suburbs are mostly conservative though there are family friendly liberal parts of the city like Brookside, Waldo, and the Plaza. We have four seasons and summer is the longest and most uncomfortable. Spring and fall are very pleasant most years and winters are very mild for the Midwest.
KC has winters that have absolutely nothing in common with the Midwest, but quite a bit in common with the South most of the time. A few inches of snow usually shuts the schools down and many people can't drive in winter weather at all. It's pretty sad.
There is a delusional class of people in this country that spew mindless lying BS about Indy and fortunately reality is kicking in and we have a way to combat that.
I almost didn't move to Indy because of the naysayers who warned me about the crime and insular people. I did my own research, though--a LOT of it; it consumed months of my spare time--and saw that some of the same things Colorado and Denver were doing 20 years ago to spur growth were happening currently in Indiana and Indianapolis. Further, housing seemed to be undervalued. Companies were moving their headquarters here; blighted areas were being rehabbed; prison sentencing reformed; abandoned house laws modified; several new nonstop flights added; the state's finances were in good shape. Plus, I'd visited Indianapolis and loved the character of the city.
I found people in Denver who were from here and interviewed them; mostly, they said to stay away from 38th Street (good advice) and that the neighborhood of Irvington was a nice place. I looked up Irvington and emailed an official from the neighborhood, who said there were some bad areas near downtown, but she'd shopped there often during the daytime and never had a problem. I was so confused about the completely different things I'd heard about Indianapolis that I came for a visit and chatted up random people. I met an IT guy who lived in Woodruff Place and said he loved it. I met an Irvington resident of 30 years who said she'd never had any trouble, and that Woodruff Place was great, but surrounded by ghetto. Another lady told me exact streets that were dividing lines between good, bad and worse neighborhoods.
One thing that wasn't quite accurate that I'd heard from former residents was the conservatism of the area. At least, that hasn't been the case where I live. I've seen more people who seem to be openly gay than I ever saw in Denver. Last year the area was full of "Pence Must Go!" signs; I've only seen one sign promoting "religious freedom." This is in a Catholic, blue collar neighborhood.
TL;DR: Stereotypes I'd heard about Indy didn't turn out to be true.
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