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I'm looking for a medium city (at least 100,000-1.5 million population) in the NW/SW/NE/Mid-Atlantic/Midwest with:
1. Affordable, accessible housing (not old buildings with three flights of stairs everywhere)
2. Balance of manmade and nature
3. Safe-low crime, at least in some neighborhoods
4. Safe-no natural disasters (hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, mudslides, wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc.)
5. Diverse and numerous cultural activities
6. Large population of dancers
7. Temperate-40 to 70 degrees almost always
8. Suburban areas
9. Significant populations of Jews and Asians
Do any places come to mind? I basically have no clue where this is.
Pittsburgh is pretty affordable and has virtually no severe natural disasters.
The atlantic coast gets hit with hurricanes. California has forest fires. Hawaii has volcanoes. Some part of the midwest has 'tornado alley'. Pacific Northwest sits on the Cascadia subduction zone. Can't think of anything Pittsburgh gets though.
Pittsburgh has a sizable Jewish community, and there are lots of asian students enrolled in colleges in the city.
Not temperate though. You get four seasons. If you want temperate, you would go to the west coast, where there are natural disaster risks. Maybe there's some other temperate place that's safe. You probably won't get everything on your list but Pittsburgh gets you close.
I think the weather aspect will the toughest part, but you would have quite a few choices based upon the other criteria within all of those regions.
Other Interior Northeastern cities/areas(PA, Upstate NY, Western MA, etc) would also fit minus the temperate weather.
Syracuse does very well in terms of natural disasters and the city’s East Side is a diverse area of town in part due to colleges/universities/hospitals nearby. It is historically where the Jewish community is concentrated and has a relatively substantial and diverse Asian population due to the previously mentioned institutions(also a diverse refugee/immigrant Asian community on the North Side). It also has a pretty high Black population that is generally working to upper middle class. This all spills over into DeWitt(Janesville-DeWitt SD), an adjacent suburb.
If you like other aspects of the arts, also on that side of town, Syracuse University has on and off campus art galleries: The Syracuse University Art Galleries
There’s Syracuse Stage, it is the professional theater for the city/area and is where Syracuse University’s Drama Department is located: https://www.syracusestage.org/index.php
40-70 year round can really only be found in small coastal towns of the PNW or high-altitude mountain towns in the west. But those areas basically never have any Jews. Some have Asians. And the PNW towns would have earthquakes and possible forest fires depending on where. The mountain towns would definitely get snow in winter and have forest fires.
So basically sorry I can't think of anything like that. Closest I'd say is maybe Eureka, CA. It's FAR smaller than you're looking for, though. But. It has the weather. Only natural disaster to worry about would be earthquakes but those don't affect Eureka like a lot of cities in CA. Lots of nearby nature. It's majority white, but not to the point that it's some small town in the Midwest. I have no idea how affordable the housing is, the crime stats, or the population of dancers. There probably are not many Jews there. As a Jew myself, I know we tend to stick to the largest, most prosperous, most urban, etc. metros.
What are some things you could do without? More temperature variation? Smaller population? Different demographic preferences?
I think the weather aspect will the toughest part, but you would have quite a few choices based upon the other criteria within all of those regions.
Other Interior Northeastern cities/areas(PA, Upstate NY, Western MA, etc) would also fit minus the temperate weather.
Syracuse does very well in terms of natural disasters and the city’s East Side is a diverse area of town in part due to colleges/universities/hospitals nearby. It is historically where the Jewish community is concentrated and has a relatively substantial and diverse Asian population due to the previously mentioned institutions(also a diverse refugee/immigrant Asian community on the North Side). It also has a pretty high Black population that is generally working to upper middle class. This all spills over into DeWitt(Janesville-DeWitt SD), an adjacent suburb.
If you like other aspects of the arts, also on that side of town, Syracuse University has on and off campus art galleries: The Syracuse University Art Galleries
There’s Syracuse Stage, it is the professional theater for the city/area and is where Syracuse University’s Drama Department is located: https://www.syracusestage.org/index.php
Also, Syracuse University is known for its high Jewish student population and has had a big increase in its Asian student population in recent years. 2017 Top 60 Schools by Jewish Population (7th on the private list)
There are about 4 or 5 other Jewish temples/synogogues between the East Side and DeWitt, along with the Hebrew School and JCC on the same campus in DeWitt: Synagogues : Jewish Federation of CNY
Albuquerque has maybe 6-8 of your wish-list items but the city+metro is less than 1 million so "significant" numbers of Jews and Asians will still be small. They have a presence but maybe not in large numbers. Don't know about dancers but I suspect there are a bunch. It will get a little warmer than 70 during summer but not the extreme heat. Low humidity (10% today) takes the edge off.
I think the weather aspect will the toughest part, but you would have quite a few choices based upon the other criteria within all of those regions.
Other Interior Northeastern cities/areas(PA, Upstate NY, Western MA, etc) would also fit minus the temperate weather.
Syracuse does very well in terms of natural disasters and the city’s East Side is a diverse area of town in part due to colleges/universities/hospitals nearby. It is historically where the Jewish community is concentrated and has a relatively substantial and diverse Asian population due to the previously mentioned institutions(also a diverse refugee/immigrant Asian community on the North Side). It also has a pretty high Black population that is generally working to upper middle class. This all spills over into DeWitt(Janesville-DeWitt SD), an adjacent suburb.
If you like other aspects of the arts, also on that side of town, Syracuse University has on and off campus art galleries: The Syracuse University Art Galleries
There’s Syracuse Stage, it is the professional theater for the city/area and is where Syracuse University’s Drama Department is located: https://www.syracusestage.org/index.php
Thanks for the very detailed suggestion. I am concerned about having to deal with the snow, though. Housing budget's under $800 for a one bedroom. I don't care at all about walkability or transit. I need to be able to drive up to my destination, park, and enter.
Thanks for your reply. My original list was in order of priority, if that helps. So numbers 1-6 are my absolute essentials and the rest are strong preferences. I can go up to around 80 on the temp, but 90 starts to be a major problem. I've done the whole live indoors every summer routine while living in S FL. It wasn't fun. I can't shovel snow because of carpal tunnel. I tend to make friends with Asians and Jews, which is why I added that to my list.
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reply to ckhthankgod
