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That's just a matter of preference... Why is that fact so bewildering?
And people are usually looking at other criterea for a choosing a city besides simply scenery, including things like jobs or amenities like nightlife or cultural attractions or restaurants or weather or schools or so on... Otherwise people would be really excited about living in a place like Port Angeles, Washington, which is a completely crappy town with nothing going for it but an amazing setting.
Just like some people prefer to live in neighborhhood with old brownstones and other people want a large single family home with an acre of land--there's nothing wrong with either choice, it's just preference.
Yeah there are a lot better settings along the coast than SF or LA, they just don't have the amenities...mostly small towns.
To me the scenery makes a huge difference. Take the city itself, lots of the amenities my city has (Seattle) can be found in many other cities- tall buildings, cool restaurants and hangouts, major league sports clubs, etc. What makes it special is the setting- to be able to go on an evening after work with my wife to the waterfront to have a picnic watching the sun set over the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains. To go out on weekends hiking and doing nature photography in the mountains within an hour or two of the city, these are things we do here- these are the things that make the city special. I'd go nuts if I was in a place like Kansas City where there was nothing scenic to go see and enjoy on the weekends. (I know because I moved here a few years ago from a city in the Midwest)
To me, the natural area around and just outside of a city is an extension of what that city has to offer. Sure Mount Rainier is not IN Seattle, not a PART of the city of Seattle, but you can see it from here, and an easy 2 hour drive gets you up to spectacular trails and meadows on the mountain itself looking at scenery that is almost unrivaled anywhere else. To me that is just one more amenity that my city has to offer.
I don't think natural scenery is overrated. To me, scenery is just as important, not more important, but just as important, as man-made city amenities. The best cities are cities that have both the landscape and the cityscape.
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