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I currently live in San Francisco, my hometown, and am absolutely an urban girl. After living in NYC for 10 years I find this place pretty provincial, and I hate hiking and camping, which is pretty important to people here. I work in arts administration and find very few employment opportunities here for that, (unless I want to work in advertising, which I don't) plus the cost of living here makes that nearly impossible. And I hate the public transportation, but of course, I am used to NYC.
Anyway, I am ready to move, and I wonder if anyone has suggestions for cities around the world that are comparable to San Francisco in climate and beauty but also have world class arts institutions, great public transportation, and that I could afford on an arts administration salary (roughly 50,000USD a year). Moving to NYC is an option just because so many employment opportunities are there, but somehow it seems even too congested for me now that I am 38, and I don't know if I could go back to being that strapped for cash all the time.
Okay, thanks for reading! Look forward to learning more about cities on this forum...
I was going to reply by saying NYC :-( but clearly you are already familiar with the area.
Since you have spent a lot of time in NYC and SF you are going to limit yourself to a small number of older high density cities. Places like NYC, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and (maybe) Washington DC come to mind. I really like SF though, but I find the people to be a little bit flaky (just my opinion).
Are you living in a nice area of SF? Do you have rent control? Because it will be hard to get a rental these days in NYC with only a 50k salary, unless you are married or something. I mean its certainly possible, but I am sure you know what I am talking about.
I'm not sure about the cost of living and therefore how far your salary would go, but I've always heard that Melbourne is very similar to San Francisco. For clarification, I'm talking Australia, not Florida. I've also seen pictures of Wellington, New Zealand and it struck me as very San Francisco-like and I've heard the social climate is similar. Both Melbourne and Wellington probably have public transportation more akin to San Francisco than New York and I'm unsure of what art institutions lie, so I'm basing these recommendations off only a select few of your criteria (weather, social climate, laid back atmosphere, beauty, etc.) that I'm familiar with. In a similar vein, Barcelona is a city that comes to mind.
Within the U.S., you may want to check out Chicago. It really doesn't have many similarities with San Francisco, but does hold quite a few with New York in terms of lots of employment opportunities in the massive art scene, terrific public transportation (albeit, any place in the U.S. will be worse than New York), and for a large city, somewhat cheap. You can live well as a single person on a 50K salary. Chicago is lacking so far as weather and beauty compared to San Francisco, but then again, no one ever accused New York of being a beacon of beauty with fantastic weather so perhaps if you could tolerate New York's shortcomings in those two areas, you could do so for Chicago.
I wholeheartedly recommend Melbourne. I am originally from Germany and have, after many others, made it the city of my choice. Melbourne is many things to different people.
It is looked upon as the ‘southern hemisphere Paris’ and is the most European of the Australian cities. It has all sorts of social hubs and sub-cultures and a great arts scene.
If find Melbourne fun. People are friendly and helpful and in that it is like a provincial town. But then you get the world class fashion and lively music and arts scene, which makes it world-class.
Public transport is great. Melbourne has maintained its famous trams. Weather is great. There are hikers and campers, but so are the bohemian artists, a myriad of multicultural communities, great food…. Melbourne has been voted one of the most livable cities in the world many years in a row.
As far as myself and my family are concerned, we love Melbourne. I also love San Francisco, but have not been to New York. As far as Australian cities go, people compare Sydney to LA, and Melbourne both to New York and San Francisco.
Last edited by Cornerguy1; 11-08-2007 at 10:13 PM..
Weather aside, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal all have similarities to SF in terms of urban atmosphere, amenities, culture, diversity, density, liberal attitudes, etc.
How about Singapore? It reminds me of SF because of its world class everything (airport, food, arts & entertainment, public transportation, diverse residents, etc). The only two drawbacks are weather (high humidity year-round) and crowds, much much more crowds than SF or NYC. But you can easily live there without a car as they have excellent public subways that run all across the country. Not sure how easy it is to find a job for foreigners though.
new zealand is very cold compared to australia so if you want the cali weather id recommend aus and we have great beaches for swimming,surfin,skmiboarding,etc. clean water. If you like a fast australian city id recommend gold coast (not much water in resorviors) , sydney and melbourne but if you like quieter cities adelaide and perth are nice.
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I've also seen pictures of Wellington, New Zealand and it struck me as very San Francisco-like and I've heard the social climate is similar. Both Melbourne and Wellington probably have public transportation more akin to San Francisco than New York and I'm unsure of what art institutions lie, so I'm basing these recommendations off only a select few of your criteria (weather, social climate, laid back atmosphere, beauty, etc.) that I'm familiar with. In a similar vein, Barcelona is a city that comes to mind.
Melbourne
