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I love living in Baltimore. I love the trees and the old brick the architecture. I love the non-pretentiousness of the city, yet it still has things to do in terms of the arts. I even like the dinginess and grit of the city. However, I'd like to live in a place that's equally non-pretentious and laidback, but more diverse (there are few immigrant communities here and the LGBT community is surprisingly small).
So, what city is like a just as laidback and down-to-earth as Baltimore, but more diverse? The first city that came to mind is Phily. But I'm worried that what I'd be gaining in diversity I'd be losing in laidbackness. The second city that came to mind was St. Louis, but I've never really been there. Any others?
St. Louis is Baltimore's brother from another mother. The two cities are incredibly similar in lots of ways: Both are independent cities, both metros are nearly the same size, and both are old industrial cities that straddle the north and south.
St. Louis has a relatively large and open LGBT community. While it's not an immigrant magnet compared to large coastal cities, it's quite diverse and multicultural in the city and inner-ring suburbs.
I'm not sure St Louis is especially more diverse than Baltimore. Both are largely black and white cities with relatively small asian and hispanic populations. Wikipedia tells me that it does have a large Bosnian community.
As for Philadelphia, it is hard for me to assess the city's laid-backness, since I've lived in the area since I was six, and so the city's social climate is the default to me. I can say that Baltimore didn't strike me as particularly more laid back than what I'm used to, but I have only visited briefly.
Living in st Louis I can say the burbs are completely white but the inner city is mostly black . the north side you will be lucky to find a white person in sight and the south side is about half and half depending on what neighborhood your in. St Louis really in my opinion isn't that diverse in the inner city. I live in downtown and so I'm always walking in inner city neighborhoods and I'd say it's more like 65% black 30% white rather then wikipedia's 49% black 43%white
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