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My partner will be graduating with a Bachelors in Computer Science next year, and we are starting to do some research of options where we might want to move once he does! Of course we know a lot of it will just be about where he gets a job, but just interesting and fun to think about the possibilities anyway.
We of course know the big cities in IT...bay area, boston, nyc, seattle, dc, austin...but how do some of the upcoming 'tech hub' type cities I often read about compare? And also how gay-friendly are they?
Some places we've read about include:
Raleigh
Huntsville
Lexington
Kansas City
Salt Lake City
Detroit
Richmond
Baltimore
Any others??
And how do they all rate in terms of liveability, IT job opportunities, and gay friendliness? Thanks!!
First and foremost, congratulations! I'd suggest you use the Human Rights Campaign's metric for gay friendly cities to see an objective look at what each offers. I've provided the link below:
Of the cities you mentioned, Kansas City and Baltimore scored perfect scores. Each offers a diverse and stable economy and the things you would expect from a big city in terms of cohesive neighborhoods, jobs, thriving arts scenes, nightlife and culture. Salt Lake City would be a close second, and is experiencing a healthy growth rate. Baltimore is the most liberal of these cities and is located in a blue state, however, with high crime and crumbling infrastructure, the city becomes less attractive. You should definitely take a look at Nashville, which is an up and coming IT city, especially in health care, call centers, distribution. Nashville is very affordable, and is one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. It offers a great quality of life, young, college educated population, easy place to live, night life, urban amenities, and attractive real estate. However, it's gay-friendliness is often overshadowed by the anti-gay politics of the state it's located in.
These aren't mid-size cities, but, I have to include Denver and St. Louis in your list of places to consider given the criteria you mentioned. They are the epitome of gay-friendly cities, and offer tons of neat things to do. I do not know enough about the other cities to give you much information on gay-friendliness.
Any up-and-coming Tech city is of interest, but I am particularly interested in the mid-sized ones...I know there is a pretty wide population variation in the ones I listed, so pretty open definition of that I guess!
Any up-and-coming Tech city is of interest, but I am particularly interested in the mid-sized ones...I know there is a pretty wide population variation in the ones I listed, so pretty open definition of that I guess!
Yeah I was going to say that Chicago is an up and coming tech city, for example. Philadelphia possibly to an extent. Then of course there's Boston, which has a city population of just over 600,000. Minneapolis at just under 400,000 as well. The Raleigh/Durham area is good. I'm not sure about LGBT relations in Raleigh/Durham area, but the other cities I just listed are good for that.
Of that list I would say Kansas City right now. There are several large firms that are expanding and hiring like crazy (especially IT related):
- Cerner (expected to add over 15k employees over the next 10 years)
- Sprint (if the T-mobile deal goes through, Sprint will be close in size to Verizon)
- Garmin (expanding its market)
Kansas City is becoming somewhat a tech hub, especially with Google Fiber. ATT is now bring their version of Google Fiber to Kansas City to compete.
KC also seems very gay friendly. There are quite a few gay bars, and gay pride events. I have several gay friends and they all love KC and it's openness to others.
My vote probably goes to Minneapolis, but I'd also add St. Louis to list of options as well.
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