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Old 08-09-2017, 04:59 PM
 
Location: Willowbend/Houston
13,384 posts, read 25,594,168 times
Reputation: 10580

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Quote:
Originally Posted by gladhands View Post
You're all over the place, but the only thing that remains consistent is your conflating correlation with causality. Detroit and has had a large middle-eastern population since the 30s, long before the decline. The Middle East and population continues to grow because there's already a large Middle Eastern population in place. People are joining their families. They're going to places where their culture is already represented.

Houston drew a large Vietnamese population after the war because it had a strong economy and a climate similar to that of Vietnam. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings when I said Houston wasn't cool, but it isn't. People move there for jobs. You should be proud of that. It's a good place to live.
Hurt my feelings? Bro, your opinion of where I live doesnt matter to me. Im not from Houston, Im from Los Angeles which is a cool city, but I dont care about that either.

Also, if you think climate is what brought Vietnamese to Houston, you dont know the history of Vietnamese immigration to the US. The ones that came here were fishermen. The ones that went to Dallas were sponsored by churches. You also have a lot of Vietnamese (albeit no where near as much as Houston and Dallas) in OKC and Wichita. Same thing, the churches brought them here.

Youre missing a point here. Pittsburgh still attracts no immigrants to speak of. If you look into the Department of Immigration data, Pittsburgh isnt even listed by itself, its in the "other" category. It gets less than 3,000 immigrants a year, but its no longer a dying city. Its recovered and prospering. It has jobs to offer people of all groups. Yet, immigrants arent moving there at all.

Look at Charlotte. Charlotte has no international connections to foreign countries on a historical basis. Yet, its still attracting a fair amount of international immigrants mainly from Central America. Why not a place like Pittsburgh?

Our definition of cool isnt the same. Houston is an extremely quirky city and very unique. Does it matter to me that you think its not cool? No. Im sure you dont care that I pointed out that Pittsburgh is lily white either.
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Old 08-09-2017, 05:02 PM
 
2,134 posts, read 2,095,609 times
Reputation: 2585
This whole thread is all over the map. As you can see, "coolness" is subjective. One poster said, cities with a lot of tech bros/yuppies makes a place less cool. So I guess Seattle and Austin are uncool now. I'm still trying to figure out the coolness of Pittsburgh other than its history, some architectural gems, and surrounding scenery.
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Old 08-09-2017, 05:22 PM
 
8,090 posts, read 6,894,660 times
Reputation: 9225
Quote:
Originally Posted by DTXman34 View Post
This whole thread is all over the map. As you can see, "coolness" is subjective. One poster said, cities with a lot of tech bros/yuppies makes a place less cool. So I guess Seattle and Austin are uncool now. I'm still trying to figure out the coolness of Pittsburgh other than its history, some architectural gems, and surrounding scenery.
Cool is incredibly subjective. For me cool centers around the and food scenes. I'm not going to argue that Pittsburgh is actually cool (although I think it is), my point is that it's modern reputation is cool:

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh | Travel + Leisure

https://brooklynbased.com/2015/04/24/move-pittsburgh/

https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nat...ity-pittsburgh

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.81438344e626

http://austin.culturemap.com/news/ci...burgh/#slide=0

Pittsburgh has a low cost of living, so creative types can actually live in IN the city. It's the kind of place where two people working in food service can buy a house in a safe neighborhood with transit. A young chef can actually open her own restaurant. These creatives make give the city an arts scene that makes the city desirable for yuppies and techbros.
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Old 08-09-2017, 05:29 PM
 
Location: Manchester
3,109 posts, read 2,891,726 times
Reputation: 3718
Reporting live from Pittsburgh here...just ran to the dry cleaners and there were two men hanging out on the sidewalk speaking Arabic. Then ran to the grocery store down the street, guess what, two men speaking Lebanese. My Pittsburgh neighborhood has at least four cool people in it.
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Old 08-09-2017, 05:32 PM
 
Location: East Side, Indianapolis
192 posts, read 240,281 times
Reputation: 276
Quote:
Originally Posted by gladhands View Post
Cool is incredibly subjective. For me cool centers around the and food scenes. I'm not going to argue that Pittsburgh is actually cool (although I think it is), my point is that it's modern reputation is cool:

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh | Travel + Leisure

https://brooklynbased.com/2015/04/24/move-pittsburgh/

https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nat...ity-pittsburgh

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.81438344e626

What are America's next hipster cities? - CultureMap Austin

Pittsburgh has a low cost of living, so creative types can actually live in IN the city. It's the kind of place where two people working in food service can buy a house in a safe neighborhood with transit. A young chef can actually open her own restaurant. These creatives make give the city an arts scene that makes the city desirable for yuppies and techbros.
And yet "food scenes" are completely subjective metrics, quantified by nothing. This is why these entire conversations (especially in the city vs city forum) are pointless.
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Old 08-09-2017, 05:33 PM
 
Location: East Side, Indianapolis
192 posts, read 240,281 times
Reputation: 276
Quote:
Originally Posted by PghYinzer View Post
Reporting live from Pittsburgh here...just ran to the dry cleaners and there were two men hanging out on the sidewalk speaking Arabic. Then ran to the grocery store down the street, guess what, two men speaking Lebanese. My Pittsburgh neighborhood has at least four cool people in it.
I just saw five hipsters in one place in Indianapolis. Indianapolis is cooler than Pittsburgh! LOL
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Old 08-09-2017, 05:33 PM
 
8,090 posts, read 6,894,660 times
Reputation: 9225
Quote:
Originally Posted by PghYinzer View Post
Reporting live from Pittsburgh here...just ran to the dry cleaners and there were two men hanging out on the sidewalk speaking Arabic. Then ran to the grocery store down the street, guess what, two men speaking Lebanese. My Pittsburgh neighborhood has at least four cool people in it.
I mean, my neighborhood is a full 30% Asian, but aside from the East End and parts of Beechview and Brookline, it's pretty much a black/white city.
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Old 08-09-2017, 06:00 PM
 
Location: Denver, CO
760 posts, read 874,924 times
Reputation: 1521
There is a "coolness" cycle...as a 20 something who is pretty active in the urban nonsense that has been going on lately, here is my opinion.

"Cool" cities cannot be found with data, trends, or by what you see/hear in the media. A place is cool when it is under the radar, and the average Joe has no idea that it exists. The people who make a city cool are the college kids, artists, creatives, service industry workers, transients, musicians, etc...basically, people who would not be holding a white collar job any time soon. The people are fine sharing a 4-6 bedroom house, like they did in college. The cheaper the city, the better, as it allows people to act on their creative interests, and allows a "slacker" lifestyle.

Pre 2010, the cool cities were Denver, Portland, Austin, and Brooklyn (there were a few others as well). I remember seeing a lot of artists and photographers from these places posting stuff online, and remembering how laid back these places seemed. Social Media also wasn't in full force, so those living in these places had to seek it out, or sacrifice something in order to make the move.

After around 2012, the economy started to improved, Millennials were starting to graduate, and many core downtown's in cities were becoming "livable" again. Those slackers who moved themselves into these cheap areas, turned them into something special, and it started a cultural shift back into the cities.

Then the "boring suburban white people" started to get high paying jobs out of college, and wanted to flee from the white bread hell they have grown up in their whole life. They would see the posts on social media of people riding bikes around the city, going to breweries, growing beards, attending cool group events, etc. They wanted to join in on the fun that their "slacker" counterparts have been participating in. The difference is that when these people started to come in, they were coming in with money. They weren't moving somewhere to split a house with 4 people, and work a few service jobs. They had high incomes, or their parents money, to get themselves into the cool spots.

This is when gentrification started in full force. Developers knew that people with money wanted to move to the cities, so that started the luxury apartment boom, followed by the growth in high end restaurants and boutiques. We all know what happens next....when hordes and hordes of people with money want to live somewhere, they end up pushing out all of the existing residents that made those places cool in the first place. The small mom and pop shops that originally put these neighborhoods on the map, started to close down due to the high rent.

At that point, new companies wanted to move themselves where the educated people are moving to. This only accelerated the growth of these cities, as it allowed more people to move somewhere that gave them a good income. There was a problem with this though...all of this change has turned the cities into what everyone was trying to flee from. Downtown areas are slowly becoming the generic, pretentious, white bread, cookie cuter areas that hoards of Millennials were trying to flee for the last few years. By this point, the "average joe" is well aware of the trendy cities, and more and more people try to cram themselves into the fun. At this point...the city has lost it's cool.

So yes, I would say that Denver and Portland are now longer "cool", but are still very popular. There is a difference between the two.

From what I see currently, the current "cool" cities are Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and Detroit. These are all affordable cities with so much potential. After visiting these places, the "slackers" have already started to do their thing, and it won't be long before the trends pick up, and the people over paying for their tiny little studio, in their cookie cuter gentrified neighborhood, will start to want to join in on the fun.


Here is a good way to test if a city is cool. Pick a place that seems to be growing, and objectively has a decent core. Tell any random person that you want to move there. If their reaction is something like "Your moving where"?!?!? ....then that city might be cool.

Sorry this is a long and exaggerated post. I'm also describing this as I hear it from others, not as any absolutes. Sorry if it's heavy on generalizations
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Old 08-09-2017, 06:01 PM
 
37,795 posts, read 41,491,884 times
Reputation: 27057
Quote:
Originally Posted by kyle19125 View Post
But who sets the "cool factor"? There's a large population of people in their 30s and 40s on up to 50 (20% of the population) who have their own definition of "cool" that doesn't involve bearded clones swilling craft beer, sporting t-shirts with ironic quotes or working in the IT industry. To put it into perspective it's sort of ridiculous that a demographic that consists of 20% of the overall population (ages 21-34) dictates "coolness", and feel certain cities that continue to thrive and evolve that are not overrun with Millennials aren't losing any sleep over it.
As it was stated earlier in the thread, like it or not, the presence of a significant amount of Millenial/young Gen X hipsters is more or less the gauge for "cool" within this particular context.
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Old 08-09-2017, 06:14 PM
 
Location: Clovis Strong, NM
3,376 posts, read 6,073,017 times
Reputation: 2031
I'd throw Albuquerque into that mix. I tell people about living in NM when hanging around in Denver or Austin. As worried as all these kids are about crime, they all think ABQ is some sort of hellhole, while Santa Fe is where it's at.

Seems like crime fears are quite overblown among all generations.
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