Best medium-sized city not connected with a large metro area
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It has a healthy business infrastructure and good quality of life overall.
That’s a nice area.
A lot of smaller cities in the Dakota’s are nice like that.
I can think of several in Wisconsin like Wausau-Stevens Point, Sheboygan-Plymouth, Eau Claire... Duluth, MN is pretty cool too.
I'd throw out Bellingham WA as a great option. About 95k in the city, metro of about 230k. It's definitely it's own city with a great downtown and awesome setting next to water. Bonus that it's still a very easy drive to either Vancouver BC (once we can cross borders again) or down to Seattle.
I would take a good look at Grand Junction on the western slope in Colorado. There is plenty of outdoor things to do and the city is the largest city on the west side of the state, and twice the size it was in 1980.
Rochester, MN. Hands down.
Health care (Mayo Clinic and other health care providers) the primary stable employer, strong steady economy, beautiful natural area, affordable, and close enough to the Twin Cities for an easy day trip. Plus, it has a Trader Joe's!
Agreed. The college towns we visited have a steep decline in population. I would not bank on college towns surviving Covid-19.
Some college towns have manufacturing plants and other large employers, so can survive, though not thrive as before. Though manufacturing jobs have declined, by college town has been referred to a blue collar college town.
I'd throw out Bellingham WA as a great option. About 95k in the city, metro of about 230k. It's definitely it's own city with a great downtown and awesome setting next to water. Bonus that it's still a very easy drive to either Vancouver BC (once we can cross borders again) or down to Seattle.
I live in Bellingham and totally agree (though we do have our own weird set of curmudgeons on City-Data that hate any positive mentions of the place).
For reference, before we moved here we considered cities that sort of reminded me of Asheville, and to a lesser extent- Boulder- two areas that I lived in prior... The list composed of Santa Fe, Flagstaff, Missoula, Bozeman, Bend, Eugene, Corvallis, Olympia, Spokane, and Bellingham- all fine, albeit somewhat expensive choices for many- though they could be perceived as inexpensive compared to the bigger cities nearby.
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