Plenty of people live in Seattle proper. I do; I walk to work and if I were trendy I’d walk to trendy nightclubs too. Of course, many prefer living in the suburbs. Diff’rent strokes.
Anywhere on the East Coast other than Washington, DC. Even then, the only way I’d live there would be for a decent career.
Philadelphia (i.e., home) tempts me, because it’s such a great city. But my god, the weather sucks in winter and the people are horribly mean. (Though damn they’re loyal sports fans!).
The Southeast is too hot and humid in the summer.
Texas is far too distant from my own personal politics.
In the midwest (where the term ‘major city’ is used rather loosely, for the most part), people tend to be too old-timey nice for my comfort (see above re: Philadelphia).
I refuse to live in any city, town, municipality, or incorporated area. I’m a county boy… 
I will not live in any city, especially Cleveland. I have seen Cleveland, and it is not the kind of place in which I would spend more than a few days.
I don’t like living in in the sleepy small town I’m in now, though I can handle it.
I know sound like a “hick”, but I prefer to see barns and fields from my house. IANA city person.
It’s something I hear people from other cities who have only seen NYC on TV say when a fancy restauarant (IOW a non-chain restaurant with cool mood lighting) or a trendy club (IOW a bar that doesn’t start with "O’ " or “Mc”) moves in. “Oh it’s very ‘New York’.”
But yeah…Boston is an extended frat party with museums and IT firms. It was a fine place to live when I was in grad school, but there doesn’t seem like much of an over 30 scene.
I have to say Detroit or Cleveland.
Also anyplace in upstate NY.
Seattle – too many hippies, too many yuppies (typified by the yuppy chick I sat next to on a plane prattling on to her other seatmate about how she’s “more of a coffee shop kind of person than a bar person” and complaining because airlines don’t usually get her tofu orders right – I hate coffee shops and picky vegetarians), taxes are too high (although I live in D.C. and it’s probably even worse, but I don’t need a car here so that makes up for it somewhat), too crowded, too many cars, too much crappy weather.
Detroit – Do I really need to explain this?
Cleveland – too cold, although I hear it’s somewhat under-rated as a city.
In fact, I doubt I’d live in any Midwest city. I lived in the Midwest for a while and it’s just not my thing. Too cold and too flat. I might consider Chicago if the money was right, but that’s about it.
And none of you consider Brisbane? Seriously, give me Melbourne over Sydney any day, but Brisbane is a beautiful, friendly, clean, safe and cheap-to-live-in city. if we could trade the Broncos for the Rabbitohs, it’d be perfect.
As for cities I’d never live in - London! What’s the fascination with this dump? An awful, awful city. Also, having just spent a year in New York, I have to confess that Newark NJ scares the daylights out of me…
mm
Reading this made me realize how picky I am about places. After giving it some thought, there are very few places in this country that I’d move to voluntarily. I need to be in or close to a major city for the restaurants, culture, and major league sports. I could live in one of the major cities from Washington north along the coast - D.C., Baltimore, Philly, NY, Boston. I like several southeastern cities like Atlanta and Raleigh-Durham and Florida is nice, but I’d never live there. I don’t get along well with the casual rascism and evangelism that is prevalent. (I know everyone in the south is not like that, there are just a lot more people like that there than elsewhere.)
Draw a line from the eastern border of Ohio north and south, and go west until you hit Denver. Everything in between is right out. Minneapolis and Chicago are nice, but too cold for too long. Everything else is either too hot, cold, flat, or religious right. Denver is the only city in the mountain west that I’d live in (and do, well, Boulder). I don’t like the desert cities, either. On the West coast, San Diego for sure, and some of the smaller places outside of LA. LA is just wierd. San Francisco and environs is good, as is Seattle. Portland is too small.
That’s only about a dozen places I’d even consider. What a snob.
Well I live in Detroit and lived in Chicago and never had a problem with either of those.
The only cities I’ve been too that I didn’t like were LA and Boston. Both for driving reasons.
I had no problems driving around NYC, maybe it was just a good day.
I would basically rule out anything in the so-called Sunbelt as well as much of the interior U.S. Essentially, within the U.S., it’s got to be north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, or west coast or Hawaii.