Hm…what about Minneapolis? Good IT community and one of the best health care systems in the country.
Of course, the downside is that you’ll freeze your eyeballs out.
If you’re into summer-year-round you might try San Diego:
Upsides:
-Great medical school at UCSD (uncertain if there’s a PA program, though)
-Three major universities in the area
-Beautiful beaches and public spaces
-Not totally consumed by suburbs nor L.A. blight yet
-Great Mexican food and culture – Mexico 15 miles to the south
Downsides:
-Horrifically expensive (median house price for two bedroom ranch = $435,000+)
-Yicky, yicky traffic during rush hours
Though Salt Lake City appears on the “depressing cities” thread, I’ll have to disagree here in some aspects. I grew up in Utah and I think that SLC offers some lovely things.
Upsides:
-Kick-ass medical school at University of Utah
-Some of the most beautiful, leafy-tree neighborhoods in the West
-Some of the most breathtaking mountains in the world
-Extremely clean city with good public services
-Very low crime rate
-Surprising amount of cultural events in SLC, Park City and Sundance
-Best skiing on earth (the license plate logos are true)
-Still affordable
-SLC, while “ran” by Mormons, actually has a population of more than half that don’t identify as such
Downsides:
-Bad pollution in the SLC and Utah Valleys (inversion effect from mountains)
-Sometimes repressive and close-minded culture
-Good Mexican food-challenged
-Ethnically and racially diverse-challenged
-Traffic is beginning to be a big problem
How I missed the fact that you were on the other side of the Trace from me all this time is beyond me ! :eek:
Anyway, my brother-in-law is in a PA program in NYC, and he just loves it. 'Course, he and my sister (she’s a native Mississippian) have lived in Manhattan for years and are used to it. If it’s just for two years, you might give it a whirl just for fun.
Well, I personally enjoy Pittsburgh, PA. A typical summer and a slightly but not really colder winter, things to do in all directions including most professional sports, and very rich in history. Housing is cheap, too, or is atleast south of it.
Course, I don’t live there…
Thanks to everyone for the responses. I do believe my choice has gotten harder, which means you did a great job of selling your choices. (Ringo, the check from the Houston City Council is in the mail! 
)
Oh, I’m not a native. One day I am going to post “Ask the Korean/Los Angeles Guy, married to a Black Woman, Living in the Deep South Thread” which will get a huge amount of response or no responses at all.
Philadelphia dweller checking in:
IMHO Philly’s your value leader in Big Northeastern cities.
Medical schools: UPenn, Drexel, Jefferson, and Temple.
Real Estate: The cost of renting an apartment downtown is basically 1/2 that of Boston, and 1/3 of New York. Or if you’re considering buying a home, real estate values may be inflated in certain neighborhoods of Philadelphia, but they’re still far below comparable properties in Boston or NY.
Philadelphia is probably the best restaurant city on the East coast.
Philadelphia’s park system is simply amazing. The city had the foresight to purchase most of the land along its major rivers and today they are preserved as city parks.
Why not consider a new country and move to Toronto?
- Beautiful
- Highly accessible, air hub, direct flights to a hundred or more US cities so you can see the relatives
- Lots to do; shows, art, sports, parks, amusements, zoos, exhibitions, festivals, you name it, all the amenities of a great metropolis, and yet just an hour or two from cottage country
- Very strong, growing, multidimensional economy
- Wildly multicultural city with all the benefits of activity and diversity that brings
- Good heath care
- Good schools from kindergarten right through to graduate schools
- Great public services as long as you’re smart enough to live in Mississauga
- Traffic isn’t bad for a city this size. Not that that’s saying much.
- Taxes are about the US average so that’s not even too bad
- Only get tornados and hurricanes like once every 30-40 years; no mudslides, earthquakes, or brush fires
The disadvantage, of course, is that this time of year it’s cold. Really cold.
What happens when you mix Alaska and San Francisco?
Seattle!! Seattle!! Seattle!!
Perks:
- Downtown area that is really quite safe and vibrant, instead of being the armpit of the city.
- Genuine “neighborhoods”. And lots of them. A viable city to not own a car in, though perfectly possible if you like.
- Nearby access to wonderful nature environments. I know just about every city claims that, but in Seattle, it is actually true.
- Water in every direction makes for great boating and excellent views, as well as fresh seafood.
- Good nightlife, good bars. Its no LA or New York, but for a city this small we do rather well.
- Competitive economy with Microsoft and Boeing.
Drawbacks:
- Lack of sunshine in Winter months makes folks a bit depressed.
- Housing isnt cheap.
- Just doesnt seem to be great Mexican food here outside of taco-trucks.
Intangibles:
- Heavily, heavily democratic. Can be seen as a blessing or a curse I suppose. If need be, Seattle can, by itself, bring the rest of the state kicking and screaming into blue territory.
Actually I don’t have a problem with that. But I thought waiting lists and entry applications were involved?
Along with the Texas Medical Center, the Houston area boasts 2 medical schools- UTMB (University of Texas Medical Branch) in Galveston, and Baylor College of Medicine smack in the middle of the Medical Center. (I recall it being between St. Luke’s and Methodist somewhere.)
I have to imagine that one or both offers a physician’s assistant program.
P.S. Galveston’s only about 30-40 minutes south of downtown Houston.
Pittsburgh PA is a good place to live. There’s lots to do here. There’s a world-class zoo, several museums, two professional sports teams, the cultural district, the strip district, lots of great restaurants and clubs and so on. Cost of living isn’t exceptionally high, either.
The single biggest drawback to living here is driving. Getting from point A to point B in Pittsburgh is never simple and the difficulties increase exponentially at rush hour.
Gaithersburg, Maryland, a CHARACTER COUNTS! city.
One of Money magazine’s hottest cities
City history here.
Well, since no one else from NY’s Capital Region has chimed in, I feel it is my duty to do so. (And I’m working on a brochure promoting the region here at work so the timing’s great.) The Capital Region includes the cities of Albany, Schenectady, and Troy as well as the surrounding areas. It’s positives:
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Location, location, location. It’s an easy drive to NYC, Boston and Montreal so there is access to the big cities but without the big-city cost, congestion and crowding. Plus, you can go +/- 20 minutes in any direction from any of the cities here and be in really rural areas. So if you want country living with city access, we’ve got it!
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Outdoor living/adventure. Year-round fun outdoors. We don’t have any of those pesky hurricanes, tornadoes (well occassionally, but they’re not as bad as other parts of the country), earthquakes, wild fires, etc. We do have great areas for hiking, camping, boating, skiing, rock/ice climbing, horseback riding, etc. We’re surrounded by the Adirondack, Berkshire, Green, and Catskill Mountains. Plus, we’re only a few hours from the ocean and beaches. However, winter is about 6-7 months out of the year. (Well, you can’t have everything! Unless you’re a skier.)
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Lots of high-tech industries, including a big push into the nanotech and biotech fields.
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Low cost of living compared to NYC, Boston and other major metro areas.
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Great educational system. Ranked 3rd in the country for access to education recently. (Sorry, I don’t have the link at my finger tips at the moment… if anyone really wants it, I’ll go find it.)
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Culture. (Who’da thunk it?) Summer home of the NYC Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Multiple museums. Lots of historic sites in the region and in short driving distance. Plus access to the incredible cultural experiences of NYC and Boston.
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Sports. (???!!!) Summer home of the NY Giants! Also great minor-league and college sports. Saratoga Race Track - the oldest race track in the country - open for a 6-week season every summer.
Unfortunately, I don’t know about PA programs, but there are a lot of colleges and universities in the area, and one of them might have what you’re looking for.
(How’d I do? The brochure I’m putting together on this has lots of pretty pictures and more depth to the descriptions, but this is the gist of the contents.)
I’ll jump in here and mention two cities I like a lot.
Santa Barbara, CA, is absolutely beautiful, great weather, nice little downtown, not too far from LA, not too close to LA.
Indianapolis is one of my favorite cities in the US. For its size (about a million people) it has an outstanding downtown. You can walk anywhere downtown and not see a vacant storefront. There’s stuff going on all over downtown, plus there’s a great enclosed mall right in the center of the city. Some of the outer/suburban areas are nice, but Indy’s downtown is fantastic.
I’ll second taxi78cab’s suggestion of the NY Capital Region. there is lots to do, lots of IT-type jobs around, and cost of living (especially in cities like Troy, Latham, and Clifton Park) is cheap.
I am also going to add Burlington, VT. It is on several “top ten” lists of places to live in the US. It boasts a low crime and unemployment rate, good educational system, plenty of things to do (several theatre groups, movie theaters, concerts, boating, skiing, biking, hiking, etc…) It’s less than two hours from Montreal, too! There are several colleges in the greater Burlongton area (UVM, St. Michael’s, Champlain College, CCV, etc…) Although I am unsure of any offer a PA program.
Downsides: The weather. It can get cold in the winter. Plus, snow is a problem if you have a car.
Cost of living. While certainly not as much as NY or LA, it is high for a city its size. In the past decade or so, there has ben a population boom, and now ‘fake’ suburbs have cropped up with cookie cutter homes. They are way overpriced for their size, etc…, but they are in demand because a lot of people moving there don’t want to live in the city, and they don’t want to live more thna 10 minutes from it. However, if you are willing to live 15-30 minutues away from the city, rent/home prices go down a lot.
LOL, Checked out that Money Best Places to Live. Houston looks great until you get to crime. Fess up Ringo, is it as bad as it sounds?
Well, IMHO, no.
First thoughts: I grew up (mostly) here, and I’ve lived here most of my life. Crime is not really a daily worry for me. I walk the streets of my area at night without much concern, and the streets of downtown as well, as that area has transformed over the last decade into a thriving area of bars, restaurants and downtown residential facilities. There’s a lifestyle that people live now that didn’t exist fifteen years ago, and parts of west and south downtown now remind me very much of Upper Manhattan.
More thoughts: Houston is one of the biggest cities in the country, and it’s compared to 1260 metropolitan areas on that website. I’d imagine, then, that the list includes some far sleepier areas.
I was, initially, surprised to see that we had a Personal Crime Risk of 183 and a Property Crime Risk of 166, compared to the index average of 100 for both categories, for the entire data base of 1260 areas. Then I took a quick look at some of the cities I’d looked at in the cost of living thread, and found:
Location New York City Chicago LA San Francisco Atlanta
Personal Crime Risk 193 363 254 189 531
Property Crime Risk 112 165 155 153 377
So, compared to other large cities, Houston doesn’t come out as all that risky. As an aside, I’m just WAGing that NYC’s relatively low Property Crime Risk is at least partly attributable to the fact that a large portion of the crime stats I’ve seen is comprised of Burglary of a Motor Vehicle incidents that would naturally be lower in a city where many residents don’t own automobiles.
Hardly a definitive research effort, I did take a look at the Houston Police Department’s Crime Statistics site. I live in area generally referred to as Montrose, which is next to downtown and is apparently HPD’s IA30 beat. For the most recent month available, October 2004, there were 117 offense reports, made up of: Robbery 10, Aggravated Assault 6, Burglary 31, Burglary of a Motor Vehicle 47, Auto Theft 7, Narcotic Drug Laws 2, Driving While Intoxicated 14. That’s all reports, not just arrests.
For the whole Central Division, which includes downtown and most of West Houston inside the 610 Loop, there were 541 offense reports in October for an area with 173,000 residents and thousands of daily commuters. Notably, no homicides.
I don’t know what Clinton is like. The above might seem like an awful lot of crimin’ to you, but, frankly, for the center of a big city, it’s pretty calm.
Yet a few more thoughts: The CNN site is interesting, but as the size of an area considered increases, averages of anything start to mean less and less. While it warmed my blood a bit to note that we have ~4x the average # of bars within a 30 mile radius, our relatively poor showing of 5 (against an index of 7.09) museums within 30 miles made me ponder the method, as I, living next door to the Museum District, have a trifle more than that within walking distance, but within the 600 mi.² of Houston Proper, or the 8800 mi.² of the Houston Metropolitan Area, you can probably find a spot that’s more than 30 miles from 5 museums. I noted that they list 0 museums within a 30 mile radius for Austin, and it’s not that there are no museums in Austin.
Conclusion: You can have a doggone good life here in Houston. C’mon down - we’ll throw you a Dopefest.
Someplace that’s really cold, expensive and has horrible traffic?
I’ll second Denver for a bigish city, Fort Collins for a mediumish city. Boulder sucks.
You’ve been to Toronto!
I should have double checked against other cities. It was just jarring, when you go down the stats on Houston, and everything looks great until you get to the last thing: crime. “Nice, real nice, great, WTF is up with the crime!”
Double checked Jackson of which Clinton is a suburb of.
Personal Crime Risk: 476
Property Crime Risk: 404
Meanwhile I get asked all the time if I’m glad I left all that crime in LA. I’m like, are you kidding me? Crime is much worse here. They look at me crazy.