Lots of people tell me they’d like to live in the Bay Area. But who wants to put up with being in traffic jams for hours or paying through the nose for real estate? SO what US city is going to be the next San Fran or Seattle? Where would you invest your property development money for a nice place to live that will become trendy within five years?
Orlando.
If I had the money, I would be buying property on the outskirts of St. Louis here. Mainly up in the O’Fallon area. The place is growing like wildfire!
In my neck of the woods (the Inland North West), Spokane Washington is heralded as the next big thing.
As far as I know, the people that make such claims are basing this on the sole fact that the city and surrounding suburbs are heavily wired with underground fiber optic cables (I’ve no idea what other cities in the US may be also). Therefore, these seers of Spokane suggest that many computer/internet oriented businesses will relocate or open large branch offices due to the optimum internet connection.
I’m no economist, but I’d have to guess that that reason alone is not nearly enough to draw businesses.
I will say though, when I moved up here from SoCal, I got to drive across most of Oregon and through a chunk of Eastern Washington. That was about 2 years ago, and even then there was alot of obvious growth: highway expansions, apartment complexes being built, bridges reinforced, etc.
Even now, the apartment complex I live in is expanding. There are U-Haul trucks coming and going constantly, as well as alot of out of state plates on the cars that regularly show up in recently paved driveways.
Take all that to mean what you will 
Newark, New Jersey.
Trust me on this one.
Up and coming? It’s been a few years, but last time I came within 10 miles of the place, it’s stink alone kept me from actually entering the city limits.
You have some inside information on that one? Like, perhaps some new scientific method of razing and rebuilding compost heaps in less than a year or something?
I’ve heard the Biloxi, MS - Pascagoula area is going to be growing quickly.
I’d say Indianapolis, where I just moved to, but they’re going nowhere until they switch to daylight savings. Lots of growth, lots of new industries and techs coming to town, great convention sites, etc. But damned if people from out of town have ANY idea what time it is. Is it Chicago time, is it New York time?
They should call it Indianatine.[sup]1[/sup]
[sup]1[/sup]Vague Seinfeld reference
Maybe Sacramento, although winter there is no picnic. It’s 100 miles to Lake Tahoe and 100 miles in the other direction
to San Francisco. The spring/summer/early fall months are fabulous. There used to be little or no cultural activities
but I think that has changed. It’s a nice size, not too big, stable downtown area. You can bike along the river
all the way from Folsom to downtown. And don’t forget the Sacramento Kings, AMERICA’S TEAM!!!
Damn, wonder why I moved…
I was lucky enough to buy a house in Denver a little more than two years ago.
I just sold it, and about a month ago I moved to …
(RastaHomie)
Up and coming — I can say that residential real estate close to downtown Orlando costs about as that in my Denver neighborhood a couple of years ago – $130 to $160 a square foot. Downtown’s active, there’s new residential development there, and the Orlando area seems to have a younger, hipper feel than most other Florida cities, Miami Beach notwithstanding.
I don’t know if Orlando will experience gentrification at the same level as Denver, where neighborhoods that were once considered dangerous ghettos are “bleaching” in a matter of months. There are teardowns and scrapeoffs in some neighborhoods, though. The small town where I work as an urban planner is experiencing mostly high end development, and long-vacant lots close to the town center are giving birth to 4,000 square foot retro-Queen Anne style houses. Orlando … maybe.
I think Buffalo has everything it needs to be the Seattle of this decade – lots of colleges and universities, plenty of bohemian neighborhoods, wonderful residential architecture, walkable neighborhoods, a safe downtown that is filled with buildings ideal for loft conversion, almost every airline in the United States serving the place, and a nightlife that cities twice its size would die for. Unfortunately, it seems as if there’s more twentysomething and thirtysomething Buffalonians living in Charlotte, North Carolina than Buffalo itself, and a continued brain drain won’t do anything to help the city’s image as a blue-collar, behind-the-times burg where feathered hair and mullets are still in, Bob Seger still rules the airwaves, and having a '72 Nova with a small-block and a four-barrel Holley carburetor is more of a status symbol than a college degree.
First, who wants to live in a city that’s about to experience explosive development? I’m more interested in the undiscovered gems. (Not that I know any.)
My votes go to Charleston, S.C.; Charlotte, N.C.; Asheville, N.C. and Richmond, VA. None exactly “undiscovered,” but all offer nice weather, friendly natives, and reasonable real estate prices.
- Are Santa Fe and Albuquerque ruined yet? *
Santa Fe is. Albuquerque – I’m not so sure. Is the Nob Hill area gentrifying?
Las Cruces – forget about Mesilla. If it’s not a house that’s owned by a yuppie or an artist, it’s a nice sized parcel that’s been owned by one family since the Spanish land grant days, and they aren’t looking to let go of it for a few hundred more years yet. Consider Mesilla “discovered.” The built environment of the Mesquite Old Town district offers the same character, with beautiful, dirt cheap (no pun intended) adobe homes, but among the locals the neighborhood’s reputation as a barrio has stifled development. It also has the same problem as Mesilla – old, old families that have owned the land for umteen generations, which will stay vacant, the Virgin of Guadalupe willing …