I wish more people would write these, because I'm interested in hearing about the different rationalist communities and where they live. Even if you WOULDN'T recommend a city, that's still useful information (and we don't want to fall into a sampling bias situation! (Also, I'm just curious...)) Here's mine
Columbus, OH; 2 years - The joking catchphrase is "We're not 'Ohio', really!" We are a much more educated and liberal city than people would guess. We're the type of city where the biggest festival is the alternative ComFest, and the biggest parade is the alternative Doo Dah Parade.
Most of the interesting people live in Victorian Village/Short North, an area right between OSU and downtown that has gone through the whole Bohemian gentrification thing in the past decades. It's full of intellectuals and hipsters and the like. If you co-house (most everyone does), rent+utilities is generally about $400 per person, so it's cheap, but safe! Most of the rationalists live in this area. A significant amount of people here don't have cars, because it's within walking or biking distance to most the good stuff. I don't think the public transport is that great though.
If that's not your style, we have lots of various enclaves (students and professors are in Clintonville, WASPS are in Upper Arlington, people-who-wear-suits are in the Arena District, etc). Columbus is often used as a test market because we have a sampling of all types of people.
The LW community- The rationalist community is already pretty awesome, plus it's still in a growth phase, so you can get in near the ground floor as we become awesomer. A year ago, Ohio had zero LW meetups. Now it has three. AFAIK, we have, by FAR, the best gender ratio of all the LW communities. Hang outs tend to be about 1:1 male:female. We are within driving distance to the two other OHLW meetups: Cincy/Dayton, and the new Cleveland/Akron one. Both of those groups also have awesome people, but each group has a distinct personality.
As to the personality of our (Columbus) group, we are friendly, social, humanist-types. Our get togethers tend more towards instrumental rationality and interesting discussions (check out Jesse's posts on www.measureofdoubt.com to see the sorts of topics we cover), and less towards the programming/AI/x-risk memeplex (not that we never discuss those things). The majority of us are poly. Most of us are atheist. Musicians, secular activists, grad students, etc.
Pros- One of the largest universities in the nation (Ohio State University), and a couple other good ones too (Capital and Otterbein). Great cost of living. Very LGBT friendly. Affordable foodie culture. Thriving arts community. Lots of various things to do. (Big enough to have communities for whatever activity strikes your fancy. Small enough that they're communities). Headquarters of Batelle (R&D company). Jeni's Ice Cream. Strong, diverse economy. Don't need a car. But if you have one, Columbus is within a day's drive of more large cities than any other city in the nation.
Cons- The highways at rush hour can be horrid. Road construction is constant; Orange barrels everywhere. (not as bad of a problem if you live in Vic Village, so can walk). We don't have as many tech start-ups. Ohio is terrible for allergies. "Buckeye Fever"- Locals are very....enthusiastic about OSU sports, especially football. You will learn the Buckeye culture, whether you like it or not. Don't drive anywhere near campus on a game day. If you leave the city, you get things like the former Touchdown Jesus.
Neutral- We have Weather (4 distinct seasons. Sometimes all in the same day!). We don't have much Geography (mountains, oceans, lakes...we do have a river though. And lots of woods).
Wow, thanks for this!
I didn't write anything about the San Francisco area because Diego cautioned against writing about the place you were from. But it looks like you managed to produce a useful report without following this rule...
Oh, please write something! The SF area has lots of interesting stuff going on.
Unless I misread, Diego's caution is actually to avoid writing about where you were BORN/grew up. He actually specifies to write about places you've live/d (If you've only visited for a month or less, you're unlikely to really know the city). For example, I've been in Columbus for the past 2 of my 30 years.
So I hope others aren't also holding back for that! And I hope you go ahead and do a write up. We definitely need to get NYC and SF up here.
I would love to hear about other Places I Can Actually Afford too (right now, the comments consist of high cost of living areas (except Cbus)), so I hope people write up about their smaller cities also.
Lund, Sweden - despite not living here that long, just a few months, I've gotten a good grip of it. Pros: Massive university that serves as an intellectual meetingplace, everything from feminism to transhumanism in unofficial lectures, a particle accelerator is being built if you're into that kind of thing, and it's possible to get EVERYWHERE with a bike.
Cons: Difficult to get anywhere fast with a car, the weather can be less than enjoyable, housing prices are fairly high and we might be heading for an economical crash soon, and it would likely seem quite different moving here from outside europe.
In short: Economical value low, cultural value high.
You might not think the economic value was so low if you had children in school, were going to have children, were a child yourself, had significant health expenses, had a criminal record, were poor, or are going to get old eventually.
Economic value pays for the cultural value.
I was basing it on what this seemed to be aimed at - single males in working age with nothing keeping them anywhere else. For younger people, you're right, it's great - my education has so far not cost me a thing, including uni, they're supposed to build more student corridors, and it's a really calm city. Sweden has free healthcare, and great welfare in general.
Update: Wonderful for people up to 25, fairly meh for working age, but there's a larger city within commute range (20 minutes by train), so it's definitely not too bad. But I've yet to hear of anyone with any considerable wealth being from here.
Oxford; 28 years (though limited experience gained from those between ages 0 and 13); beautiful city with a lot going on intellectually, and - for ethically-inclined rationalists - home to the Centre for Effective Altruism; terrible weather, high cost of living.
The weather is excellent if you like rain!
Small city, low crime, ample selection of intellectual events (in term time there will be tens of talks every evening), also FHI. Good commute to London. Very good for cycling.
Oh, and I just saw this: Oxford is best place to live, survey finds. So it's established - close the thread.
In England and according to the people who did that analysis. It doesn't show up here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_most_livable_cities
It would be useful to say something about cultural/geographical background, as they shape the experience.
Less Wrongers are a diverse crowd, more so now than in the early days. I wonder if we could step away from anti-generalizations, generalize and try to say good places to live, under a few assumptions (remember, the idea of an assumption is to assume it, not to claim it is less or more representative of observation class X or Y and then go on to nerdify it.)
Recetly, Xanghai was claimed as an interesting place to teach english.
Just having returned from 15 days in Rio de Janeiro, I may talk a little about it.
Assumptions:
1) Assuming your family lives somewhere else, other state or country.
2) No children yet. Single, Married, Gay, Bisexual, Male, Female.
3) You can muster $1-4k a month (teaching a language, like English, programming, writing, family money, lottery, spy for the CIA)
4) You like science/philosophy, rationality, and not a complete misanthrope (you'd hug five times more than you do if given a chance, and you'd double the number of close friends you have, as well as balance their gender ratio)
My suggested format is city name, time spend there, experience, cons, and pros.
Rio de Janeiro,15 days, Rio is an interesting city. Near the subway you can get to the vast majority of places without a car, a good night out will cost between 15-40 dollars, depending on whether you drink or not, and therefore need a cab home. Nice dinner 12-50. There are millions of people including lots of tourists easily reachable there. So unless you are estonian, you will be able to find someone from home there. Because travellers go to Rio for it's beauty, you can find them in free places, and make friends with locals and foreigners alike, allowing for short term and long term friendships. They say you get tired eventually, but the natural beauty is great and spread. Forests and beaches and mountains abound, all 4 minutes away from a supermarket.There are nearly free public bikes in some areas.
Cons: Science/philosophy are not what Rio is known for. Their universities are good, and you can find youe way there if you can in a good college, but a meeting with a lot of people to discuss two boxing on newcomb is less likely in the following ten years.You can't park in Rio during the day, if somehow you managed to have a car and a carplace in your apartment. You won't buy a place,and it won't be big, an awesome ipanema apartment 190sq meters goes for 2,3 million dollars, and renting a tiny place costs about 1thousand a month.
Pros: Papers to the contrary, weather does impact your life for quite a while if you pay attention to it. Not necessarily the weather itself, but the social oppotunities that arise because of it (moonlight music at the beach, free overhearing music in the bohemian neighborhood, dancing as opposed to freezing, etc...) can be, literally, life-changing. Rio has many people not from Rio, so it is easy to befriend them, they also need new friends. The Couchsurfing community is active and speaks english.
Neutral: Many think that people (specially women) look amazing in Brazil, quite the contrary. Our average look is way below your expectations, but the top5% of people are really better looking to foreigner eyes than the 5%of their own country. Long tails, pun intended.
If you lived for a while in a city that you'd like to recommend to some niche Less Wrongers, report. Avoid doing so for the city you were born in, since a native experience differs violently from a migrant/immigrant experience.