I think it's a bit too simplistic; specifically, some of the options were like "would you rather live in city a), with high walkability, high paying jobs, great food, and beaches OR city b), with...
I think it's a bit too simplistic; specifically, some of the options were like "would you rather live in city a), with high walkability, high paying jobs, great food, and beaches OR city b), with mediocre food, cold winters, and no jobs".
Like I think you should probably at least get some cons for every city - I know some of them are subjective, like the weather, but is "mediocre food" something anyone wants? Maybe the british?
Interesting that this is what you read, as it is about restaurants. I can see this not being a big deal for someone who rarely goes out to eat and mostly does home cooking. Having said that, the...
mediocre food
Interesting that this is what you read, as it is about restaurants. I can see this not being a big deal for someone who rarely goes out to eat and mostly does home cooking.
Having said that, the comparisons did seem a bit odd to me as well.
You can just choose to set your exact settings. It's trying to help people narrow down who don't know (although it asks WAAAY too many questions to calibrate imo).
You can just choose to set your exact settings. It's trying to help people narrow down who don't know (although it asks WAAAY too many questions to calibrate imo).
Honestly, mediocre food is what you get at fast food, pizzerias, chain restaurants. That's likely what they're referring to... non "fine dining". There's no really good term for it... common food,...
Honestly, mediocre food is what you get at fast food, pizzerias, chain restaurants. That's likely what they're referring to... non "fine dining". There's no really good term for it... common food, maybe?
Probably would've been easier to ask about access to fine dining. Plenty of small to midsize cities have restaurant variety, just nothing that'd make the Michelin guide or have a tasting menu.
Probably would've been easier to ask about access to fine dining. Plenty of small to midsize cities have restaurant variety, just nothing that'd make the Michelin guide or have a tasting menu.
It's bad wording to be sure, but there's really only two classes of restaurants to a number of people... places you go to when you want high quality food, and places you go to because you know the...
It's bad wording to be sure, but there's really only two classes of restaurants to a number of people... places you go to when you want high quality food, and places you go to because you know the food will be edible and acceptable. They break down further (drive-through vs sit-down), but those are essentially the tiers.
I do think mediocre is a loaded word, and wish they'd chosen something like "family restaurant."
A family restaurant can be excellent though. It just depends. I think chain v independent is a better breakdown. Independent can be inconsistent but with some real winners.
A family restaurant can be excellent though. It just depends. I think chain v independent is a better breakdown. Independent can be inconsistent but with some real winners.
This is the millenial version of those early internet quizzes eh :) My top result was Lexington, Kentucky, probably because I chose "cheap housing" any time it came up, no matter what it was...
This is the millenial version of those early internet quizzes eh :)
My top result was Lexington, Kentucky, probably because I chose "cheap housing" any time it came up, no matter what it was bundled with. Except for hot year round, that's my only hard no go: if it's already hot it's just going to be perpetually on fire in 20 years.
The most useful feature is the sliders on the result page, under Tweak results. After fiddling with it such that I only have strong opinions about cheap housing and NOT hot year round, the results were Flint MI, Detroit MI, and Erie PA.
Aside from the climate being a show stopper issue, Free Public Heath Care is also a big one for me. Based on the tweaked results and climate/health care, I guess I will continue to be Canadian.
Edit: I grew up in Hong Kong and Vancouver, which were already world class cities with nearly all of these good qualities except Heat for HK, and except cheap housing for either. There's no point asking me where I'd rather live if cheap housing wasn't a concern: I was already there, and I gave up all of that for cheap housing. I'd even briefly considered moving to the deep freeze + summer heat of the prairies if it would be even cheaper than Atlantic Canada. The sad fact is that in a capitalist society, having capital means nearly everything: with money I can enjoy beach and forest and great food by travelling. Without money I won't have the time to enjoy the beach down the block or the restaurant below my unit. There's no point living in a city with great everything if one doesn't have the capital.
I believe it's mostly pollens, though I'll admit I am not finding it listed anymore as a top allergen area like I remember finding it in the past. But it is certainly in the geographic center of...
I believe it's mostly pollens, though I'll admit I am not finding it listed anymore as a top allergen area like I remember finding it in the past. But it is certainly in the geographic center of the highest allergen cities based on maps I can find from AAFA.
If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with ALLERGIES you may to be entitled to financial compensation. ALLERGIES is a rare cancer linked to asbestos exposure. Exposure to asbestos in they Navy,...
If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with ALLERGIES you may to be entitled to financial compensation. ALLERGIES is a rare cancer linked to asbestos exposure. Exposure to asbestos in they Navy, shipyards, mills, heating, construction or the automotive industries may put you at risk. Please don't wait, call 1-800-99 LAW USA today for a free legal consultation and financial information packet. ALLERGIES patients call now! 1-800-99 LAW USA
Hehehe oh U S of A, you such a silly place Yeah regular allergies I can medicate away and I'll consider living there if housing is cheap and it's not hot. But if it's like, everyone downwind of an...
Hehehe oh U S of A, you such a silly place
Yeah regular allergies I can medicate away and I'll consider living there if housing is cheap and it's not hot. But if it's like, everyone downwind of an abandoned mine gets weird rashes and wheezes and good old benedryl doesn't work and we don't know why except when it rains or something, no thanks.
I think folks are getting unnecessarily hung up on the choices presented. I think this is implemented as a conjoint analysis survey, which is used to present different attributes to see what...
I think folks are getting unnecessarily hung up on the choices presented.
I think this is implemented as a conjoint analysis survey, which is used to present different attributes to see what people actually use in their final decision making. It is mixing and matching to tease out the factors that are most significant to you. Individual bundles presented have no real meaning or tie to a specific city, they are just combined to tease out what is tipping you one way or another.
I've used similar tools in product development to tease out what people will actually do versus what they say or think they will do. E.g., people often say they will pay a little more for a green/healthy/vegetarian product, but when tested even small price increases show most people won't.
So people might say that certain politics are critical to the decision of where to live, but this might tease out attributes that actually drive your decisions more.
But without seeing under the hood I couldn't say for sure. To its credit, it picked some cities I do enjoy.
So shapely values are an interesting idea that is similar but distinct from the analysis maths in a conjoint assessment. That's more a game theory, cooperative agent, coalition game concept. I'm...
So shapely values are an interesting idea that is similar but distinct from the analysis maths in a conjoint assessment. That's more a game theory, cooperative agent, coalition game concept. I'm curious now how a head to head comparison of the methods might compare, though that would require making interesting choices about the relative importance of attributes a priori.
I made something kind of similar before but for all cities around the world--not just US cities: https://unli.xyz/city/calc/ -- click "edit city filters" and you'll see hundreds of characteristics...
I made something kind of similar before but for all cities around the world--not just US cities:
https://unli.xyz/city/calc/ -- click "edit city filters" and you'll see hundreds of characteristics that you can filter cities on via quantiles (the ecology filters like rain, wind, and temperature are based on the "start date" in the upper-right corner)
https://unli.xyz/city/honeymoon/ -- this one is mostly focused on multiple passport / visa rendezvous. I made it to pick a city to travel with my friends. But it also shows historical temperature, rain, and wind. It's probably most useful for planning international conferences with lots of different passport and origin city combinations.
I think those filters are really interesting, but despite all the granularity it's more or less useless to me without the ability to filter for places where I have certain legal rights as a queer...
I think those filters are really interesting, but despite all the granularity it's more or less useless to me without the ability to filter for places where I have certain legal rights as a queer person or access to healthcare as a trans person. Heck, even without factoring in trans healthcare I'd like to filter by how accessible healthcare is, that's one of the biggest factors I took into account when I moved to another country irl.
Yea, I feel like the politics could be better done as a high-pass/low-pass filter. I don't need a liberal supermajority, and don't really care about localized political demographics once a...
Yea, I feel like the politics could be better done as a high-pass/low-pass filter.
I don't need a liberal supermajority, and don't really care about localized political demographics once a reasonable baseline is met.
In practice, that means a blue state these days.
Also, I learned their definition of mild winter is very skewed from mine. If it doesn't go below 10F for more than a week, its a mild winter lol. Expecting temperate temps year round basically rules out everywhere but southern california automatically.
I think it would have been useful to have the author list some of these things. I ended up with a similar view, where I'd prefer a "mild" climate but it turned out as you said for the author that...
their definition of mild winter is very skewed from mine
I think it would have been useful to have the author list some of these things. I ended up with a similar view, where I'd prefer a "mild" climate but it turned out as you said for the author that just meant socal, I'd just like to have trees that aren't pine trees survive the winter.
The quiz questions teased out that I'd be willing to (very grudgingly) live in a highly conservative US city if it has cheap housing and it doesn't get hot. That's probably a luxury option that...
The quiz questions teased out that I'd be willing to (very grudgingly) live in a highly conservative US city if it has cheap housing and it doesn't get hot. That's probably a luxury option that many others cannot live with though. Fortunately my current area is mixed/liberal, cheap, and not hot.
My top three were San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, so ig I didn't rate "cheap housing" high enough lol. If I were to move back to the US I'd probably look at Chicago, but the weather in San...
My top three were San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, so ig I didn't rate "cheap housing" high enough lol. If I were to move back to the US I'd probably look at Chicago, but the weather in San Francisco would be much more to my taste.
My wife clearly values parks more than me based on her results. Her top one was St Louis.
I don't plan on moving back to the States soon but I have a very positive impression of Chicago as far as public transit goes, which is my priority. It's definitely one of the cities I'd seriously...
I don't plan on moving back to the States soon but I have a very positive impression of Chicago as far as public transit goes, which is my priority. It's definitely one of the cities I'd seriously consider if we did need to move back to the US for some reason. The biggest downside imo would be weather, and I grew up in Cleveland so there at least wouldn't be many surprises.
Lol, I got SF I think largely because I kept choosing mild winters/warm summers, walkable, and ...? I lived in SF for 5 years and while it was a great choice in my 20s, I'm very happy to be out....
Lol, I got SF I think largely because I kept choosing mild winters/warm summers, walkable, and ...? I lived in SF for 5 years and while it was a great choice in my 20s, I'm very happy to be out. I'd describe my current location as small population, mixed politics, beach, walkable, mild winters/warm summers (or maybe warm winters, foggy summers). But it fits much better.
The city has already been completely changed. I used to live the in the mid 00's and visiting now it just feels so much more... Sanitized and commercialized? I'm sure the effect was happening back...
The city has already been completely changed. I used to live the in the mid 00's and visiting now it just feels so much more... Sanitized and commercialized?
I'm sure the effect was happening back then but it's a stark difference to me now.
Same here. My top 10 were either in CA or WA, and I've already eliminated all of the CA locations as places I'd want to live. Guess I'll be staying in WA state then. 🤷♂️ I had kind of hoped it...
Same here. My top 10 were either in CA or WA, and I've already eliminated all of the CA locations as places I'd want to live. Guess I'll be staying in WA state then. 🤷♂️
I had kind of hoped it would suggest somewhere I hadn't considered before, but maybe I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.
City A has: 🏘 Small population 🟦 Liberal politics 💲 Cheap housing City B has: 💰 High-paying jobs 🏙 Big population 🌤 Mild winters, warm summers How is this a comparison? ls it implied that the...
City A has:
🏘 Small population
🟦 Liberal politics
💲 Cheap housing
City B has:
💰 High-paying jobs
🏙 Big population
🌤 Mild winters, warm summers
How is this a comparison? ls it implied that the other city doesn't have Liberal politics?
I believe it’s trying to tease out two things: Your preference in various criteria (e.g. politics, climate, population density) Your relative weighting of each criteria (e.g. population is more...
I believe it’s trying to tease out two things:
Your preference in various criteria (e.g. politics, climate, population density)
Your relative weighting of each criteria (e.g. population is more important than climate)
To do so, it wants you to weigh bundles of attributes against one another, assuming anything not listed is whatever would make you feel neutral. With enough questions and attribute combinations, they deduce how you feel about it all. Doing it this way can be lower-friction and more revealing than asking someone all of the preferences and relative rankings directly.
I am familiar with the principle, in this case it really made me scratch my head a bit. Specifically because a lot of these really trigger that part of my brain screaming for more context. To be...
I am familiar with the principle, in this case it really made me scratch my head a bit. Specifically because a lot of these really trigger that part of my brain screaming for more context. To be fair, I tend to overthink this sort of things anyway, but the way this was set up really made it higher friction for me ;)
I got Sandy, UT! Which seems right. Much larger than any town I've ever lived in, by about a factor of 10. I just want snow in the winter and mild summer and some great skiing within a 30 minute...
I got Sandy, UT! Which seems right. Much larger than any town I've ever lived in, by about a factor of 10. I just want snow in the winter and mild summer and some great skiing within a 30 minute drive, or so. If I could limit options to a minimum of 100" of snow per year, and an average daily high less than 80° in the hottest month of the year, I could pay less attention to metagaming to make sure I get a place with favorable climate and, instead, focus on other things i care about like walkability, housing costs, and public transit.
It's so interesting to see what the "must have"s are for everyone :) Maybe this quiz would be more useful if it allows users to include one or two non-compromisable qualities, and then shake out...
It's so interesting to see what the "must have"s are for everyone :)
Maybe this quiz would be more useful if it allows users to include one or two non-compromisable qualities, and then shake out the options left thereafter.
I got NYC as my Number 1, which I've never been to. My second was DC, which conveniently, I just moved to! Well, the Virginia side, anyway. 3rd was Boston (also never been), but 4th was Chicago,...
I got NYC as my Number 1, which I've never been to. My second was DC, which conveniently, I just moved to! Well, the Virginia side, anyway.
3rd was Boston (also never been), but 4th was Chicago, where I did live for school. Missed it all the time after I went back home to Kansas City.
I definitely prioritized public transit and walkability, so it makes sense that these cities popped-up. Coming from Midwest, I'm totally fine with cold, snowy winters (and hot summers), but I hate absolutely hate super hot summers. I don't think I could do Phoenix or Las Vegas.
Food is whatever; I still eat like a college student even though I'm in my late 30s. Though it is nice to have decent restaurants. But it's not a huge need for me.
Population size isn't a big deal, but I do prefer to live in cities/metros. Really, those that have international airports within about an hour.
Beach or forests doesn't matter. Political leanings matters a little, but most larger cities are fairly liberal. And though I lived in blue/purple city, it was in a red-ish state, so I'm used to that.
Honestly doesn't seem to be able to put enough weight on "cheap house". Yes i'd like good food, but cheap housing is a MUST. I literally cannot afford to live in New York, so it's not really worth...
Honestly doesn't seem to be able to put enough weight on "cheap house". Yes i'd like good food, but cheap housing is a MUST. I literally cannot afford to live in New York, so it's not really worth putting as my #1.
That was a fun little quiz. I ended up with NYC as my top. While I love visiting there, I’m not sure I could live there. I value walkability and public transit highly, but it’s a bit too big for...
That was a fun little quiz. I ended up with NYC as my top. While I love visiting there, I’m not sure I could live there. I value walkability and public transit highly, but it’s a bit too big for my taste. Some of the other top options for me were LA, SF, San Jose, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and DC.
With both the results it gave me and after I tweaked them, my actual city, Minneapolis, was only like 25th, which surprised me. I absolutely love living here and the only place in the US I’d rather live is in California, though I’m not going to subject myself to that high cost of living voluntarily.
As a non-american I got Washington DC. My choices were basically for walkability and public transport, and avoid hot climate. My actual city is Copenhagen, so does anyone who has been to both...
As a non-american I got Washington DC. My choices were basically for walkability and public transport, and avoid hot climate.
My actual city is Copenhagen, so does anyone who has been to both think this is an apt comparison?
Not really. Climate wise, pretty much all of the eastern coast gets much hotter; Copenhagen has very mild summers, with averages of 18C even during July. You'll definitely hit 30-32C in DC. You'll...
Not really. Climate wise, pretty much all of the eastern coast gets much hotter; Copenhagen has very mild summers, with averages of 18C even during July. You'll definitely hit 30-32C in DC.
You'll get 30-32C even all the way up in Boston in the summer.
Transportation wise, DC is... OK for US standards. Walkability is also just OK. I'll say that area is getting better. It's also a bit weird, since "DC", in terms of where people actually live is really more Arlington, Virginia, but people call it DC anyway.
If I were to construct a city more close to Copenhagen, probably SF? Climate is much more similar, with extremely mild summers, although Copenhagen gets much colder in the winter. Walkability is better, and so is public transit.
I don't know how good the public transport is in Copenhagen, but unless it's really bad or non-existent, it's probably better than any US city except maybe New York City. The standard for...
I don't know how good the public transport is in Copenhagen, but unless it's really bad or non-existent, it's probably better than any US city except maybe New York City. The standard for "walkable city" in the US is at a completely different level than in Europe. I constantly complain about how car-centric Berlin is now that I live here, but in the US it would be the most walkable city by an enormous margin.
Weather in DC might even be milder than Copenhagen though, though summers might be hotter. DC has a big metro area and the politics can change a lot when you venture outside DC proper. iirc DC is pretty expensive to live in too but that'll be familiar in Copenhagen I'm sure.
I got DC, but a lot of the top 20 matches are areas I've already lived. I wish you could easily search for a city, I'm interested in seeing how my current city matches up against these others....
I got DC, but a lot of the top 20 matches are areas I've already lived. I wish you could easily search for a city, I'm interested in seeing how my current city matches up against these others.
Anyway, I'll be in DC in a couple weeks so maybe it will win me over!
I got all the way to the last question and the quiz bugged out and wouldn't let me go any further. I'll just assume it was going to tell me Portland and forget about the whole thing.
I got all the way to the last question and the quiz bugged out and wouldn't let me go any further.
I'll just assume it was going to tell me Portland and forget about the whole thing.
Mountain View, California. I currently live outside Columbia, South Carolina. I was agnostic about housing cost and politics, but strong on walkability, transit, and warm weather, which probably...
Mountain View, California. I currently live outside Columbia, South Carolina.
I was agnostic about housing cost and politics, but strong on walkability, transit, and warm weather, which probably directed me to California cities (which dominate my top 50). In addition to what others have said, there’s very much a vibes test (“I know it when I see it” in the words of Justice Potter Stewart) about where you want to live, that are hard/impossible to quantify or put into an algorithm.
I got Inglewood, CA which I've never heard of before. Looking at it on the map I think there's a thing in the US where a "city" is actually part of a massive city and therefore sure it says...
I got Inglewood, CA which I've never heard of before. Looking at it on the map I think there's a thing in the US where a "city" is actually part of a massive city and therefore sure it says Inglewood is 100k people but it's still smack in the middle of LA county which to me looks like a massive sprawling single urban area. I wonder if that doesn't help the dataset. To any Americans, do you consider Santa Ana and Huntington Beach actually different cities or is it just an administrative thing?
The second option seemed very different whilst appearing the same sizewise on the index, Hartford CT.
I got Durham Oregon which I know very little.about. Didn't account for accessibility, which "walkable" and "public transit" do not sufficiently cover. I can walk to my local grocery store, my...
I got Durham Oregon which I know very little.about.
Didn't account for accessibility, which "walkable" and "public transit" do not sufficiently cover. I can walk to my local grocery store, my partner has a very uncomfortable trip.
I think it's a bit too simplistic; specifically, some of the options were like "would you rather live in city a), with high walkability, high paying jobs, great food, and beaches OR city b), with mediocre food, cold winters, and no jobs".
Like I think you should probably at least get some cons for every city - I know some of them are subjective, like the weather, but is "mediocre food" something anyone wants? Maybe the british?
I like cold winters!
😂What a driveby. Ice cold.
You best sleep with one eye open stu2b50.
Interesting that this is what you read, as it is about restaurants. I can see this not being a big deal for someone who rarely goes out to eat and mostly does home cooking.
Having said that, the comparisons did seem a bit odd to me as well.
You can just choose to set your exact settings. It's trying to help people narrow down who don't know (although it asks WAAAY too many questions to calibrate imo).
Honestly, mediocre food is what you get at fast food, pizzerias, chain restaurants. That's likely what they're referring to... non "fine dining". There's no really good term for it... common food, maybe?
Probably would've been easier to ask about access to fine dining. Plenty of small to midsize cities have restaurant variety, just nothing that'd make the Michelin guide or have a tasting menu.
It's bad wording to be sure, but there's really only two classes of restaurants to a number of people... places you go to when you want high quality food, and places you go to because you know the food will be edible and acceptable. They break down further (drive-through vs sit-down), but those are essentially the tiers.
I do think mediocre is a loaded word, and wish they'd chosen something like "family restaurant."
A family restaurant can be excellent though. It just depends. I think chain v independent is a better breakdown. Independent can be inconsistent but with some real winners.
This is the millenial version of those early internet quizzes eh :)
My top result was Lexington, Kentucky, probably because I chose "cheap housing" any time it came up, no matter what it was bundled with. Except for hot year round, that's my only hard no go: if it's already hot it's just going to be perpetually on fire in 20 years.
The most useful feature is the sliders on the result page, under Tweak results. After fiddling with it such that I only have strong opinions about cheap housing and NOT hot year round, the results were Flint MI, Detroit MI, and Erie PA.
Aside from the climate being a show stopper issue, Free Public Heath Care is also a big one for me. Based on the tweaked results and climate/health care, I guess I will continue to be Canadian.
Edit: I grew up in Hong Kong and Vancouver, which were already world class cities with nearly all of these good qualities except Heat for HK, and except cheap housing for either. There's no point asking me where I'd rather live if cheap housing wasn't a concern: I was already there, and I gave up all of that for cheap housing. I'd even briefly considered moving to the deep freeze + summer heat of the prairies if it would be even cheaper than Atlantic Canada. The sad fact is that in a capitalist society, having capital means nearly everything: with money I can enjoy beach and forest and great food by travelling. Without money I won't have the time to enjoy the beach down the block or the restaurant below my unit. There's no point living in a city with great everything if one doesn't have the capital.
Hey, Lexington isn't just cheap...
There's also the award-winning high level of environmental allergens!
Natural allergens like pollen grass and mites, or other ones like mould, asbestos, abandoned mine shaft dust, oil well smog etc?
I believe it's mostly pollens, though I'll admit I am not finding it listed anymore as a top allergen area like I remember finding it in the past. But it is certainly in the geographic center of the highest allergen cities based on maps I can find from AAFA.
If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with
ALLERGIESyou may to be entitled to financial compensation.ALLERGIESis a rare cancer linked to asbestos exposure. Exposure to asbestos in they Navy, shipyards, mills, heating, construction or the automotive industries may put you at risk. Please don't wait, call 1-800-99 LAW USA today for a free legal consultation and financial information packet.ALLERGIESpatients call now! 1-800-99 LAW USAHehehe oh U S of A, you such a silly place
Yeah regular allergies I can medicate away and I'll consider living there if housing is cheap and it's not hot. But if it's like, everyone downwind of an abandoned mine gets weird rashes and wheezes and good old benedryl doesn't work and we don't know why except when it rains or something, no thanks.
I think folks are getting unnecessarily hung up on the choices presented.
I think this is implemented as a conjoint analysis survey, which is used to present different attributes to see what people actually use in their final decision making. It is mixing and matching to tease out the factors that are most significant to you. Individual bundles presented have no real meaning or tie to a specific city, they are just combined to tease out what is tipping you one way or another.
I've used similar tools in product development to tease out what people will actually do versus what they say or think they will do. E.g., people often say they will pay a little more for a green/healthy/vegetarian product, but when tested even small price increases show most people won't.
So people might say that certain politics are critical to the decision of where to live, but this might tease out attributes that actually drive your decisions more.
But without seeing under the hood I couldn't say for sure. To its credit, it picked some cities I do enjoy.
Yup, exactly what I thought as well. Computing Shapley values to determine different feature contribution to an overall score.
So shapely values are an interesting idea that is similar but distinct from the analysis maths in a conjoint assessment. That's more a game theory, cooperative agent, coalition game concept. I'm curious now how a head to head comparison of the methods might compare, though that would require making interesting choices about the relative importance of attributes a priori.
I made something kind of similar before but for all cities around the world--not just US cities:
I think those filters are really interesting, but despite all the granularity it's more or less useless to me without the ability to filter for places where I have certain legal rights as a queer person or access to healthcare as a trans person. Heck, even without factoring in trans healthcare I'd like to filter by how accessible healthcare is, that's one of the biggest factors I took into account when I moved to another country irl.
Yea, I feel like the politics could be better done as a high-pass/low-pass filter.
I don't need a liberal supermajority, and don't really care about localized political demographics once a reasonable baseline is met.
In practice, that means a blue state these days.
Also, I learned their definition of mild winter is very skewed from mine. If it doesn't go below 10F for more than a week, its a mild winter lol. Expecting temperate temps year round basically rules out everywhere but southern california automatically.
I think it would have been useful to have the author list some of these things. I ended up with a similar view, where I'd prefer a "mild" climate but it turned out as you said for the author that just meant socal, I'd just like to have trees that aren't pine trees survive the winter.
The quiz questions teased out that I'd be willing to (very grudgingly) live in a highly conservative US city if it has cheap housing and it doesn't get hot. That's probably a luxury option that many others cannot live with though. Fortunately my current area is mixed/liberal, cheap, and not hot.
My top three were San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, so ig I didn't rate "cheap housing" high enough lol. If I were to move back to the US I'd probably look at Chicago, but the weather in San Francisco would be much more to my taste.
My wife clearly values parks more than me based on her results. Her top one was St Louis.
Can I suggest Chicago - especially Lake County - as a great place? We have a stellar forest preserve department.
I don't plan on moving back to the States soon but I have a very positive impression of Chicago as far as public transit goes, which is my priority. It's definitely one of the cities I'd seriously consider if we did need to move back to the US for some reason. The biggest downside imo would be weather, and I grew up in Cleveland so there at least wouldn't be many surprises.
Lol, I got SF I think largely because I kept choosing mild winters/warm summers, walkable, and ...? I lived in SF for 5 years and while it was a great choice in my 20s, I'm very happy to be out. I'd describe my current location as small population, mixed politics, beach, walkable, mild winters/warm summers (or maybe warm winters, foggy summers). But it fits much better.
Yep, moving to Boulder CO sounds like a great plan. Now I only have to convince my beach loving SO.
The city has already been completely changed. I used to live the in the mid 00's and visiting now it just feels so much more... Sanitized and commercialized?
I'm sure the effect was happening back then but it's a stark difference to me now.
Yeah, turns out I like where I live already. My top 10 were 8 cities in the SF Bay Area, Seattle, and NYC.
Same here. My top 10 were either in CA or WA, and I've already eliminated all of the CA locations as places I'd want to live. Guess I'll be staying in WA state then. 🤷♂️
I had kind of hoped it would suggest somewhere I hadn't considered before, but maybe I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.
City A has:
City B has:
How is this a comparison? ls it implied that the other city doesn't have Liberal politics?
I believe it’s trying to tease out two things:
To do so, it wants you to weigh bundles of attributes against one another, assuming anything not listed is whatever would make you feel neutral. With enough questions and attribute combinations, they deduce how you feel about it all. Doing it this way can be lower-friction and more revealing than asking someone all of the preferences and relative rankings directly.
I am familiar with the principle, in this case it really made me scratch my head a bit. Specifically because a lot of these really trigger that part of my brain screaming for more context. To be fair, I tend to overthink this sort of things anyway, but the way this was set up really made it higher friction for me ;)
Neat tool from a Reddit post I came across while Googling. Got Winston-Salem, NC. Manually tweaked the settings afterwards and got Albany, NY.
I’m not surprised it picked NYC, that’s one of my top two cities, the other being Tokyo.
I got Sandy, UT! Which seems right. Much larger than any town I've ever lived in, by about a factor of 10. I just want snow in the winter and mild summer and some great skiing within a 30 minute drive, or so. If I could limit options to a minimum of 100" of snow per year, and an average daily high less than 80° in the hottest month of the year, I could pay less attention to metagaming to make sure I get a place with favorable climate and, instead, focus on other things i care about like walkability, housing costs, and public transit.
It's so interesting to see what the "must have"s are for everyone :)
Maybe this quiz would be more useful if it allows users to include one or two non-compromisable qualities, and then shake out the options left thereafter.
I got NYC as my Number 1, which I've never been to. My second was DC, which conveniently, I just moved to! Well, the Virginia side, anyway.
3rd was Boston (also never been), but 4th was Chicago, where I did live for school. Missed it all the time after I went back home to Kansas City.
I definitely prioritized public transit and walkability, so it makes sense that these cities popped-up. Coming from Midwest, I'm totally fine with cold, snowy winters (and hot summers), but I hate absolutely hate super hot summers. I don't think I could do Phoenix or Las Vegas.
Food is whatever; I still eat like a college student even though I'm in my late 30s. Though it is nice to have decent restaurants. But it's not a huge need for me.
Population size isn't a big deal, but I do prefer to live in cities/metros. Really, those that have international airports within about an hour.
Beach or forests doesn't matter. Political leanings matters a little, but most larger cities are fairly liberal. And though I lived in blue/purple city, it was in a red-ish state, so I'm used to that.
And "cheap housing?" What does that mean? 🙃
I got New York, which is not surprising, since that's where I grew up and currently live. I guess I'm where I'm supposed to be.
It returned San Francisco... And only San Francisco.
I clicked cheap housing almost every time and it said San Fran.
Haha same. Definitely no cheap housing there, and Oakland is not SF.
Choosing beaches and getting SF, not exactly the kind of beach I was visualizing.
SF has a number of nice beaches, though perhaps a little chilly most of the year. The cleverly named Ocean Beach is nicer than ever in this heatwave.
Well my brain was visualizing the kind of beaches with palm trees 😅
Here I am in the city and I really do not like beaches. But there’s plenty of other stuff to do!
I feel this could be simplified. There’s likely already a CS paper written with an optimal algorithm to sort these cities.
I think a lot of the features are difficult to quantify, so an optimal algorithm may be tough, but that problem extends to a quiz like this too.
Honestly doesn't seem to be able to put enough weight on "cheap house". Yes i'd like good food, but cheap housing is a MUST. I literally cannot afford to live in New York, so it's not really worth putting as my #1.
You can tweak the values at the end if you want to absolutely max that out.
I did but even with that maxed it would recommend new York before cheaper places
I guess NYC is just that good on all other metrics?
That was a fun little quiz. I ended up with NYC as my top. While I love visiting there, I’m not sure I could live there. I value walkability and public transit highly, but it’s a bit too big for my taste. Some of the other top options for me were LA, SF, San Jose, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and DC.
With both the results it gave me and after I tweaked them, my actual city, Minneapolis, was only like 25th, which surprised me. I absolutely love living here and the only place in the US I’d rather live is in California, though I’m not going to subject myself to that high cost of living voluntarily.
Pretty much the areas I’ve lived and/or grew up in, New England or PNW. Not surprising to be honest.
As a non-american I got Washington DC. My choices were basically for walkability and public transport, and avoid hot climate.
My actual city is Copenhagen, so does anyone who has been to both think this is an apt comparison?
DC is unimaginably hot and humid compared to Copenhagen. May through October is pretty unbearable!
Not really. Climate wise, pretty much all of the eastern coast gets much hotter; Copenhagen has very mild summers, with averages of 18C even during July. You'll definitely hit 30-32C in DC.
You'll get 30-32C even all the way up in Boston in the summer.
Transportation wise, DC is... OK for US standards. Walkability is also just OK. I'll say that area is getting better. It's also a bit weird, since "DC", in terms of where people actually live is really more Arlington, Virginia, but people call it DC anyway.
If I were to construct a city more close to Copenhagen, probably SF? Climate is much more similar, with extremely mild summers, although Copenhagen gets much colder in the winter. Walkability is better, and so is public transit.
I don't know how good the public transport is in Copenhagen, but unless it's really bad or non-existent, it's probably better than any US city except maybe New York City. The standard for "walkable city" in the US is at a completely different level than in Europe. I constantly complain about how car-centric Berlin is now that I live here, but in the US it would be the most walkable city by an enormous margin.
Weather in DC might even be milder than Copenhagen though, though summers might be hotter. DC has a big metro area and the politics can change a lot when you venture outside DC proper. iirc DC is pretty expensive to live in too but that'll be familiar in Copenhagen I'm sure.
I got DC, but a lot of the top 20 matches are areas I've already lived. I wish you could easily search for a city, I'm interested in seeing how my current city matches up against these others.
Anyway, I'll be in DC in a couple weeks so maybe it will win me over!
I got all the way to the last question and the quiz bugged out and wouldn't let me go any further.
I'll just assume it was going to tell me Portland and forget about the whole thing.
Mountain View, California. I currently live outside Columbia, South Carolina.
I was agnostic about housing cost and politics, but strong on walkability, transit, and warm weather, which probably directed me to California cities (which dominate my top 50). In addition to what others have said, there’s very much a vibes test (“I know it when I see it” in the words of Justice Potter Stewart) about where you want to live, that are hard/impossible to quantify or put into an algorithm.
I got Inglewood, CA which I've never heard of before. Looking at it on the map I think there's a thing in the US where a "city" is actually part of a massive city and therefore sure it says Inglewood is 100k people but it's still smack in the middle of LA county which to me looks like a massive sprawling single urban area. I wonder if that doesn't help the dataset. To any Americans, do you consider Santa Ana and Huntington Beach actually different cities or is it just an administrative thing?
The second option seemed very different whilst appearing the same sizewise on the index, Hartford CT.
I got Durham Oregon which I know very little.about.
Didn't account for accessibility, which "walkable" and "public transit" do not sufficiently cover. I can walk to my local grocery store, my partner has a very uncomfortable trip.