I did not like SF because it felt quite monocultural (tech) and not as fun to walk around as NYC is, but has all the problems that NYC has and more

I grew up in cincinnati, lived in SF and now live in Brooklyn

I love Cincinnati, but there are several things that make living in NYC much better for me at this time in my life (i'm 31) --

- There are simply more people and that means there are more ambitious and interesting people too. Because you are in a small area it is easy to bump into them

- Because ppl from elite colleges tend to congregate in a handful of cities, lots of your friends and friends of friends end up there if you went to one of these schools, so you have a better social life which is very important to me

- The jobs are much higher paying and even tho cost of living is very expensive you end up saving way more anyway (if you are in a highly paid industry)

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That said it's obnoxious when people dismiss smaller cities / towns, I think the quality of food and culture is just as high in many places as it is in New York, it's just the scale that is different. I think the divide here is bad for society overall

I live in New York now and love it! There are wonderful things to do all the time and all kinds of interesting people to meet.

But, there are neighborhoods in Cincinnati and many other cities that feel similar, and there are sophisticated and wealthy consumers all over america.

I got the data for this from this papaer https://www.nber.org/papers/w30088

and made the visualization in Tableau Public!