The Goldilocks Zone of cities

July 12, 2019 11:22 AM

My spouse and I are searching for a new place to live and we would love your recommendations.

We currently live in New Orleans and we're tired of flooding and tropical storms and the existential dread at the thought of climate change and the undeniable potential of our city disappearing within our lifetimes. We're thinking of relocating somewhere that won't be as affected by climate change in the next, say, 50 years.

Here's a list of bullet points more or less ordered by importance:
- We're looking for a city with a metro area of 350,000+ which gives us about 50 to choose from
- We're looking for a city that hopefully won't flood or fall into the ocean or experience constant unreasonably high temperatures before we die
- One of us is not excited about extended periods of freezing weather
- We're both in our mid-40s
- Our jobs are in accounting and project management
- Child-free
- Good food / good restaurant scene is important - New Orleans has spoiled us
- Good public transport is a bonus
- Decriminalized or legalized cannabis is also a bonus

We look forward to your recommendations!

posted by anonymous to Grab Bag (24 answers total)

Is Seattle too obvious? Also cost of living is high. But it checks a lot of your boxes, and the Pacific Northwest will probably be a climate refuge.
posted by argybarg at 11:28 AM on July 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

Denver, Austin
posted by nickggully at 11:31 AM on July 12, 2019

Decade-long Denver denizen here. I wholeheartedly recommend it. It's a big city without the endless bustle of LA or NYC; the biggest climate risk is forest fires (not ideal, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a city with NO climate risks); despite its reputation the winters are quite tolerable with only one or two really nasty blizzards a year and pleasantly warm temperatures during many winter days (though it does drop to freezing at night); plenty of jobs for middle-class professionals in a variety of industries; good restaurants but probably not as good as NOLA; acceptable but not world-class public transit; and, yeah, we definitely have legal weed.
posted by zeusianfog at 11:38 AM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Well, Austin of course. And these days, Dallas. It's a big city with lots of fun different neighborhoods and lots of restaurants. The standard take is that it's boring, but if you live there, it's not. It hits all your bullets except, unfortunately, the last.
posted by ubiquity at 11:40 AM on July 12, 2019

Portland, OR hits all your marks. As does Sacramento, CA which has a really lively food and arts scene, as much of its new growth in population has come from people escaping cost of living in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
posted by caveatz at 11:43 AM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Denver is lovely, but it does suffer from water shortages that I assume will get worse with climate change, no?
posted by Bunglegirl at 11:51 AM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

I can’t imagine Austin and Sacramento are going to fare well with climate change.
posted by argybarg at 12:04 PM on July 12, 2019 [6 favorites]

I would cross DC off your list, if it’s on there.
posted by sallybrown at 12:23 PM on July 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

Is cost not an issue? I think, unfortunately, every city will be fairly negatively impacted by climate change. In the past some people said the Bay Area or the Pacific Northwest would fare better than others, and maybe that's true, but there have already been serious impacts in both places from increasingly bad wildfires and extreme heat.
posted by pinochiette at 12:28 PM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Atlanta, although our public transport isn't great. (I'm not sure about unreasonable temperatures, but people have mentioned Austin.)
posted by madcaptenor at 12:29 PM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure why sallybrown would have you cross off DC. I think it hits all of your criteria. Summer temps are about 3 degrees below New Orleans'; it's certainly no Austin and is a touch cooler than Atlanta.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:34 PM on July 12, 2019

We're looking for a city that hopefully won't flood or fall into the ocean or experience constant unreasonably high temperatures before we die
- One of us is not excited about extended periods of freezing weather

DC fails both of these, and there are serious budget issues with our public transportation coming to a head. Our rain has also been out of control for the past few years. The intense humidity we used to experience at the end of August is now present on and off starting in June and lasted as long as October last year. We have a typical mid-Atlantic winter that includes a long period of below-freezing weather. I also worry about the rise in water. This question is not about the next 5 years, but the next 50.

I say that as someone who otherwise loves DC, even in its present incarnation as Gentrification Central.
posted by sallybrown at 12:41 PM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Yeah no, sorry, DC is fucked climate-change wise. Say you guys live to be ~100, we're looking at unbearably hot and humid summers, more incidences of catastrophic floods like Monday's, and a Potomac River that's in a lot more places than it is now. It'll probably still be ok to live up in the higher-elevated neighborhoods but we definitely have to buckle down for a significantly different landscape than what we see now.
posted by capricorn at 12:44 PM on July 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

Minus public transportation and decriminalized cannabis, the Triangle area of NC would fit. And if you're in Chapel Hill/Carrboro, they do have free public buses and weed is readily available and widely enjoyed and no one would bat an eye.
posted by greta simone at 1:34 PM on July 12, 2019

- One of us is not excited about extended periods of freezing weather

Well, if you wait long enough, the winters in the Twin Cities won't have extended periods of freezing weather anymore. And unless things go completely ass-over-teakettle, we won't be sliding into the ocean anytime soon. Probably more tornadoes, though.

sigh/sob
posted by Gray Duck at 1:48 PM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Chicago checks a lot of the food, transport, and big city boxes and with Lake Michigan we are fairly well protected by the water shortages. We do however have winter and climate change is making it more unpredictable.
posted by typecloud at 2:00 PM on July 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

Hey, y’all. Come on up the river to Memphis. Public transport...exists, in some places (better in Midtown or Downtown). Medical cannabis is legal across the river in Arkansas. Other than that, we meet your requirements. We’re up on bluffs above the river, so short term at least we’ll still be here. And we’re cheaper than all those nice cities.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:15 PM on July 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

Might I suggest looking at population density over population? For example, Bakersfield has 383,000 while Santa Ana is at 333,000. If you look at pop den, Bakersfield is around 2500/mi2, while Santa Ana- the lesser populated city- has nearly 5x the population density at 12,000/mi2. They're going to feel very differently populated.
posted by FirstMateKate at 2:23 PM on July 12, 2019 [10 favorites]

I have long said that the Midwest is where people will flock to as global warming gets worse. Extreme weather is going to become a reality everywhere, so you really want to go to somewhere that is already equipped to deal with it. You may be better served by looking at it from that angle. I'm not specifically recommending Milwaukee (though it hits most of your points, I can't speak to restaurant scene, and we haven't decriminalized yet but Evers is working on it), but we have the infrastructure to deal with really hot and really cold weather. I keep seeing articles about people dying of heat in areas that don't have good AC, or cities shutting down because of an inch of snow in places where they don't have salt and plows. That's not a problem here. Freezing temps suck, but if you drive and get a place with heated/covered parking, then it becomes a lot more tolerable.
posted by brook horse at 3:17 PM on July 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Maybe Cincinnati? Pot is awkwardly and ineffectually decriminalized here in Ohio. It’s not going to meet NOLA levels of food heaven, but it’s also low-COL and has distinct seasons without crazy long freezes like my usual recommendation, Cleveland.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 3:32 PM on July 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

One thing that's worth considering, if you're thinking of somewhere to settle down long long term is - if it's too perfectly Goldilocks, then you are likely to find the place will have a larger influx of people in the future, potentially causing infrastructure problems. So you should also pick somewhere with a good history of building up and maintaining infrastructure - how well a place handles change is maybe as important as how it is now. Similarly, if there's anything you like that a lot of people don't, maybe it's worth choosing somewhere that has those features.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 4:23 PM on July 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

Montgomery AL suits us for some of the reasons you list. It's on the smaller side, but we joke that it has one of everything. It's also close enough to Atlanta and Birmingham if you want to do big town stuff. Climate change wise, Alabama is pretty much forecast to not change a whole lot, once you get inland far enough.
posted by Maxwell's demon at 4:56 AM on July 13, 2019

You might consider modifying the first item a bit, and you will expand your options tremendously: a city or town within 30-60 minutes of a >350,000 metro area.
posted by megatherium at 6:31 AM on July 13, 2019

For flooding, see the NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer. Select a city and a sea level rise. There's the option to show the sea level rise by date and scenario.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:13 AM on July 15, 2019 [1 favorite]