[derefr]

> I wonder what US cities have the best "proximity to interesting people to living expense" ratio

I wonder what place, worldwide, city or not, has the best "proximity to interesting people" : cost-of-living ratio. I'm at a place in my life where I'd be willing to both immigrate and learn a language if it meant finding myself in this century's Venice.

[dionidium]

I don't know about worldwide, but don't believe what you've been told about U.S. flyover country. Understand that when somebody says a state is a "red state," we're still talking about a ~45% liberal population, almost all of which is concentrated in cities.

Your Kansas Citys and Cincinnatis and so on are full of interesting people. And they have a lot of what you'd expect from larger coastal cities, albeit on a smaller scale.

And, despite what the HN crowd thinks, they got the WWW 25 years ago there, too.

[derefr]

Probably true enough, but isn't very useful information to me: I don't live in the US in the first place, so it's not easier for me to pick a US city than one anywhere else. :)