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by gemstones 927 days ago
If you're already an American, move to St. Louis.

- North enough that climate change will not affect it as much

- Inland so not at risk of sea level change

- Next to a large fresh water source

- Food security - weather suitable for all kinds of crops, even as temps rise

- A large enough group of people in a rich country that it will still be able to get resources as things get worse

- Because of the city/county split, the city crime rate is arbitrarily high despite being a safer metro than most. Means that housing prices are low. Places like Chicago are more at risk of becoming unaffordable as refugees crises get worse

- The region is one of the few that has been continuously settled from pre-colonial days, indicating some Lindy effect in play

4 comments

I'm not disagreeing with you that St. Louis is good, but sea level rises in our lifetime will be a drop in the ocean compared to climate changes (severe flooding due to excess rain, heat waves, etc.).

No one cares about 4 inches higher water (Except maybe a few Florida boat owners whose boats can no longer fit under bridges).

It's not just about our lifetimes. Some people have children who would prefer that if they are to inherit a house, they will inherit one that will not be submerged or subject to the hurricane swell lottery when they leave it to their children.

And four inches doesn't begin to capture the potential.

St Louis is also the most dangerous city in the country. Macro trends 50 years from now don't matter if I'm just going to be murdered anyway.
Don't take the clickbait "top X lists" too seriously. The metropolitan St. Louis area is not some killhouse, it's just that the city is geophgrahically smaller then other major cities. The bad crime parts of the metrpolitan area are overrpresented in the city, which again, is a small part of the greater metroplitan area.
You missed the part about why the stats are that way. Obviously you don’t live in St. Louis, you live in the other 90% of the metro area that’s merely “St. Louis”.
The Lindy effect really doesn't apply there. If we were still a pre-colonial society and you were trying to find the best place to build your mostly-agrarian city, fine, but the conditions for survival are unrecognizably different than they were then.
A lot of places fit those conditions just fine.

Inland upstate NY, where I live, is one example. It ticks every one of those boxes (though the precise proximity to large clean water sources, of course, varies, there's ample clean water across this whole region).