[dcatx]

Having lived in Texas for 30+ years and now happily living in southern California, I feel pretty qualified in saying that my personal quality of life is dramatically better in California.

The cost of living is higher, but I get a tremendous amount of value for the extra costs and wouldn't move back to Texas for any amount of money at this point. Los Angeles is a very safe city for its size, I live in a comfortable, walkable neighborhood and I just got back from a run through a beautiful, well-maintained city park. My neighborhood is diverse, my representatives care about what is happening, and the city and state government generally try to make things better for the people who live here, even if they don't always succeed. I rarely felt that to be true in my 30+ years in Texas.

Austin is a great city, but the cost of living is high enough now that it is very hard to justify it vs. the dramatically higher quality of life, access to nature and culture, and incredible weather that you get in southern California.

[darth_avocado]

It’s always amazing to see people who have a certain view of California or San Francisco because of what they’ve been told all their lives to finally come here and realize that it’s actually a very nice place to live. Like San Francisco is one of the best cities to live in (if you can afford to). Why would you not want a nice weather year long, great food scene, access to outdoors, good employment prospects, walkable/bikeable streets and low crime rates (yes San Francisco has very low crime rates as compared to any other major city despite what the media headlines say).

[qwerpy]

Funny, I moved to SoCal (Orange County) from the Seattle area and have also found it to be a huge improvement in everything except air and water quality. Can’t have everything I suppose. But the politics are much more sane, crime is low, and there are so many parks and playgrounds that can be used year round. The city government listens to residents (no, we don’t want dense housing, we want a big park) and although cost of living / taxes are high, we get a great quality of life in exchange.