[rayiner]

I think Atlanta has much to recommend in terms of a startup destination: great access to smart engineers (Georgia Tech is in the city, Duke and UNC are not too far away), low cost of living, quite livable, etc.

However, it's just so tremendously isolated. The closest real city with a real financial/tech sector is Charlotte, but the transit interconnection between the two is very weak and as a result there is very little cultural cross-pollination between the two cities (unlike say DC and New York which are about the same distance apart).

I think Philadelphia is actually a smarter bet. Low cost of living, like Atlanta, Penn and Drexel right in the city, and just 90 minutes on the train to either New York or DC. The amount of cross-pollination in the DC-PHL-NYC corridor is just phenomenal, enhanced by the fact that the three cities have very different cultures and host very different types of industries.

[kylebgorman]

Having just moved after 6 years in Philadelphia: very high violent crime, and corrupt local government w/ no interest in technology; rents are lower compared to DC or NYC but raising rapidly. While I loved going to the Philly tech meetups, most everyone was working in the suburbs, where companies are free of the high city corporate tax rate (most cities don't _have_ corporate taxes).

[laurentoget]

Atlanta can probably rival Philly when it comes to violent crime and corrupt institutions.

[melonakos]

Every city has pockets that are bad and pockets that are safe. Atlanta has tons of safe places.

[Mz]

I fatfinger voted on this comment (when I wasn't intending to vote at all). I don't know if it was an upvote or downvote. Whoops! and sorry.

[rayiner]

Crime is a downside, but it's also one that's not uniformly distributed throughout the city. And to be fair, Atlanta isn't a low-crime city either.