[badave]

Except none of those places are Silicon Valley or San Francisco. There are few major hubs of startup activity, the other major one being New York City. The atmosphere and population density of ambitious programmers and like minded designers and business guys play a key role in why those active hubs exist in very few places.

VC money and the active community play huge roles here. There are dozens of meetups you can go to and meet people interested in programming or startups. There are hackathons every other weekend and a lot of tech based conferences are pretty much routine. There are happy hours almost every day of the week at various incubators or shared work spaces or even at clubs hosted by a startup.

The sheer volume of events and startups and tech based companies here blows Boise, Denver, Phoenix, .... all other cities out of the water. That's why SF is so expensive to live in -- all these tech guys get paid $$$ and landlords feel as though they can just keep raising prices to take over that income. It's similar to how NYC got extremely expensive because of all the financial guys making tons of $$$. If there is cash to be had, it'll raise the cost of everything.

[JimboOmega]

One thing that's left out is that young people want to move to certain cities because other young people also live there.

The economic/networking benefits are huge, of course. But you can't ignore the "cool" factor.

It's not just some ephemeral thing. Being in a "cool" city means vastly more and better dating opportunities. Also social ones - more like minded people - but dating ones in particular.

Young people with disposable incomes want to hang out and date others like them, and that's one of the biggest draws of a city like San Francisco.

[sirkneeland]

As a 28 year old single male who isn't about to impress women the world over with his athletic prowess, the dating pool is probably the biggest reason I live in San Francisco as opposed to some nearby cheaper suburb or even another city. It's not to be underestimated.

[eli_gottlieb]

That's not really a draw of San Francisco unless you're a female heterosexual or a homosexual of any kind. The gender ratio is pretty damn skewed.

Also, the old "odds are good, but goods are odd" saying shows how people actually feel about living in monocultured, gender-skewed environments.

[JimboOmega]

According to this, 50.7:49.3. I would not call that "damn skewed". http://www.city-data.com/city/San-Francisco-California.html

Also the same article suggests that 2.2% of households are gay male, while .8% are lesbian. That means the heterosexual ratio is even better.

Now I'll grant that it's easy as any place to run in circles that are skewed, and as much as we might wish (and often work) for it not to be the case, there are many more men involved in developing. If you only work and go to tech events (or other heavily gender skewed events, like Magic:The Gathering events), it might seem pretty skewed. But it's really not. There's a lot going on in the city.

Even then, "[the] odds are good, but [the] goods are odd" sells developers well short.

[eli_gottlieb]

Well then, I was just plain wrong and deserve all those downvotes.

[fennecfoxen]

"If there is cash to be had, it'll raise the cost of everything."

If there's cash to be had, it'll rase the cost of... some things.

First of all, obviously, of real estate, because there is a finite stock of developed real estate, there is finite land nearby (especially in San Francisco), the short-term supply curve is relatively inelastic (i.e. it takes time to build apartments) and the long-term supply curve isn't that elastic either (because local governments limit construction through the political process).

And then that will push up the price of things with real estate as an input (e.g. restaurants and grocery stores) and with labor as an input (also restaurants and grocery stores and other things in the service industry)....

But that's about it. Some things will remain cheap. You can buy the same cheap electronics and home furnishings and digital media off Amazon.com as anyone else does.