Why is Philly not considered cool like Chicago/NYC? (buy, costs)
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Getting back to the thread topic, the point made about places like Nashville and Austin is exactly what I was getting at: they're "pop culture" cool cities. They're having their moment with our social media-obsessed society.
By comparison, Philadelphia is much more of a "niche" city, particularly outside of the East Coast. Its cool factor is amongst a much narrower set of urbanites and hipsters who tire of Brooklyn's cost-of-living. It's a unique mix of gritty and edgy personality and cosmopolitan cultural tastes in a very dense, overwhelmingly rowhome-based environment. It's not for everyone.
So, in that sense, I completely get why Madison from Lincoln, Nebraska is much more likely to go to Nashville or Austin for her destination bachelorette party, and Philly wasn't even really in the running. They're just more "approachable" cities.
And they're just different kinds of "cool" to different kinds of people.
I don’t know why people are looking at census numbers, or counting the waiters looking to be stars when trying to decide cool. New York is cool even if 90% of Americans would never want to live there. And no one thinks it’s the future chorus girl who is screwing up your Starbucksorder that is making NYC cool.
LA, NYC, and Miami have long sense entered the American consciousness for coolness. Hollywood/South Beach/the Village, all entered into our cultural lexicon as different facets of American coolness. San Francisco and Haights-Asbury had a similar place in our minds a generation ago. By contrast the reach of nearby Silicon Valley is strong, but it’s cool factor is somewhat removed from its physical location. It’s almost an idea as much as a place, and that blunts it’s appeal.
As far as the fourth, I still think it’s Vegas. It went from cool to kitsch to back again. The Strip is America’s playground, with Brad Pitt and George Clooney planning capers while listening to Frank in front of the Bellagio fountain.
YOU made the claim that Nashville has a ton of people moving there for "pure vibes" while San Francisco has people ONLY moving there for economic reasons. The burden of proof is on you, Ak.
I never claimed that people were visiting for any particular reason. I merely pointed out that cool cities, in fact, *do* get lots of visitors.
Nashville is a relatively homogeneous, largely Black-White city that doesn't even have the quirkiness of Portland. So the appeal is going to be far more limited compared to that of SF that's going to appeal to Asians, Latinos, Whites and even some Black people (the other 40% of the U.S. population). Not to mention foreigners.
This is not entirely accurate. Nashville is pretty diverse and has always been quirky when you mix state gov.'t, education, healthcare, and the music/creative industry all into one pot. I'd take it, as Black Person of over Portland any day. And no SF and Portland have lost a lot of their cool factor in the last 10 years.
I grew up there and have lived in a couple of major metropolitan areas. If anything, the white-washing of Nashville has turned up a notch as it felt more diverse as a city ironically when I was a kid - 2nd and Broadway was a mix of country, house, top 40/hip-hop clubs and now is entirely country just about until you hit 5th and Broadway despite the city growing more diverse than ever before.
If you ask basically anybody they’d say Providence is cooler than Boston. And Providence does not get a lot of visitors. In fact Boston is pretty famously uncool but gets lots of tourists, because what people see is cool for tourism is not that same as cool for a city. (See DC as well)
I was thinking of adding Atlanta but I feel like a lot of it is bigger/nicer/newer house than the Northeast Plus is a genuine economic powerhouse attracting people for, opportunities that don’t exist in Cleveland or Detroit. You know typical sunbelt factors. While Nashville has a pretty useless real world economy but is growing none the less (much like Portland a decade ago)
Like a feel like Black people move to Atlanta because they do believe it’s a place of economic opportunity rather than pure vibes.
>> While Nashville has a pretty useless real world economy but is growing none the less (much like Portland a decade ago)
Look - I love living in the Northeast but the words in this post reeks of falsehoods. While it certainly isn't my favorite like New York, Nashville's economy produces a ton of medical research (Vanderbilt/Meharry/HCA) and creative/music output. It's not useless by any stretch of the imagination.
It would be unfortunate to fall into the stereotype of using condescending words when writing about Southern cities (as I quickly found out about going to college and living in New England - not necessarily CT but MA).
Cause Nashville is very American that’s why. It doesn’t appeal to Chinese people, foreigners aren’t some special sauce that matter more. In fact foreign visitors are not even representative of the country they’re from.
Nashville is one of the cooler American cities it attracts people to live there despite honestly having a sucky economy. That’s impressive
SF can’t retain Americans despite having the highest paying jobs in the world.
Nashville has had for a while a visible Kurdish, Japanese (via Nissan auto), and Mexican population. It's more diverse than what folks think it is - just correcting the record based on being born and raised there and not trying to be a homer.
OP/Mods - just correcting some statements made about Nashville (a city I feel comfortable writing about).
Otherwise, I think Philly is super cool and quite frankly may be cooler than Chicago for many of us who live on the East Coast - probably because of proximity, shared history, and its a quirky city that's complicated.
Nashville has had for a while a visible Kurdish, Japanese (via Nissan auto), and Mexican population. It's more diverse than what folks think it is - just correcting the record based on being born and raised there and not trying to be a homer.
Let's be serious here. Nashville is 3.6% Asian. By comparison, Charlotte is 6.6% Asian (and 14.6% Latino compared to 10.5% in Nashville), Greenville, SC is 2.7% Asian and 9.5% Latino, Winston-Salem is 2.5% Asian and 15.1% Latino and Jacksonville, FL is 4.8% Asian and 10.4% Latino. So Nashville is not diverse compared to Southern cities around its size and even smaller.
I think Nashville is "cool" among that tier of smaller to mid-sized metros, but it is not going to be able to compete in that category against economic/cultural heavyweights that by their very nature are going to be far more cosmopolitan.
Also, I don't see how NYC could be considered a "cool" city any longer after the Times article last week saying that the median rent in Manhattan is now $4,000. The number of people working in finance, accounting and BigLaw is several orders of magnitude larger than the number of people working in "creative" fields. I'm not sure why NYC seems to be exempt here while SF takes a hit to its coolness. NY stopped being "cool" a long time ago if we're talking about broke people moving here to pursue a dream.
By comparison, Philadelphia is much more of a "niche" city, particularly outside of the East Coast. Its cool factor is amongst a much narrower set of urbanites and hipsters who tire of Brooklyn's cost-of-living. It's a unique mix of gritty and edgy personality and cosmopolitan cultural tastes in a very dense, overwhelmingly rowhome-based environment. It's not for everyone.
We need to distinguish between cool in reputation and cool in fact.
Philadelphia is not a particularly cool city in reputation. It is a rather cool place in fact even though people may consider it a poor man's version of NYC. But a lot of people, I have found, don't really know all that much about it. I would say it enjoys a sort of neutral reputation, at least among those who don't watch Fox News.
But this is only comparing it to its peer cities, which in IMO are DC, Boston, Chicago, SF. Even though some have dumped on DC saying that people "only move there for a job," a lot of people are moving to DC for a certain type of job and a certain type of scene that can't really be found anywhere else but DC, so in that sense it could be considered a "cooler" city than Philadelphia. Not that NYC monopolizes the "cool, artsy and gritty vibe," but there's this sense that you could go up the street and find more of the same thing in NY.
I think a big thins is NYC is so big and generally the mobile “creative class” is comparatively small it gets lost in the vastness of Demographic trends.
But you clearly stated this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by btownboss4
SF can’t retain Americans despite having the highest paying jobs in the world.
The same thing could be said about NY: NY can't retain Americans despite having the highest paying jobs in the world.
Quote:
NYC and the NYMA are similar to the cities and metros of Los Angeles and Chicago, in that they rely on high levels foreign migration and natural increase to offset high levels of negative domestic migration, and have few substantive relationships where they are net receivers of domestic migrants. Academic research suggests that the absolute largest cities and metros behave this way; attracting both low and high skilled foreign migrants while redistributing middle and working class domestic migrants to suburban areas and smaller metros. This pattern of positive foreign migration offsetting negative domestic migration has characterized population trends in NYC for many decades.
If NY can't "retain Americans," how could it possibly be cool?
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