Good Places to Live as a Less Wronger

I wish more people would write these, because I'm interested in hearing about the different rationalist communities and where they live. Even if you WOULDN'T recommend a city, that's still useful information (and we don't want to fall into a sampling bias situation! (Also, I'm just curious...)) Here's mine

Columbus, OH; 2 years - The joking catchphrase is "We're not 'Ohio', really!" We are a much more educated and liberal city than people would guess. We're the type of city where the biggest festival is the alternative ComFest, and the biggest parade is the alternative Doo Dah Parade.

Most of the interesting people live in Victorian Village/Short North, an area right between OSU and downtown that has gone through the whole Bohemian gentrification thing in the past decades. It's full of intellectuals and hipsters and the like. If you co-house (most everyone does), rent+utilities is generally about $400 per person, so it's cheap, but safe! Most of the rationalists live in this area. A significant amount of people here don't have cars, because it's within walking or biking distance to most the good stuff. I don't think the public transport is that great though.

If that's not your style, we have lots of various enclaves (students and professors are in Clintonville, WASPS are in Upper Arlington, people-who-wear-suits are in the Arena District, etc). Columbus is often used as a test market because we have a sampling of all types of people.

The LW community- The rationalist community is already pretty awesome, plus it's still in a growth phase, so you can get in near the ground floor as we become awesomer. A year ago, Ohio had zero LW meetups. Now it has three. AFAIK, we have, by FAR, the best gender ratio of all the LW communities. Hang outs tend to be about 1:1 male:female. We are within driving distance to the two other OHLW meetups: Cincy/Dayton, and the new Cleveland/Akron one. Both of those groups also have awesome people, but each group has a distinct personality.

As to the personality of our (Columbus) group, we are friendly, social, humanist-types. Our get togethers tend more towards instrumental rationality and interesting discussions (check out Jesse's posts on www.measureofdoubt.com to see the sorts of topics we cover), and less towards the programming/AI/x-risk memeplex (not that we never discuss those things). The majority of us are poly. Most of us are atheist. Musicians, secular activists, grad students, etc.

Pros- One of the largest universities in the nation (Ohio State University), and a couple other good ones too (Capital and Otterbein). Great cost of living. Very LGBT friendly. Affordable foodie culture. Thriving arts community. Lots of various things to do. (Big enough to have communities for whatever activity strikes your fancy. Small enough that they're communities). Headquarters of Batelle (R&D company). Jeni's Ice Cream. Strong, diverse economy. Don't need a car. But if you have one, Columbus is within a day's drive of more large cities than any other city in the nation.

Cons- The highways at rush hour can be horrid. Road construction is constant; Orange barrels everywhere. (not as bad of a problem if you live in Vic Village, so can walk). We don't have as many tech start-ups. Ohio is terrible for allergies. "Buckeye Fever"- Locals are very....enthusiastic about OSU sports, especially football. You will learn the Buckeye culture, whether you like it or not. Don't drive anywhere near campus on a game day. If you leave the city, you get things like the former Touchdown Jesus.

Neutral- We have Weather (4 distinct seasons. Sometimes all in the same day!). We don't have much Geography (mountains, oceans, lakes...we do have a river though. And lots of woods).

Lund, Sweden - despite not living here that long, just a few months, I've gotten a good grip of it. Pros: Massive university that serves as an intellectual meetingplace, everything from feminism to transhumanism in unofficial lectures, a particle accelerator is being built if you're into that kind of thing, and it's possible to get EVERYWHERE with a bike.

Cons: Difficult to get anywhere fast with a car, the weather can be less than enjoyable, housing prices are fairly high and we might be heading for an economical crash soon, and it would likely seem quite different moving here from outside europe.

In short: Economical value low, cultural value high.

Oxford; 28 years (though limited experience gained from those between ages 0 and 13); beautiful city with a lot going on intellectually, and - for ethically-inclined rationalists - home to the Centre for Effective Altruism; terrible weather, high cost of living.

It would be useful to say something about cultural/geographical background, as they shape the experience.