10 Cities That Brim With Vitality and Why

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Kinda innovative to make a list of the cities with the most Cheesecake Factories!

Minneapolis is definitely the western most Midwest city but it was never a rust belt city. Its early manufacturing base was grain and cereal products, something that never had the bottom fall out like coal or steel.

Love the commentary on Minneapolis. There is a saying here that St Paul is the last city of the East and Minneapolis is the first city of the West

The focus of this video really demonstrates how a relatively neutral data set like housing turnover can show both a healthy urban area (where neighborhoods are stable and filled with families who've lived there for decades), or an unhealthy urban area (where people are trapped in their current living situations because moving would be prohibitively expensive). It shows how the same piece of data can mean different things in different contexts

Yes, people in NYC do not move. I've met people who live in the homes that their grandparents owned and just passed the house down to the next generation. It's a smart move since these places likely have rent control ( I know a person paying $1,000 for a 1-bed in Harlem). I'm jealous lol

5:44 Students make up ~20 percent of Boston’s population, so I don’t find this too shocking.

Feel free to contradict me, but I’m of the opinion that car dependency is a HUGE barrier to social mobility.

Man, you've talked about SLC enough this year that you're practically required to make the quick plane ride over here. I'll slap down five whole dollars for the cause.

"I just get ideas for new videos while I'm in the middle of working on other ones." Creativity breeds creativity.

Seattle does a pretty good job of making infill possible. There's tons of process and fees, but there's no veto process or politics at the end. The State requires all cities to plan for and accommodate growth (look for mass upzones throughout the region late this year!) So we add huge numbers of units. We also have a lot of new residents cycling through for their 20s before leaving to chase cheap lawns in their 30s.

As a DC resident for 30 years now, I can attest that DC cannot build out due to the borders but what the city has been doing is redeveloping areas that were underutilized like the closed DC General hospital, the ancient water filtration area at pleasant plains, the old Walter Reed hospital, and other areas.

As many others have already said, Minneapolis is viewed as the Easternmost Western city, and St Paul as the Westernmost Eastern city. I've also lived in Boston and Denver, and I very much agree with this viewpoint. It's very cool living in a metro area with so much variety, all very accessible and comparatively affordable. The value here is excellent.

4:39 Absolutely spot on observation (at least, for our situation). We traded less space at home for more access to shopping/dining within easy walking distance and it's constantly proven to be a great decision for us.

Can you do a video on the strange urbanism of Atlanta? There's no planned urban design and lots of sprawl with lackluster public transportation, yet people continue to move there at record numbers and there's insane levels of new building all throughout the city. The Midtown neighborhood is completely unrecognizable from 10 years ago. I just think an in-depth look at Atlanta from your unique perspective would be interesting despite its rather poor urban design on a macro-level (though the beltline is cool). I mean Atlanta just seems so weird. Is there any other major city where the metro area population is so disproportionately larger the inner city pop? Atlanta only has 500K but the metro area has over 6 million. That's crazy to me.

For the 8 millionth time, there is plenty of housing in the US. What there is not is affordable housing in places people want to live. Though my wife's cousin who's a retailer has 10 homes under $150k available right now. In and around Lake Mills Iowa lol

Not sure what data there is for this — it could be interesting to see a Top 10 on college towns with the least "brain drain". As in — which towns see the least number of students leaving the city upon graduation

Some of those Minneapolis pictures were in fact St Paul. People often forget that St Paul is its own city. I would love to see a video comparing and contrasting St Paul with its more upbeat neighbor.

If you take that Austin street view back to 2007 it is even more of a contrast. The only people who think falling home prices are a problem are NIMBYs that are about to retire and downsize. Our property taxes are so high in TX that any decrease in valuations is welcome by most.

Minneapolis feels like a west coast city seed dropped in a Midwest biome