u/Smor96_

Hey everyone I’m from Florida and I’m considering relocating to St Louis in the next few years. I just think your city is really beautiful and has a lot of potential. I used to live in Europe and I miss walkability and I’ve been told significant parts of St Louis are walkable. I can’t afford Boston or NYC and tbh even if I could they’re too crowded and busy for me anyway. I want someplace slower. I was considering Louisville too but Louisville doesn’t have transit the way STL does.

I like soccer baseball hockey bars hiking transit paddle boarding theme parks and skiing. I’m thinking of living in either midtown or central west end to live a car free life. Wanted to know if anyone else in STL does this?

Also are people in STL open to transplants? If I move in my 30s will I be able to make friends?

I do not get the appeal of most suburbs. Like I understand the marketing of what it’s supposed to promise- space, comfort, privacy, wealth, safety, and stability. And I guess if your focus in life is on raising kids sure suburbs have their place.

But in practice what I just see is a lot of land and house I have to spend my free time taking care of, and a lot of my wealth affording and maintaining it. A lot of suburbs just don’t have soul to them either. Like you hardly know your neighbors and you’re far away from anything interesting and so I just end of feeling like I live in a box.

Manufactured homes neighborhoods are stereotyped as being trashy and undesirable, and while I think this isn’t always inaccurate, I think that nice ones are ragged on too much. I visited one of my friends in such a neighborhood and when I was there I wasn’t thinking “oh damn it sucks he has to live like this” I was thinking “wow, he’s within walking distance of a lot of things, knows his neighbors, and none of this feels cookie cutter and fake.”

Maybe it’s because I don’t have kids and I’m not materialistic but seeing my friends place i think I’d rather just live in a smaller house or manufactured home than spend so much money and effort trying to get a mccmansion. Like I don’t even think McMansions are nice tbh.

Like obviously mixed used neighborhoods and streetcar suburbs and dense missing middle housing is the best we can shoot for but I think manufactured homes have the potential for becoming little villages. Imagine if we allowed for grocery stores and maybe a bar or cafe to pop up in the middle of them they basically becomes villages right?

If you want to move to a cheap urban city that’s resilient to climate change move to Minneapolis. It’s barely more expensive than other midwestern cities but you get significantly less urban blight, and significantly more pedestrians and development. Minneapolis actually feels alive and going in the right direction.

Every time I go to a rust belt city I just think to myself “god I’d actually shoot my brains out if I lived here.” St Louis Detroit milwuakee rochester buffalo and Cleveland are all just different flavors of depression. The downtowns are dead, there’s usually one semi functional neighborhood surrounded by urban wastelands.

“But I can afford a nice apartment for 2$!!!1” because you live in a place with a dead economy and dead neighborhoods. And you convince yourself because lime scooters just got installed, you saw a guy in trendy clothing pass you on the street, and a Whole Foods opened up down the block, that the city is “mAkInG a CoMeBaCk.”

Inb4 the “living in a dilapidated, decaying, and declining city with gloomy shit weather for most of the year is actually peak and op is stupid” comments

Hey everyone.

I’m broke and am looking at moving to a place with a better wage to COL ratio than where I’m currently at. I’d also like to live some place that isn’t just a blown up suburb like a lot of southern cities are. What im imagining is architecture, history, energy walkability, transit, and other pedestrians on the street. The typical suggestions like Philly NYC and Chicago are too big for me- I’m looking for something a little more mid scale.

My search has led me to Cleveland and St Louis. I can’t decide which would be better for me

What I like about Cleveland

Cleveland is on Lake Erie, and also has a national park nearby. Cleveland’s transit system seems to actually go more relevant places in the city besides the airport and downtown, like the lakefront, the university, suburbs and malls. Cleveland also seems to have people actually walking around in its neighborhoods and downtown. It feels like a true mini Chicago to me

What I don’t like about Cleveland

The Great Lakes gloom. I don’t want to move to Chicago and Minneapolis because the winter in those cities scares me and Cleveland seems like it might have the same problem. Also, idk why, but the architecture isn’t as charming.

What I like about St Louis

St. Louis is just so fucking pretty. It seems to have a genuine aesthetic and unique distinct vibe to it. The brick neighborhoods are lovely, the parks are lovely, downtown is extremely clean, and I think the weather is a lot better than Great Lakes. I like that St. Louis is more country, and also like the fact I’d have access to the ozarks.

What I don’t like about St Louis

While downtown is clean- downtown is also completely dead. It doesn’t seem like anyone actually walks in St Louis, even in the walkable areas. Not enough for there to be street energy like there is in Cleveland. I also don’t like that St Louis transit is much more limited that Cleveland- it seems to just take you from the airport to downtown and that’s it.

Anyone who’s lived in both or knows both, can you give me some more insight?