Never Retire Needs Your Help: To Rank The World's Cities

This is post #400!

Thank you for the support and being part of this community. I’m in this for the long haul.

From Los Angeles this year and Spain next year and beyond. Now’s the ideal time to seal the deal and upgrade to a paid subscription or lifetime founding membership.

Asking for “audience” participation can be tricky. Sometimes, it falls flat. However, I constantly try. Because when it does work, it reaps benefits for the crowd.

In today’s instance, my inclination is that this can be a fun and ultimately informative exercise to participate in.

Plus, it can help your fellow subscribers.

Vamos a ver. We are going to see!

For two reasons—

• More than a few readers are trying to decide where they’d like to live going forward.

• I often say I have the ability to know—with certainty—how I will feel about a place after spending just a short time in it. You might have the same ability. If not, you’ve likely been around the country or the globe and can report where the cities you have experience with fall on your list.

So here’s what we’re going to do—

I will refine the categories I presented the other day in—

Why This Barcelona Neighborhood Might Be My Favorite Barrio In The World

—then, I’ll go first and place the cities I have been to under each category.

I hope you’ll do likewise in the comments’ section of today’s installment. I’ll do the work to compile all of the data and sort it out to see which cities fit where.

In the above-linked installment, I explained why urban Spain, specifically Barcelona and Valencia, makes the most sense for me and Melisse, however—

Some people want to disconnect from everything. Neighbors as far away as possible. You have to drive 30 minutes to get to the nearest (fill in the blank). I actually think this is super fucking cool (and I’d love to hear more about it from people who prefer this way of living). It’s just not the type of environment I want to live in, particularly—in what might sound odd to some people—as a I grow older.

Seamless connectivity in a vibrant, but relatively laid back urban environment.

That’s as much abstract and psychological as it is concrete and practical. The space between your subjective observations and feelings while in a place and the objective reality on the ground is where you might find your ideal Never Retire neighborhood and city.

Place might more important than anything in the Never Retire equation.

Where can you get what you want from a region, city, neighborhood, apartment or house at the right price?

To get an idea of how I consider that question (beyond the nuts and bolts cost of living and lifestyle information we regularly discuss), consider how I distinguish between the following three cities:

• Paris: Like New York City, but better. However, too busy—too much of a hustle—for day-to-day life. Some neighborhoods appear ideal, however we like to constantly explore the entire city. Doing that in Paris would likely feel like a grind. Plus, not knowing French would make it super difficult.

• Barcelona: Similar pace to San Francisco. Big city vibe but without the high intensity of Paris and New York. People are more laid back, move with purpose, but slower and seem friendlier (probably because of the weather). Neighborhoods feel better connected, more distinct than Paris.

• Valencia: If San Francisco, Santa Monica and Barcelona had a threesome they might spit out the perfect child—Valencia. Feels urban and beachy at the same time. Easy access to parks and the coast. Well-connected neighborhoods, laid back, increasingly diverse environments.

I’m rarely wrong on my initial impressions of cities. I feel the same way about San Francisco today as I did in 1999 when I first set foot in the place. There are few cities where I have changed how I feel about them—from a “can I live there?” standpoint—other than, my current home, Los Angeles.

It’s true that your first impression of LA likely will never stick. The place truly does—or can—grow on you. It all depends on where you experience it from. There’s no place I have experience with—or have heard of—where two people can have two completely different feelings about the place based entirely on the neighborhoods (and cities that are not LA that we still call LA) where they spend most of their time.

Anyhow, there’s some background on how I think about this stuff.

As we get to the five categories, please leave your cities under each in the comments (or email them to me).

At the same time as not feeling the need to mention every place you’ve ever been to (I’m not), don’t feel as if they all have to be big-time, super famous cities. The smaller places—even non-cities—matter.

Because we have subscribers looking for their next home in all types of areas, including places that aren’t urban. You can also feel two ways about the same place, as I illustrate below.

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I absolutely 100% could live in a place.

For me, this is a short list. But I have very specific criteria about places. This is also my money is no object list.

• San Francisco

• Los Angeles

• Portland, Oregon (though I wonder if the weather would bother me eventually?)

• Valencia

• Barcelona

I wouldn’t make it a point to live here, but it would not be the end of the world if I had to.

If I had more experience with these places—particularly at the local, neighborhood level—maybe my opinion would change. This process will evolve once we move to Europe and spend more time in some of these cities. I’m pretty certain the North American cities will stay where they are.

• Madrid

• Rome

• Florence

• Paris

• Toronto

I couldn’t (or just don’t want to) live there, but will go back multiple times for extended periods.

So, some repeats here. In part, because the only way to know if a city moves into the 100% absolutely category (or not) is to spend more time there.

While my first impressions tend to stick, this doesn’t mean they can’t change with more experience. It’s just that—as life works out—you can’t collect the necessary amount of experience to really know.

Here again, it’s part of the reason for moving and adopting the lifestyle we foresee. To be able to spend time in these cities and others to develop our senses for cities on an entirely different and elevated level.

Also, circumstance and effort play a role. Typically, Toronto might make this list (I love the city), but it just doesn’t make much sense to spend the time and money to visit a place I have so much experience with.

At the same time, there are dozens of cities I have yet to visit and can’t wait to see that—once I have the experience might pop up in one of these categories. Such as Buenos Aires, Mexico City, everywhere in Northern Europe, Lisbon, smaller places in Spain and Italy, and so on. We plan to travel somewhat extensively once we settle in Spain, so, as a paid subscriber, you’ll follow every aspect of these journeys and learning experiences.

• Madrid

• Rome

• Paris

I’d visit again.

We would be here all day if I named every city, so consider this a representative sample. These are also places I’d like to go to again, often to see the progress they have made (or not) from an urban planning perspective.

• Buffalo

• Chicago

• Dallas

• Denver

• Vancouver

• Lyon

• Bordeaux

• Toulouse

I won’t go out of my way to visit again.

Enjoyed my time, but either wasn’t overly impressed (with one or more things) or the place was too small (you walk for more than 20 minutes and end up back in the same spot!).

• Girona

• Montpelier

• Naples

For some color, here’s a report we did from Naples last year—

In Napoli: Your Housing Payment Now And In Relative Old Age

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I’m a bit of a nerd about this stuff so, I realize it might be too much. I could have gone on all day about each city. This is part of why I didn’t.

Ideally, a whole slew of you categorize your cities (along with commentary) and I aggregate them into categories in a frequency table of sorts to develop some level of consensus as people consider places to visit and, maybe, live in for short or long periods of time, which might include forever!

The beautiful tree-lined streets of Northwest Portland