Sneak Peek: Wed June 19, 2024
Added 2024-06-19 12:39:00 +0000 UTCToday's video revisits ideas around affordability and undervalued cities, using fresh data and a bit of a different approach. One thing I took a quick look at was how prices have changed in the two years since I did my "10 most undervalued cities in the U.S." video. I'm not certain exactly what lesson to take away from the fact that rents have risen faster in Chicago than in NY or SF. The joke I make in the video is that I'm at fault for this because I told everyone Chicago was America's most undervalued city back in 2022, so now everyone is trying to move there. But the other idea I have (also considering that I had New York at number 10 in that video!) is that, I was just...right. Those cities WERE undervalued, and prices have caught up a bit in the last two years.
Anyway, it was really interesting to look at this question again with recent rental listing data and post-pandemic (I mean COVID isn't over, but you know what I mean) transit ridership data, etc. Even in two years you can really get a sense of cities moving in different directions on a lot of fronts.
My 2024 travel calendar is pretty much accounted for at this point. I think a few weeks ago I asked you all about cities you'd be interested in seeing profiled if I was able to fit them in, and yes, that actually has influenced my travel planning a bit! I really do trust this group to give the best feedback -- you're literally the ones who are most invested in making this channel better.
So let me ask a similar question -- I'm looking at international travel (meaning outside North America) of some sort in 2025, maybe even a couple trips. (Not three-month adventures like I did in Spain/Portugal last year, though.) I just think it's so important for what I do to make sure I'm getting outside of the U.S. bubble and making content and sharing thoughts about what's happening in other places where humans have organized their cities very differently. Considering what would be valuable to the channel, cost effective, and the fact that my grasp of non-English languages consists of pathetically rudimentary French and Spanish, what candidate cities would you suggest? Or itineraries where I can film multiple interesting cities over a few weeks. Don't be afraid to make obvious suggestions, but I'm open to weird stuff too!
Happy Wednesday.
Comments
I grew up in a really stable community; lots of great things about it (same coach for years, best friends that I went to school with since kindergarten) and lots of really bad things too (a scary place to be queer, a marriage in my family that needed to end but stayed together simply because life was so stable and it was the norm). It was like the opening scene of Pleasantville and when I saw that movie I was like, "this is my town!" I moved to an expensive area of the country (Oakland) and while we held onto our first rent-controlled apartment for 11 years, many people came and went largely due to the cost of living and lack of adequate housing. At first, I hated the turnover. I felt like our family couldn't get any footing. We would make cool connections and 6 months later they would relocate back to their hometown in France or Nashville. I guess it does have to do with life stage quite a bit. It's not super fun to explain to your three-year-old again and again why the people that they meet don't live close to us anymore. Another forever challenging factor was that my partner and I grew up living life in big extended families that never moved and we were learning to navigate marriage, our first house purchase, our first baby, having a second child, and raising teens without family. We learned to find a created family but to be honest, the pandemic made it really challenging. I found that people started to stick to themselves more and trust institutions and others a lot less. I've heard many people in my area say they cope by.... not having a friend group. Ugh. Sometimes we work on creating a community where we are and other times we just feel really frustrated. And honestly, I use the opportunity to travel. I feel more of a sense of curiosity and adventure.
Emily Chandler
2024-07-03 17:37:40 +0000 UTCExploring Delhi and Calcutta would be awesome. There are plenty of videos of rail journeys in India, but most of these focus on intercity travel, not getting around within a city and the urban fabric.
Alexander Dragone
2024-06-20 19:21:45 +0000 UTC
