People keep asking this, along with why people love the bay area with it's high cost of living. It has to be obvious that a great swath of people are willing to pay high rent/housing costs to have access to: lots of sunshine, bright people everywhere, top notch arts, culture, food scenes, good universities. And that should be enough of an answer. Silicon Valley isn't more international because they don't have to be.
well, i forgot the most important part: be in a cluster of a jobs, opportunity and entrepreneurship. Where else is going to match all that? Taken together, NorCal leads the world in spades,
Sure. But you live in Iowa. You may like it, but many people don't. It's great that it works for you. As a visible minority, I wouldn't be too comfortable myself in any of the flyover states. The lack of diversity and general ignorance (But where are you FROM?) is not worth $200/month rent to me.
I live in Iowa City (well, near it). Its got the University of Iowa, with a population of faculty, staff and students from 100 countries. Its hard to stand out here. And in the top 10 cities in America for PhD's per-capita.
Per capita. That's great. I went to school in a place similar to that (Waterloo). Extremely diverse, smart people abound, blah blah. Still once you move on from campus life, it's about as boring and whitewashed as one would expect. There's cool stuff going on, but it's like 1 or 2 things. Not many. The stimulation dies off. fast.
