I’ve lived in the Boston area (Cambridge, Western suburbs) for most of my adult life. We own a studio on Somerville and our D lives in Brookline. I travel quite a bit for work – these days one or two trips a month to Europe and assorted trips elsewhere (New York, Bogota, Riyadh, Istanbul, Sao Paulo, Bermuda, San Francisco, Toronto, …) and know some cities reasonably well.
Things I think are good about Boston:
First and foremost, because of Harvard, MIT, Tufts, BU, BC, … and the biotech, high-tech, and financial firms (many of which have spun out of MIT and Harvard), Boston has more interesting people per capita than the other cities I know. This is a large part of the reason that I have remained here. We meet really fascinating people at parties and/or university events and invite over for dinner leading geneticists, psychologists, professors of public policy and business, consultants, biotech execs, journalists, artists, etc. We are always learning.
Second, Cambridge and Boston have interesting neighborhoods and the Charles River running between them makes for some nice views and areas.
Third, unlike NY, one can go 12-15 miles out of town and be in beautiful places in the Western suburbs/exurbs. Good cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, bicycling, kayaking, etc. One can get to beaches on the North Shore (I don’t really know the South Shore) and fabulous places (albeit expensive) like Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are not too difficult to reach.
For the last decade or so, the sports teams have been pretty strong.
On the not so good side, it is ridiculously expensive (though cheaper than NY and SF), the infrastructure seems overly taxed, and state and city politics are embarrassingly bad. Although there are a few weeks of spring and fall each year that are lovely, I can’t say much else that is positive about the weather.
