[ESRBob]

Quote:

Originally Posted by justin From reading the list, it seems many places have a "Five Points" area that is hip and happening. Anyone have one of those "Five Points" areas in your city?

Justin,
What is a "Five Points" area?

Hip can be hard to find, especially if you also want cheap. As you get older, hip seems less important than other stuff. but for me, 'green' is important, or 'creative' or 'authentic', but those areas don't always come cheap either. Rural areas around big east coast ciites can sometimes have it at a reasonable price., (e.g. Hudson River Valley in NY, Berkshires in Mass, mountain area in North Carolina) One idea is to find a musical artist you really like and then look at his/her tour schedule as a way to potentially find kindred spirits around the country or world. Another way is possibly to see where a favorite store or coffee shop has put up sites, if the whole notion of chains isn't repulsive to you. These people do the demographic analysis so you don't have to.

Richard Florida wrote a book called "The Rise of the Creative Class" which is all about how cities can make themselves attractive to people on this type of hunt. The book lists many good hip/green/authentic areas of the U.S., and he might have some more recent work that gives you an updated list.