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I'm a pacific northwesterner through and through. So my very biased answer is portland, Oregon or Seattle, Washington.

I think for me there's a difference between working in a city versus living in a city. I'm a suburbs girl so I don't think I could live in a city unless it was like temp housing for 1-2 months.

I could work in Boston and live in the suburbs.
Same with Philadelphia.

Seattle (and the suburbs) is a good town to live in but we are probably going to leave before the end of the year.

I would/could transfer to San Francisco but housing would be so expensive and we are hoping to get closer to family now that we have the twins.

DH would love to live in NYC. It wouldn't work for me because no jobs and housing would be even more expensive.

@Mamaof2: Chicago! But, you just have to move the whole city to the NE.

Maybe South Carolina, the Charleston area. I'm an East Coast girl for sure! Could never live too far from the beach.

@Mamaof2: we ended up in Austria...for now.

Maybe San Diego, can't beat the weather and beaches. Every time I visit there i end up swooning over it.

Boston is pretty awesome if you don't consider the winters (hard to do some years). Good food, good public transit (by U.S. standards), tons of interesting people, and great beaches and outdoors stuff nearby.

I've always dreamed of NYC or LA!

I've always lived in the same tiny rural town and that would be a huge change. It would be fun!

Personally, I love Atlanta! DH and I also really like Chicago (although the winters are brutal).

Where I live. We're very happy here, all things considered.

Charleston, SC.

@snowjewelz: Hah, I don't know if DH and I could ever both swing jobs there, but I can fantasize! Meanwhile I'm stuck with New England winters, and just glad this year was relatively mild!

@hb3233: Haha, I have no idea what we would do there. And we don't actually want to be away from our familes either, but yes, fantasy time

Like a good place for my career and/or DH's that we wouldn't mind living in? I guess where we live right now, which is NYC. If someone forced me to move right now and it had to be in the U.S., then Washington, D.C. since it's good for my career (not DH's), I've lived there and liked it, and we know people in the area.

I would consider the Charleston historic district and New Orleans if I was just going to hang out all of the time.

@bluestriped bee: I've lived in Boston, with a few short breaks, since 2001, and like it. I don't have family here but I have great job opportunities. I live a few minutes walk from the subway line that I also work near, so my commute is only 20 minutes and I only pay $35 for public transit a month. The catch is that our current area doesn't have great schools (but does have lots of families with pre-K age children) and we live in a smaller place to afford it (but I actually like that - less space to keep clean). I commuted for awhile from Providence RI, which is about as much in the suburbs of Boston as you can get (hah, no offense to RI, which I love), and while not ideal the commuter rail worked well about 98% of the time (the exceptions being during a snow storm, when everything is a mess). Traffic really peaks during rush hour, many people in my office either drive in a bit earlier or later than rush hour, since we have some flexibility, and it's not so bad. Evening can be a little trickier since traffic is more even.

Real estate is not cheap, but our other job offers when we were deciding where to live were in the Bay Area, which is a bazillion times worse. Wages are (significantly) higher here than in much of the U.S., so if you look in real terms people still tend to be slightly better off economically than elsewhere.

I don't mind the winter so much, there's typically only snow late Dec/early Jan to mid-March, and some years we barely have any. I'd say about every four years is an awful winter, every four years is a mild one, and the other two are somewhere in between. During the winter months we try more to explore new stuff indoors (i.e. restaurants, etc) and never run out of interesting things, the real problem is lack of time.

I think it's definitely not for everyone, my parents are from a small town and are not fans, but I think one could do much worse.

@bluestriped bee: @Mamaof2: For Boston, where your job is located really plays a huge role in commute times. For ex. if the job is in the downtown area and you can take the T or commuter rail directly in, you can find towns with semi-reasonable house prices and commute times. But if you have to go to the hospital area or Cambridge or other non-central parts, things can get hairy, especially if both of you WOH in different parts of the city (which is my situation).

@Madison43: Good point. Definitely not as bad as NYC!

Ithaca, NY! But it's tough to find a job there unless you're in education

San Francisco or Honolulu. I grew up and now live in a NYC suburb, but I'd like to try the west coast. I'd have to live close to an ocean! We lived in NYC for @10 years, which was awesome before we had kids. We couldn't afford to buy real estate there nor did we want to raise children there.

Asheville NC or Boulder CO