Good places to live

Through the years, I’ve been wondering what are the good places to live. To get to a conclusion, I usually consider a number of factors: cost of living, salaries, security in the streets, traffic, etc. In fact, these are the factors most people and companies take into account when moving to a new place.

 

Let’s compare two examples, Salt Lake City, in the United States, and Porto Alegre, in Brazil. Generally, those two cities are out of most rankings, because there are no major national or global companies with headquarters located there, except maybe one or two. The first city, is medium-sized, with a population of about 200,000 inhabitants. The other is a big city and more than 1,400,000 people live in town.

 

In terms of urban planning, the American city is laid out on a grid plan, with a main street running through the city (Temple St.) and a clean view. On the other hand, its Brazilian counterpart is a real chaos. Urban planning is weak, construction controls are minimum and tall buildings are taking over, being built all over the place. When you see the city from an airplane, you literally look at a “sea of buildings”!

 

In Brazil, not only Porto Alegre look like this, but most of Brazilian big cities go in the same way: unplanned growth, lack of definitions about commercial and residential zones, and lots of other issues.

 

In terms of security, Salt Lake is much safer than Porto Alegre. Crime rates are much lower and there’s less poverty in the American city. This fact is due to the strong religious presence in this town, where 53% of the population is LDS (Mormon).

 

As you could see in this text, both cities have enormous contrasts. But there are also qualities that make both places good somehow. Read the facts and take your own conclusions.