Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Seattle's Educated Population Influx

The Seattle Times just published this interesting article about the impact of educated people moving into the Seattle/Bellevue/Puget Sound metro:

Seattle ranks as nation's best-educated big city

The article states, "Educated Americans are gravitating to the country's big cities, chasing jobs and culture and driving up home prices." It's perfectly true. The cost of living here is exceptionally high. Not as bad as NYC, Aspen or San Fran, but more than LA, DC, Boulder or Atlanta, for example.

I do feel you get what you pay for, here: the Seattle and Bellevue Downtowns are beautiful. There are open spaces and manicured parks everywhere. Incredible access to hiking. Fine dining, waterfront walks, lively museums, free jazz music, cafes/bookstores/wine bars/great food...the whole drill that makes city living so alluring. Bellevue is especially exciting since its growing up as a walkable city. [No, I don't work for the city. I just love it here.]

More info. The US Census page for Bellevue reports the percentage of people with at least a Bachelor's degree or higher is 54%.

I completely buy this. It's like a sense of coming home to find so many like-minded folks in this one area. Such a relief after spending the last decade and a half mostly in Arizona (no offense to that beautiful state, but it DID, as a whole, vote for Bush...).

To sum, as my husband says, "You'd have to be some kind of stupid NOT to move here. :-)"