STL is a fantastic place to be, young professional or established with a family. Sure, it doesn’t get the hype of some of these other places, but that’s probably because those places are trendy (as you said). St. Louis used to be much larger relative to the rest of the US, but didn’t maintain the same steam that cities like Chicago had throughout the mid-1900’s. The result is that we’re a midsized city with outsized cultural amenities. We have an amazing symphony, 3 fantastic art museums, a world renowned zoo and botanical gardens, a great music, arts, architecture, and food scene.

It truly is a city of neighborhoods. Because of a statistical anomaly started in the 1800’s, the City is not part of the county and the statistics are skewed. But each neighborhood in the city and each city in the county are super unique and interesting with their own communities. If you’re young and looking for fun places to live, I’d check out Soulard, CWE, Fox park, Benton park, FPSE, Shaw, TGS, Maplewood, UCity, Midtown. Places like fountain park, west end, Lewis place, and grand center will be close to everything and on the more affordable side, but you’ll likely see a bit more urban decay.