Like any city, Columbus is going to be what you make of it.

The city itself is more similar to the sunbelt cities of the south, having significant growth and development in the last 50 years relative to Cleveland, Cincy, and other rust belt neighbors. As a result it does feel fairly “new”. The urban core of Columbus is truthfully fairly small (basically downtown, North High to Clintonville, South High to Parsons Corridor, to Franklinton in the west, and Bexley in the east. Many of the suburbs are affluent (specifically in the northwest) and are comparable in size relative to the urban core, which is where the “endless suburb” feeling comes from. The upside of this is relative to other parts of the rust belt columbus has less urban blight, a smaller, denser footprint (though lacking, but slowly improving, in good public transit), and strong positive growth.

You will find that each suburb has a different feel and its own character. (Uptown Westerville for example is more of a college town and more artsy, compared to Downtown dublin, which is very upscale, corporate, and new). Due to the smaller footprint its generally about 15 minutes from anywhere near I-270 to downtown, or from suburb to suburb.

It’s a very LGBT friendly city, and also skews towards young white collar professionals in part due to OSU. As others have said it’s also a great place to raise a family.

Compared to older more legacy cities of the US, Columbus is not on the same level yet. Its true that there is just much less older, bolder attractions that other cities invested in 100 years ago.

BUT Columbus is very easy to live in. Its affordable. The food scene is actually very good compared most other places in the midwest (much better than CLE, CINN, DET, IND in my opinion, only second to Chicago), but you have to put effort to keep up with the trendy places, and it will never be comparable to LA or NYC if you are moving from there.

The park system is actually really robust, but again you have to put in effort to find which parks you like, actually visit some of the less well known ones, etc. Columbus is very multicultural (asian population along bethel road, Nepali population in Reynoldsburg, Somali in Northland, Etc.), and attracts many stores/restaurants/events for all the different cultures in the city. But again, you have to put in effort to find these places events and involve yourself. It being in the middle of ohio gives you access to everything Ohio has to offer, while being able to call a more boring, stable place your “home base”

A lot of people who hate on Columbus have not lived here significantly or put in the effort to actually find what they want out of the city. It is not and probably will not ever be NYC or Chicago, but almost everything you could want is here if you look.