Should you move to the modern day equivalent of Florence?
I've tried to think about the value of the network I have versus the one I might build
Thank you for reading Nuclear Meltdown. This blog is primarily distributed via email, so any sharing you can do will be greatly appreciated.
A couple of weeks ago I highlighted research that shows how families continued to benefit from wealth over the course of 600 years. The researchers looked at families in Florence, Italy. Significantly, 600 years ago Florence was a world capital of culture and finance.
After that post, a friend of the blog responded asking if I’m considering relocating to the modern equivalent of Florence. It’s a good question, because being in the right place at the right time can have a huge impact on how well a family does over the course of a few generations. It worked out well for the Medicis, who rose to power and funded the Renaissance in Florence. And one reason the Kennedys were so successful is because unlike many Irish immigrants who moved west, they stayed in Boston at a time when the city was on the rise.
So here’s my response when asked about the prospect of trying to relocate to today’s equivalent of Renaissance Florence1:
Salt Lake City — where I currently live — is definitely not modern day Florence. But what is?
It's probably New York City, and will be for the foreseeable future2. The question then becomes what's more valuable: The network of family and friends I already have in Salt Lake, or the possibility of building a network from scratch in an entirely new place such as New York? And if I moved to New York, would I have the time and resources to build the kind of community I already have in Salt Lake?
For example, we just hosted a Thanksgiving dinner with more than 40 people. If we lived in New York3, would we A) even know 40 people, and B) be able to afford to host them?
Based on our recent experience living in Los Angeles, the answer to both of those questions is a resounding no. Which is to say, if we lived in today's “equivalent of Florence,” I suspect so much of our money would go toward simply surviving that we'd be unable to spend it on things that'd have long term benefits — like hosting big relationship-fortifying dinners or owning a home that’s big enough to act as a gathering place4.
If we were significantly richer, maybe our choices would be different. I don’t know. But in the end we had to be realistic about the level of resources we’re likely to have, as well as where our network was already strongest. And when thinking about it in those terms, Salt Lake is the obvious choice for us.
My hope four years ago when we moved was that the benefits of living in Salt Lake would be worth the tradeoff of not living in the financial and cultural capital of the world. It's a gamble, to be sure. If Salt Lake were to experience a decline akin to Detroit’s (unlikely, but not impossible5) my descendents may rue the fact that I dug in here and didn’t move to a place with a more robust labor market.
But at least for now, moving to New York would mean starting from scratch when it comes to building a community of friends and family. And it’d mean accepting that many of our existing relationships would wither or fade away. I’ve seen this first hand with people who are not estranged from each other, but who thanks to distance gradually have only the most minimal of relationships. I don’t want that for myself, or for my kids.
All of which is to say that we tried the build-a-network-from-scratch approach when we moved to LA, and we tried the plug-in-to-an-existing-network method when we came back to Salt Lake. I’ve experienced both sides of that coin, and it’s very clear the plug-in method offers a relationship head start. In Salt Lake, the network was already built. So why build it again and again? Why reinvent the wheel every single generation? And now we’re already seeing how the network is extending into the next generation as our kids plug into a large community of cousins, aunts, uncles and friends that they’d lack if we stayed in LA or moved to New York.
So, our gamble has paid off. We went from seeing a very small group of friends and family very occasionally in LA to seeing people nearly every day. New York and to a much lesser extent LA are surely closer to being the modern equivalent of Renaissance Florence than Salt Lake. But so far at least the tradeoff has been worth it in every regard. In fact, I think we underestimated just how good life could be.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to this newsletter. It’s free!
This post is based on an emailed response to a reader, but I’ve slightly expanded it, and removed some personal details.
There are lots of other contenders. London, for example, is also a major financial hub. San Francisco is a tech hub. Places like Tokyo dwarf the size of cities in the West. New York, however, still seems like the epicenter of the western world because it’s vastly larger and more diversified than a place like San Francisco, as well as most foreign cities in the West. As a practical matter, it’s also difficult for an American to permanently relocate to a foreign city without vast amounts of money. Not impossible, but also not super easy.
Because I work in media, I probably know more people in New York than in any other city I’ve never lived in. I also love New York. So it’s interesting to ponder what could happen if we were to move to New York — which we got very close to doing in 2014. Perhaps we’d have a huge group of really great friends. I say this because I know people who have made that choice and had things work out really well. And I know others for whom relocating to a place with no existing friends and family has been very difficult. I can only speak to my experience.
This is a very long winded way of saying that part of the reason we moved out of LA is because we were priced out. But of course I’m aware of how lucky we were to be able to make that choice. Many people, including most of my friends and professional colleagues, don’t have the luxury of choosing to live anywhere.
I suspect the biggest long term threat to Salt Lake is environmental; if the Great Salt Lake dries up and starts spreading toxic dust, that could be a serious liability to the region. So, hopefully we’ll address that issue.