Hacker News Reader

Comment by jerryalex | Hacker News Reader

What are some great cities with surrounding nature for software engineers?

I was looking at Atlanta, GA which I heard has the most trees for a city.

According to Wikipedia, it has 47.9% tree coverage

Stockholm is not bad at all for a nature loving SW developer. I know lots of people who moved from here, to the valley (biggest opportunity), London/Berlin (bigger than Stockholm while still European cities) and lately some successful people started leaving for Singapore (taxes & climate reasons) but I don't think any of those offer the same nature opportunities. We have a pretty damn good tech/IT scene here, and from the city center you can go on a run and be in a huge, empty natural reserve forest within 20 minutes (it's about 2 miles out). You can also head out into the archipelago of 25,000 islands just east of the city. Lots of space, pretty unspoiled and accessible to all regardless of ownership, thanks to a law that gives the public the right to hike or camp anywhere in the country. I'd imagine there are few IT startup hubs that can compete in this. Portland maybe? Helsinki or the Baltics certainly have the nature, but smaller startup/tech scenes.

Atlanta is great! There are places like this[0] inside the perimeter. My old apartment had a trail down to the river and we would drive half a mile up the road and then tube back down to my apartment.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@33.8906588,-84.4418735,3a,90y,1...

Raleigh NC is called "City of Oaks" for a reason. I feel like it probably has more tree coverage than Atlanta, but it's much smaller too. Still, great place to live and a pretty solid tech scene between downtown offices (RedHat, Salesforce, Citrix) and RTP + Durham jobs a short drive away (SAS, NetApp, Cisco, Epic Games).

We also are working on a new 300 acre park project that's only about a mile from downtown, so I'm really excited to spend time there when Fall comes around.

Thanks, Raleigh is definitely in my top 10. I'm currently living in Texas so my nature options are pretty limited. I do appreciate not having an income tax though.

Helsinki has a forest smack in the center going north. slightly to the east is another green corridor going northeast and ending in a National Park (Sipoonkorpi) . There is another big national park (Nuuksio) just to the north west.

Helsinki central itself is sterile compared to actual forests.

Most of southern Finland however is deforested or wood plantations. About 5% of the area is natural state forest.

Sacramento has the "City of Trees" nickname.

https://medium.californiasun.co/sacramento-city-of-trees-207...

IMO Sac is the best location in California if you're a outdoorsmen but need to be close to a city. I live 30 minutes east in the mountains and work from home.

If you live more towards Grass Valley it is gorgeous, but wow the greater Sacramento area is pretty devoid of nature. I would argue Chico is way more beautiful, if you are working from home already.

For the Bay Area, probably the best bets are Los Gatos if you work on the peninsula and Mill Valley if you work in the city ( San Francisco ). Requires a roughly one hour commute though, depending on time of day and the parking situation.

Portland, OR is a great candidate for this, IMO. In the city is "Forest Park" which is more like a forest than a park. There are tons of trails, and you're less than an hour from dozens of trails in the Colombia River Gorge.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com