Despite what Trump and Fox News says, cities are pretty good places to live

 About Seattle, "A Seattle visitor’s guide:  Riots, bad drivers, the big dark and overrated Dick’s burgers. Locals and experts tell the truth,." Seattle Times.

Josh Cruz, 38, head of marketing for a small software company, moved here from St. Petersburg, Fla., with his partner. Cruz belonged to a group of fans of the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team. “One of the first literal responses I got from a conservative colleague was, ‘What are you gonna do there? Join antifa?’

“I took it to mean he watched too much Fox News,” Cruz says about his fellow hockey fan. He says his mom also asked about the protests that were portrayed as riots. “I told her the news focuses on one group of three people as the night ended, (who) did one stupid thing,” he says.

... Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm, says, “From a crime perspective, Seattle is just like any major city. If crime is your main concern, then you shouldn’t be visiting any major American city.”

Friends and neighbors were in Portland recently it's fine, which is probably why housing prices are high ("Buying a Home in Portland Is More Expensive Than You Think") Wall Street Journal).

High demand for housing in Forest Hill Queens ("Home Buyers Are Paying Millions to Experience the ‘Fairy Tale’ of Forest Hills," Wall Street Journal).

SF isn't a cesspool.

Trump and his LA military incursions were a way to satisfy his base ("Newsom Slams Trump For ‘Brazen Abuse of Power’ as L.A. Mayor Imposes Curfew," New York Times), not based on reality ("Trump wants to 'liberate' Los Angeles, residents say 'no thanks'," Reuters), and the National Guard and Marine troops he sent there have left ("More than 1,000 National Guard troops leaving L.A. Newsom says Trump’s ‘political theater backfired’," Los Angeles Times), "Marines Will Begin Withdrawing From Los Angeles," New York Times).  

The "rioting" was limited to a couple blocks of demonstrations, with riot police and Trump's federal police and troops escalating the situation.

Although yes, Seattle, SF and Portland reached progressive overreach in the early 2020s, and the electorate dialed back, voting a bit more to the center than to the left.  This is particularly evident in Seattle.

In SF, a Levi Strauss heir connected to the business community won the mayoralty.  And the super progressive prosecutor was recalled out as crime climbed.

OTOH, also in Boston, the Downtown housing market is stagnant ("As housing prices in Mass. soar, they’ve remained stagnant in downtown Boston. Here’s what that means for the city").

It's so obvious on article comments that are negative on particular cities that the writer has no real experience with cities.  The same with Fox News and of course Trump ("‘Cesspools,’ ‘Hellholes’ and ‘Beautiful Places’: How Trump Describes the U.S.," New York Times, "Trump keeps brutalizing immigrants because he's failing at everything else," USA Today), "The politics of fear," New Yorker).

Fox trumps up crime in cities before elections especially and it probably had an effect in increasing the number of Republican House members from New York State ("Crime coverage on Fox News halved once US midterms were over," Guardian).

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In Boston's election for mayor, Josh Kraft, of the New England Patriots and a conservative, is running, figuring he had a chance like Daniel Lurie in SF.  His polling is terrible ("Can the Josh Kraft campaign be saved?," Boston Globe).