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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Iowa is a great state. The college towns and Des Moines (the capital) are as fun and forward-thinking as any other state's college towns I've been to, and cost of living is hard to beat. Ironically, in the Related links for this article, there's a story titled, "Des Moines was just named the nation's unhappiest city for workers" [0]. When I was in Iowa, DM wasn't much fun despite being the biggest city in Iowa, but I had heard it had in the past years become much more fun for young folks.

[0] https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2018/...

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I got my CS degree from the University of Iowa. Iowa City is a nice town. My parents have lived in Cedar Rapids for the past 20 years, so I've visited Iowa often.

I wouldn't be opposed to moving there, but I also have no desire to make it a target destination.

The tech landscape seems to largely be older, more conservative companies: Rockwell Collins, NCS Pearson, GoDaddy, John Deere, etc.

GoDaddy is a "conservative" company among the likes of John Deere and Rockwell Collins?

I went to Iowa as well and really enjoyed Iowa City. I think it’s a great place to get an education but I also lived there for a year after college and was happy to move to a larger city.

Met a lot of people from Chicago who either went to U of I or sent their kids. Nobody seems to want to stay though.

Des Moines has a large network of skywalks connecting many of the buildings downtown. I think it’s actually a bad idea as far as urban planning is concerned. When you are in the skyways it feels a little bit like walking around a giant airport. They also draw up all the pedestrian traffic and make the city look deserted outside. Not sure if that has anything to do with it but I don’t think it helps.

So do Minneapolis and St. Paul. Let me tell you, they are an absolute blessing in the winter months. Heck, they're nice in the summer months too if you need to cut across a few blocks and don't want to walk amongst the traffic, or it's crazy humid out.

IMHO, I think they're really beneficial. MSP / STP will never be the urban utopia that everyone sees NYC or random European cities as in terms of walkability; we've gotten what, a foot of snow between two days in the last week? It's not unheard of for weeks of summer to break 90 or 100 degrees F.

Heck, the two cities are only a half million between them; the "metropolitan area" constitutes over EIGHT THOUSAND square miles for a grand total of a little over three million people. Traffic- cars, busses, and light rail- are all here to stay, and that means walking city streets is only as nice as you enjoy breathing exhaust fumes and the noise of tires.

I grew up in Des Moines, 50ish years ago, and at that time the downtown area was a dirty, depressing dump that most people only ventured to if they had to go to court. Now the downtown area is one of the most fun parts of the city, and the skywalks were a big part of its rebirth.

Maybe it helps when the weather is too hot or too cold?

Yep that’s the idea. I was not a huge fan of them.

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