I agree with you.

My last job was on a deep learning team located in a university research park at UIUC in Central Illinois. The area was rich in local entrepreneurship and had a critical mass of skilled people.

I retired and moved back to my home in Sedona Arizona, but I can strongly recommend UIUC for both the great tech community, great tech meetups, and also good quality of life with a low cost of living.

I compare this to working as a contractor at Google, which was a really nice experience but my wife and I burned through $6500/month in living expenses in Mountain View and the traffic was so bad that I was dissuaded from driving to tech meetups.