OAKLAND, California
Population: 406,253
Unemployment: 4.7 percent
Fortune 500 Companies: 1
Like Brooklyn to the east, Oakland has become a less-expensive, hipper alternative to a very expensive (chillier) neighbor, i.e. San Francisco. Home to one of the nation’s great ports, hipsters, techsters and a diverse group of immigrants are creating what has been called an incubator for great restaurants, performance spaces, literary and art scenes. In fact, when Lonely Planet ranked its top 10 places in the U.S. international travelers should visit, California’s Bay Area was represented by Oakland.