{"id":15834,"date":"2018-04-25T03:36:22","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T10:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.movoto.com\/blog\/?p=15834"},"modified":"2022-04-19T16:52:55","modified_gmt":"2022-04-19T23:52:55","slug":"the-50-most-steampunk-cities-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.movoto.com\/blog\/the-50-most-steampunk-cities-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"The 50 Most Steampunk Cities in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are two types of genre fiction that keep me from going crazy: urban fantasy and steampunk. Reading these mind boggling\u2014and supremely cool\u2014books gives me immense joy, letting me stretch my imagination a bit beyond fictional houses. So, when the Movoto Real Estate<\/a> bloggers started tossing around concepts for a Big Deal List<\/a> centered on steampunk, I laced up my boots and jumped all over the idea.
\nFirst, however, I should explain a bit about the genre. Steampunk adventures, with tales of sky pirates and robotic men, take place in an alternate time when steam power became the major energy source. The majority of these tales are set near the turn of the 19th century and have a definite Victorian quality. By that I mean there are gentlemen and ladies and a sense of etiquette that is different from today\u2019s standards. In addition, steampunk has a definite DIY feel about it and a sense of invention, as in literally building things. I used this to guide me like a mad scientist.
\nSo what city won? It turns out that Atlanta, Georgia is the most steampunk city in the nation. After I thought about it, this makes a lot of sense, as the city also ranked No. 1 as the Nerdiest City<\/a> (to be clear, I\u2019m not nerd-bashing). More importantly, Atlanta ranked highly in a number of our criteria I looked at such as antique stores, steampunk conventions, and flea markets. More on that in a bit.
\nIf you\u2019d like to know how your city ranked, you can jump to the bottom of the post for a list of the 50 cities ranked in order. You can find the top 10 most steampunk cities here:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Atlanta, GA<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Winston\u2013Salem, NC<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Orlando, FL<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. San Francisco, CA<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Las Vegas, NV<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Portland, OR<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. Sacramento, CA<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Denver, CO<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. Cincinnati, OH<\/a><\/li>\n
  10. Minneapolis, MN<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If you\u2019re interested in learning how we did it, grab your goggles, fire up your airship, and let\u2019s do this!<\/p>\n

    How Did I Do It?<\/h2>\n

    \"Source:<\/a>

    Source: Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>
    \nThere\u2019s a saying around our office: If it isn\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it\u2014unless you can make it steam powered. Unfortunately, as much as we tried, we weren\u2019t able to make our Big Deal List steam powered, so we went with the old standby.
    \nAs with our other Big Deal Lists, we looked at the 100 most populous cities in the country and ranked each cosmo across a set of criteria. We then took the average rank across all these criteria. The city with the lowest overall rank earned a feather to stick into its top hat… you know, if people did that back in the pre-industrialized world.
    \nLet\u2019s move on to the tic-toc parts of this list machine\u2014the criteria.<\/p>\n

    The Rule of Cool<\/h2>\n

    I surveyed eight criteria for this piece. My goal was to distill the idea of steampunk down to some of its basic moving parts, and then find criteria that correspond to the these parts. To help me along the way, I looked up steampunk tropes and read essays about the subculture. The criteria I used were:<\/p>\n