Indy Quality of Life

There are a lot of things that make life in Indianapolis great. And the real sweet spot of that greatness is found in the intersection of four big things: affordability, accessibility, opportunity, and quality.

Indianapolis is affordable, with a rent and cost structure that puts the best of the city within reach to the average person, not just the super-rich. That’s true both in starting your career, and also for the rest of your life. In Indianapolis, unlike in so many other places, you can move up to owning a home in a cool neighborhood as you grow in life and your career.

Indianapolis is also accessible. You can live downtown or in a cool neighborhood and walk to great things, but you aren’t just limited to that. It’s easy to get almost anywhere around town in only a short trip. It’s a city where you can take advantage of the whole region easily. In many other places it can take an hour or more one way just to get to places within the region.

While affordability and accessibility make life easy in Indianapolis, opportunity and quality make life great here.

Indianapolis is an opportunity city. There are great jobs with leading global firms for people graduating from college. But the opportunity Indy offers extends far beyond that. It’s a city with an open social network that welcomes newcomers, where top business and civic leaders are frequently people who grew up elsewhere and are here by choice not chance. It’s a place that’s a great entry point for entrepreneurs, with successful large-scale tech startups like Exact Target, acquired by Salesforce which then grew an even larger local presence. And the same is true of social entrepreneurship, with incredible organizations like People for Urban Progress, which recycled the Teflon roof of the Colts’ former stadium into wallets, bags, and purses with super-cool designs. 

Last, but certainly not least, the quality of much of what you can get in Indianapolis today is as good as anything in the world. Put it to the test yourself. Have breakfast at Milktooth. Get some ice cream from Circle’s or bacon from Smoking Goose. Check out whole animal butchery Turchetti’s. Or get a vegan pot pie from Mrs. Murray’s Naturals. Put these up against competitors from any city anywhere in the world and see for yourself how Indy stacks up.

There are some places that might be cheaper and more accessible than Indianapolis. In some industries there may be better opportunity in some other specific city. There are going to be things for which some cities do have better quality than Indy.

But when you put it all together, Indy has a truly unique package of great professional opportunity and incredible quality that’s both affordable and accessible.