The Nuanced Place Where Montanans Want to Move

This is an interesting way to approach a study.

There have been plenty of stories about Montanans leaving in the past year and the places where everyone wants to move, but I've yet to see a story about 'the most popular alternative cities.'

What's an Alternative City?

The number crunchers at Remitly say some cities commonly show up when these studies are done, namely Paris, New York, Madrid, and London. So they decided to do a study where none of those cities was an option, and they thought they'd remove capital cities and "...the most search for 'move to' city in each country..." too. Then they looked at the places people were searching on Google.

When you slice it that way, you're bound to get some interesting destinations. Given those parameters, what is the "alternative city" where Montanans want to move?

Chicago.

To be fair, Chicago was the second most popular "alternative city" on the list after Kansas City. Other top choices included Seattle, Miami, and Charlotte.

My Theory About Alternative Cities

Looking at the top cities, I have to wonder if pop culture has any influence over these choices.

It might be possible that there's some crossover between searches for the Kansas City Chiefs (who've won the past two Super Bowls) and searches for Kansas City. Similarly, the TV show The Bear has won Emmys, Golden Globes, and Critics Choice Awards and has been Googled plenty in the past year, and it's also set in Chicago. I'll throw one more in: there's a pretty strong Pearl Jam/Chicago connection the way there is a Pearl Jam/Missoula connection and maybe Montana's Pearl Jam fans are searching Chicago.

That being said, the study did look at the search term 'move to [city]' so people were really interested in moving to these cities. I just wonder if they were watching KC fans or drooling over the food in The Bear and then wondered, "What would it be like to live there?"