There will be the rare individual who tries to tell you how terrible Worcester is, but please take everything they say with a massive grain of salt. As far as cities in MA go, Worcester is just fine, and I’d even say it’s great. It’s come a very, very long way.

I live 25 minutes from Worcester, and I typically go there for nightlife/food and other activities, especially since it’s such a hassle getting into Boston. Yes, you will be trying new restaurants forever, as there are always new ones opening up. Very diverse ethnically.

No shortage of bars, clubs, and basically any other establishment you can think of. Amenities and grocery stores are plentiful. Gyms, venues, parking, you name it.

They have the commuter rail which sucks but is set to get better. I have no idea about the buses. Beautiful parks and old architecture.

The city is actively being revitalized and being heavily invested in. There are many people that love Worcester and want to see it develop. It’s one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. There are several colleges/universities and lots of young people. I see them every time I go.

The thing to keep in mind is that Worcester is, at root, a working class mill town. These are cities in the Northeast that were built and sustained by the blood sweat and tears of blue collar workers. Once all the industries moved out, these cities were mostly left for ruin. You still see that in Worcester. But it’s not nearly as bad as some other cities in MA. Some neighborhoods are trashy. Lots of triple deckers that used to house the mill workers. Lots of these neighborhoods ended up housing low income families. But of course now most apartments are unaffordable for these people, so within the next century you’ll see Worcester become completely gentrified in my opinion. The next Boston.

There are 200,000 people in Worcester. It’s small but very populated. There’s something and someone for everybody.

Just don’t shy away from that working class feel and charm. People who hate on Worcester either have lived there for decades or are from a yuppie white suburb in metro west and have never so much as set foot in a real city with real people.

It’s very down-to-earth. You’ll meet plenty of awesome and friendly people!

OP for what it’s worth, I don’t understand why people have a problem with your wording. I read young professionals as a description and nothing more.

I just moved to Worcester a few months ago and so far it’s great. I’m in the burbs over by Indian lake. A 10$ Uber gets me downtown. I havnt had much luck with the busses… twice now I’ve waited for them at the times posted online and they didn’t show, so I would not recommend them.

I love Vincent’s bar. It’s divey, fun and always has live music. Also an outdoor area to smoke whatever your vice is

Disregard all the people jumping on you for being “young professionals”. There is a portion of people who long for the “good old days” when Worcester was more blue collar and, let’s be honest, dirtier, poorer and, depending on the area, dangerous. (I know this comes off as elitist. It’s not how I mean it. When I was younger there were a lot of neighborhoods I wouldn’t go into. Now they are fewer and more spread out).

I grew up 15 minutes east of Worcester and have been going there for my entire life. It’s on the upswing. The city has a massively diverse restaurant scene, with a wide variety of different cuisines and restaurant styles. Don’t be afraid to go into some of the smaller counter-style restaurants. Some of the best look like dirty holes-in-the-walls. (Hien Vuong on Green St is still the best Pho I’ve had). Shawarma, Indian, African, Caribbean, and Asian food is all represented throughout. I avoid chains and corporate restaurants and have rarely had a bad meal.

I’m not a club guy, so I can’t speak to the scene, but the bar scene is solid and ranges from dives to upscale, craft cocktail focused. There are several excellent breweries in town. There are a couple different arcade bars/esports cafes.

Whatever your interests are, either Worcester has it, or you can find it within a 20-30 drive. Worcester is the hub of Central MA with major highways going in all directions and the surrounding cities and towns have a ton to offer.

Public transit is pretty terrible. I definitely recommend a car. Parking generally isn’t an issue, other than downtown where you will often need to use a garage or pay lot.

Also, if you aren’t familiar with the general area, just know that the people here are generally great. I’ve worked in/around Worcester for the majority of my adult life. I’ve never not felt welcome. You will encounter a fair share of assholes, but that true anywhere.

Feel free to reply with any questions

As a 30 year old yuppy born and raised in Worcester that has also spent a lot time in Boston with college friends, my certainly biased opinion is that Worcester greatly exceeds living in eastern MA when you look at it from an ROI standpoint. Cost of living has increased quite a bit the last few years after the secret got out that Worcester is a great/affordable alternative to eastern MA, but the delta in COL between Boston and Worcester is still tremendous. If you need to go to Boston occasionally, the drive is 45 minutes to and hour.

Restaurant scene is fantastic. Truly a foodies' paradise. New restaurants popping up all the time that my gf and I love checking out. We have a handful of go-to's but when we want to switch it up and try somewhere new, there's a extensive list of options.

Night life has come along way recently. It isn't as lively as big city night life, but there's still plenty of options. Valentino's, the Banner, Funky Murphys, Mercantile, Cigar Bar, Vincents, White Eagle, tons of breweries. There's an option for really every crowd. As with most cities, making friends usually revolves around your social scene (which bars/restaurants you frequent) and the workplace. I have numerous transplant friends that have done just fine meeting people.

Public transit is Worcester's Achilles heel. Very unreliable schedules and inconvenient routes.

If you're going to be working at Biotech Park, I suggest looking in the lake ave/plantation street area first, and if you don't have any luck there you can extend your search to the Burncoat neighborhood or across the bridge in Shrewsbury if your rental budget is large enough. Burncoat and Shrewsbury are farther away but IMO nicer neighborhoods.

Worcester is a great city. I’m from/grew up here. My wife is a transplant. Heading to bed now but I will reply with more tomorrow.

In Worcester the public transportation is not good. You really do need a car to enjoy what the city offers because it is a large city as far as it’s land mass goes. so you have a bunch of bad neighborhoods mixed into good ones. None of the areas in Worcester are free of crime. Property crimes are still common but violent crimes are far between compared to cities of that size.

Because Worcester is so spread out I encourage people to check out the surrounding towns to live and head into Worcester to enjoy the city.

I’d rather live in Worcester than Boston, Springfield, Fall River, Lowell, Lawrence, Brockton, and like a couple dozen other places in Massachusetts, but I would still rather live in one of the surrounding towns of Worcester, because the property crime is so high.

I lived in Tatnuck, a good neighborhood, and my house got broken into multiple times. My brother lived on May street, a bad neighborhood and his joint got broke into as well. 3 floors up and still got robbed. Property crime is still real bad.

Worcester has a lot of restaurants, especially along Shrewsbury street, downtown, and in the canal district around Kelly Square and the streets north of it (and a bit south too).

We have a few areas that are lower income, some higher, like any city, but it's pretty intermixed and spotted across a bunch of areas in the city. Best bet is unfortunately to look at crime data on sites like Zillow, and consider that most of the heavier density of issues while they tend to have more crime that does not mean they're nessicarily unsafe, we've had a lot of catalitic converter thefts that are skewing the map a bit.

The bus system is free through this year iirc, but we're fighting to keep it beyond that. The WRTA is a hot-mess right now, they're blaming it on drivers taking too much FMLA but they should at this point have been able to correct for it. They've cut routes on Fridays affecting 1000's of riders due to the supposed shortage. On top of that, they run pretty infrequently anyway, and it can take an hour or more to get really anywhere in the city if you have to transfer at the hub. I like to call it a hub and spoke model, without the wheel, because other than the umass university hospital stops, most of the routes do not loop back to re-combine in areas apart from the hub downtown.

The commuter rail from Union Station is going under an upgrade to add a second platform, this hopefully also is a prelude to the continuation of the line towards Springfield. There's supposedly wifi on the trains, but that's generally a lie. They run at decent times, which will probably improve when the 2nd platform opens.

As for where folks hang out, it depends on what you like to do, wrestling and comedy are popular things, so are some bars, do you have any particular preferred methods of hanging out and meeting folks where you currently live?

Food scene in Worcester is legit. Vietnamese, East African, Dominican, there's lots to try and new things popping up regularly.

Culture is super vibrant and many universities as well bringing in young people all the time.

Public transport is not that great. Basically bus and commuter rail heading outside Worcester.

Overall city is very friendly and a good variety of different types of housing. I'd visit a couple times to see what areas resonate with you the most.

Worcester is actually pretty damn great. Museums, stage theater venues, shopping, restaurants, hospitals/doctors/specialists, entertainment, outdoor spaces. Mid state so you can go anywhere and get there pretty quick.

I worked in the city several years ago, the only thing that was bad? Traffic. But that's pretty normal for any city.

Moved here four years ago from Houston and couldn’t be happier. As far as bang for your buck in Northeast urban areas, it’s hard to do better. Great mix of food, some beautiful parks and hiking trails, good people, and if you get sick of it you can always take a day trip.

As other posters have said the biggest downside is public transportation which is barely existent (buses run every hour and they’ve cut service on Fridays because they don’t have enough drivers). Commuter rail is alright and will get better once they finish the project at union station.

Worcester is like most cities except its more blue collar and nobody really wants their neighborhood gentrified. I recommend not moving to worcester at all, so you "young professionals" (read as White Collar) cant drive up the rents of everyone else because you can afford to be overcharged.

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Move to surrounding town there is a reason why the majority of police,fire, teachers and city officials do not live in Wista. The Worcester restaurant scene is not what it was. Burtons in Shrewsbury, Romaines in Northboro, Tavern on the Square Shrewsbury.

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Something’s are crappy. I haven’t left after 6 years because of the food and bar options

>- How are restaurants, nightlife, and recreation in Worcester? Are there enough restaurants where it feels like you can always try somewhere new?

Good amount of restaurants to eat at, but only a few that my husband and I think are worth the money and they tend to be on the pricier side. He used to be a chef, and I've been expanding my cooking skills A LOT since the pandemic, so our opinions could be quite bias.

As for nightlife, we live near Indian Lake so we'd have to take an Uber, or similar, if we both wanted to drink which can make it expensive to go out. We generally just do game nights at friends houses and whatnot, but there are a decent amount of bars and club like bars around.

Recreation is dependent on what you enjoy to do. We like disc golf, hiking, camping, and such but not many good places in Worcester for that. We end up going outside Worcester for most of our recreation, but much of it is within a 30 minute drive of us so it's not bad.

>- How prevalent is public transportation? How do people get around?

We're from the Twin Cities in MN so my opinion may be bias here. I think the public transportation is crap within Worcester. I like that there's the train station so you can easily go to places like Boston, but for places within Worcester, you'll need your own vehicle or an Uber.

>- What are the "good areas" and "bad areas" of Worcester? Where should we avoid? Where do young professionals tend to live/hang out?

It really depends. As mentioned, we live near Indian Lake. We're near Holden, not far from Goldstar Blvd, and not far from WPI. Some people think we live in a bad neighborhood, but it's VERY quiet where we are. We're near a couple busy streets, but we live on a dead end street so we don't get a lot of noise beyond kids playing and people using yard equipment. We hear the trains in the winter, but it's dulled by the trees once the leaves come back.

For young professionals, I'd suggest looking more for the house you'd want and judging the neighborhood second. If you two want kids in the near future, get a house with that in mind. If you don't, get a house with that in mind. There are pockets of super expensive places with mansion like homes, other places with all multi family homes, some with all single family homes, and some with a mix. And think of commuting as well, if you don't WFH. You'll want to be near the highway if you commute as getting around within Worcester can be a PIA and take upwards of 20 minutes to get from east to west depending on the lights and route taken.

>- How easy/hard would it be for us to meet new people within our age group?

Depends on how extroverted you are. We tend to go into Holden more, but we've chatted with people when out and about in Worcester. People are mostly friendly if you choose to start up a conversation. But, if you go out and keep to yourselves, you won't meet anyone.

What’s the difference between young professionals and other 28 year olds?

Like, what do you do differently?

a lot of cool young professionals wear alumunim triangular pyramids on their heads to help us similar people identify each other, comingle and--ultimately--procreate....try it and you will get the attention you deserve it

God this reads like a wasp mom getting info about private high schools for her kids via facebook

Lol young professionals. Fancy way of saying you think your job is better than a blue collar worker