I have a lot of family and friends who live in and around Philadelphia, and they visit me regularly in Baltimore. This generates an interesting dynamic that is very telling about how people perceive places, namely cities.

For one, they almost all have negative, hopeless feelings about Philadelphia. BUT they all have positive, almost dreamy feelings about Baltimore. The reasons for this are simple - they are inundated with constant negativity about Philly (especially from the local Philly media) and because they live there, they see all of Philly's warts.

When they visit Baltimore, they are only doing fun things and seeing our best neighborhoods. They don't have access to our local media, social media, etc. and the people they know aren't shit talking Baltimore on a daily basis. In their day to day lives all of that negativity is reserved for Philly. Meanwhile, their feelings about Baltimore are based solely on positive, curated experiences. This leads to an intense "the grass is greener" kind of feeling that isn't 100% "valid", but their feelings aren't necessarily wrong either.

Baltimore is great. Philly has it's challenges. But Philly is also great...and Baltimore also has its challenges. Perspective matters a lot.