We lived south of Boston, Ma (Norwood) and retired to Atlanta, Ga. A bit of culture shock, tho I had lived here before and we knew friends here.
We miss the atmosphere of Boston/Cambridge (very college, artsy, intellectual). We live within walking distance of Emory Univ and you'd never know a college was there. It took till this year to build a real bookstore just off campus. That said there are lots of colleges/universities, etc here.
There are wonderful restaurants of all different varieties, pretty good medical care, a 4 season climate, theaters, music, festivals, plenty of shopping, tho not too many great fabric stores, a reasonable number of quilt shops.
We live in a condo community built 1949 on the register of historic places because it's built like Bauhaus (Square red brick, metal window frames, small porches), but dynamite landscaping and in the spring...it hurts the whole city is so pretty with all the dogwoods and azaleas.
Atlanta is a forested area and when you look down on it from a high rise you mostly see wonderful old trees, tho with the droughts several years ago we have begun to loose some of the old wonderful trees due to stress. However, they have generally been replaced, so I expect that the forest will continue to grow.
We're a couple of hours from mountains and 5 hours from the sea...that we miss, tho we are about an hour from big reservoirs. We're in the foothills of the Appalachins (sp)so the whole area is nicely varied in topography.