What are the most creative cities?

Designers of all capacities have it great: whether in-office, 100% freelance, or a mixture of both. Depending on what type of design you do, you can work from anywhere as long as you have a good internet connection and an electrical outlet. However, designers tend to gravitate towards cities; there's something unmistakably vibrant and inspiring about a center of culture, busy streets, amazing food and coffee shops, and tall buildings all clustered within a smaller radius.

In case you didn't know, Medialoot for the most part is headquartered in Philadelphia. We're incredibly proud of our city and the creative energy it brings for both artists and designers. So we're going to preface this blog post by saying that while we're biased about our city, we recognize that many other cities are designer friendly too. What we're most bummed about is when Philadelphia gets left off of a list because Philadelphia is awesome, and here's why.

(Before we really dig into bragging about Philadelphia, we want to ask you to tell us what city is the most creative — and why — in the comments below.)

• Collaborative CultureWe call for artists and designers to design bike racks. In making the city more bike friendly, we need more bike racks. But why have them just be standard issue bike racks when they can be functional sculptures?
• Girl Develop It - PhiladelphiaGirl Develop It Philly Chapter is one of the biggest in the entire GDI network. As a participant in some of the GDI Meetups, I am hugely enthusiastic and lucky to be able to have access to such amazing resources.
• Amazing Design FirmsHappy Cog was named one of the 10 Best Web Design Firms for 2014. They're right around the corner from us in Center City Philadelphia. Oh yeah, and there are a ton of other awesome design firms in the area.
• Plethora of Creative MeetUp GroupsThe Philadelphia creative Meetup group list is long and diverse. The network of designers and developers in Philadelphia is large but closely knit.
• Awesome Co-Op Working SpacesThe coop working spaces are unparalleled. From Indy Hall (named one of the coolest places to work by Business Insider) to South Philly's Co-Op Workspace to Benjamin's Desk to The Fire Works in West Philadelphia, there are no shortage of cool spaces to work as an individual or as a startup.
• Education and UniversitiesThe creative universities and art/design programs in Philadelphia like University of the Arts, Drexel, and Philadelphia University, and Temple have some of the best creative programs in the nation.
• Tech WeekWe have our own Tech Week.
• EventsThere are always a number of great creative and entrepreneurial events going on somewhere in Philadelphia.

So yes, it's quite possible that we have a thing for our own city. Can you blame us? This article that could have been titled: 8 reasons why Philadelphia is the best city for design.

What cities do you think are the most creative (besides the big ones like Los Angeles and New York)? Tell us why your city is so awesome!

Or, if we missed any more selling points of why Philadelphia is so great for artists and designers, comment below with those, too!