While not exactly boomtowns, Albany and Hartford are hardly near the bottom. I would live in either way before I would live in other places like Baltimore, Phildelphia, Newark NJ, St. Louis, etc, etc.
And Allentown? Sure, while again its not the boomtown it was back in the heyday of steel, it's also not the depressed/dying town it was when that Billy Joel song came out.
Agreed. Hartford is preferable to many, many places - especially CT’s largest city of Bridgeport!
Plenty of white collar jobs abound in Hartford and while no one actually lives IN hartford, there are many very desirable towns surrounding it (West Hartford, Avon, Simsbury, Farmington, Glastonbury, Wethersfield...)