Quote:
Originally Posted by Eightball
Cape Town, South Africa or coastal (preferably, so cost is less) Portugal or Spain.
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Cape Town can be great, but fails OP's criteria on a number of points. Crime, of course, being the main one. While the City Bowl and Atlantic coast areas are reasonably safe by South African standards the crime rate is still many times that of a place like San Diego. It's a risk I'd be willing to take but if someone is specifically concerned about crime it's not an attractive prospect. Everyone I know who has lived there has experienced some form of crime (whether direct or indirect), and stuff like monthly fees to a private security firm, electric fences, burglar bars and panic buttons attached to lanyards of are a fact of life. Things as simple as walking to a corner store by yourself at night are questionable - you'll probably be fine but the chances are higher than you'd like. Similarly the visible homeless poor population is very much in your face, even in nicer areas. Just a couple weeks ago a bunch of Metrorail train cars were torched in a mini riot in the central railway station as a response to terrible service / cancelled trains (in turn as a result of rampant cable theft of railway equipment).
With all the foreign investment in property it's not as cheap as it used to be, either, both in housing prices and the food/drink prices in nicer establishments. If you're retiring or getting paid in Euro/USD this is still not much of an issue but if you're relying on a local job paid in Rand it's not a cheap city. Wages are still quite a bit below what one would get paid in Gauteng Province for an identical job.
The recent wildfires also came very close to damaging large parts of the city, so it may not be safe on that front either!
Portugal seems like an interesting suggestion - haven't heard anything but good stuff about the country and it seems very affordable.