Some business plans will benifit a lot from being in a specific location; however if you currently live in a city with friends, family, and maybe a SO with a job starting right where you are until at least you hit MVP isn't a bad idea.
I'm personallly biased towards lower cost areas, the same funding slug buys you more runway. Being in michigan I'd say Detroit ISN'T on my top list of cities to start in, I find Ann Arbor to be more expensive but offers better quality of life and is right next to a major univeristy. Grand Rapids is cheaper, and has StartGarden.com that is trying to build a whole ecosystem.
Probably Detroit or its peripheral cities (there are some nice ones, Birmingham, Royal Oak and more). Dan Gilbert (Quicken Loans) is trying to revive downtown and investing in new startups.
Also it's only 45min away from Ann Arbor which is an awesome city.
You can rent an apartment for the cost of monthly parking in SF :)
Thats Detroit proper (do not move to downtown Detroit or Flint :) but the cities around Detroit are good, and I don't know much about the schools there but it's worth looking into.
Oakland County has some of the richest cities in the US (a lot of old money) so you can easily find a nice city around Detroit that will be cheap and still very protected.
I've lived in extremely high crime areas before. One study of my neighborhood predicted I had a good chance to be dead within 5-10 years because of crime.
The truth is that unless you're part of the drug trade or other nefarious dealings, you're usually pretty safe. I can't speak for Detroit, but I'm always suspect of these stats.
Rochester/Birmingham and other cities have some of the best schools in the state. The northern burbs are on par with any good suburban area in the country.
Pittsburgh has a nice combination of low-cost housing, good universities, and a moderately sized tech industry (boosted by the Google satellite). Nice nature in the area as well.
I'm personallly biased towards lower cost areas, the same funding slug buys you more runway. Being in michigan I'd say Detroit ISN'T on my top list of cities to start in, I find Ann Arbor to be more expensive but offers better quality of life and is right next to a major univeristy. Grand Rapids is cheaper, and has StartGarden.com that is trying to build a whole ecosystem.