Paul Graham:

No matter how determined you are, it’s hard not to be influenced by the people around you. It’s not so much that you do whatever a city expects of you, but that you get discouraged when no one around you cares about the same things you do [...] Unless you’re sure what you want to do and where the leading center for it is, your best best is probably to try living in several places when you’re young.

I feel directly concerned by this article; having lived in Bordeaux vs. Montreal and having been to San Francisco, I can certainly tell the difference.