Fallout 4 might be a little over 8 years old now (jeez that makes me feel old), but there are still plenty of topics that lead to hot debates between players. One such topic is where the best place to build a settlement is. While there're probably hundreds of mods that let you choose custom locations, we're talking about the default locations today, as Fallout 4 players have been bigging up their personal favorite locations in the game on the Fallout 4 subreddit.
It was u/Glitched_Link who posed the question to fellow fans, with the only catch being that you couldn't pick Sanctuary. As you might expect, answers soon came flowing in, with Starlight Drive-In one of the more popular choices amongst players. Not too surprising considering how close it is to Sanctuary, and as u/fusionsofwonder points out, the pool of water in the middle of the area lets you set up a couple of handy water purifiers.
Another popular choice seems to be Hangman's Alley, as those brave souls that like to play on Survival Mode like it for how easy it is to defend and how central it is to the rest of the map. There're even a few people who play on normal that love Hangman's Alley like u/camoure, simply because the limitations of the area make for some interesting challenges that lead to unique builds.
If we're talking about safety, you can't get much safer than The Castle - once you've taken out the Mirelurk Queen of course. That safety seems to appeal to a lot of players in the thread, including u/NitetimeNatalie who explains that they always make a beeline for the fortress straight out of the gate to avoid spreading out building materials. Smart thinking, although I can't imagine Preston Garvey is too happy about you annexing his former home like that. Snooze you lose, I guess.