We spent a few days to find out where to live in Zurich and traveled
on trams, trains, and walked. Below is a summary of places we've been.

1) Limmatstrasse side of the train station: very liveable, bakery
opens on Sundays, bio shop, wine shop, Migro, restaurants
extreme central, there are even two story houses with (baby) gardens.

2) Around Romerhof (uphill): Cafe, shop, nice, central.

3) Seefeld toward the lake, seems a great place for easy access to the lake
park, some shops and restaurants nearby.

4) Zurich West for reasonable rent (?) and club scene

5) Zurich Enge area, beautiful houses, park, convenient, one french culinary
school restaurant, convenient. Expensive area.

6) Oerlikon : lots of large shops. Easy living.

7) Kreis 6. peaceful, some cafes, one even open in the evenings,
grocery shopping easy, nice Gemeinde center, park for walking

8) Kustnacht along the coast : public space, BBQ on the beach,
public walks along the lake, and other places. A community center
with gym, restaurants

9) top of Zurichberg near the forest. Lovely walk along the forest and can
forget one is in the city. But no grocery.

10) Toward the airport between the two flight paths, we were told good and reasonably priced

11) Greifenensee, the middle of the trio lake. Village feel (no first hand experience), but apparently a place to be for real life, e.g. a house with some garden, a rarity in Zürich.
12) Zollikon . Larges houses, some shops. Houses on the hill. Tram but we walked there from the center and back. Tax advantage.

In summary, there are nice places to live, affordability and availability aside. There is one particular place we liked and found out that the houses there never went into public if and when it became available. We also find some attractive apartments which apparently have a 3-year waiting list.
We looked at some pictures of the apartment for rents more closely, the kitchen are generally small, with small working surface and crowded with overhead cabinets. I have designed my own kitchen, no overhead cabinets lots of windows, good long working surface for making dough , cutting, and cluttering, and was a little disappointed with the kitchens on the market. Guess rental properties do not care about well functioning kitchens.