Data-Driven List Curates the 100 Best Places to Live with Affordability & Personalization in Mind
Livability.com announced the release of its 10th annual Top 100 Best Places to Live list, celebrating the best small and mid-sized communities across the U.S. The list is based on extensive research into relocation trends, economic variables and factors that influence quality of life.
“What’s truly unique about our annual Top 100 is its consistent emphasis on affordability and the small to mid-sized cities best positioned to offer reasonable costs relative to their location,” says Amanda Ellis, Livability.com Editor-in-Chief. “ “Our Top 100 Best Places to Live celebrates places where you can still live a little after covering the costs of essentials like housing and transportation, where middle income earners have a good shot at owning a home and where you can live the life and career you want.”
Per Livability’s emphasis on affordability, only cities with a median home value of $500,000 or less were included in the final Top 100 Best Places to Live.
This year’s list is the most interactive to date, with a variety of filters that elevate user experience by tailoring the ranking to reflect specific priorities when it comes to choosing a place to live.
“There’s no one size fits all when it comes to finding the right place to live, and we want our ranking to help you find your best place,” says Ellis. “That’s why this year’s list is not a ranking telling you the No. 1 to No. 100 best places to live in America. Instead, we’re leaving it up to each individual to filter and rank the categories that mean the most to them for a personalized top 100 ranking of the best places to live.”
Livability.com partnered with Applied Geographic Solutions (AGS) to curate the Top 100 Best Places to Live list based on nearly 100 data points measuring economy, housing and cost of living, amenities, transportation, environment, safety, education and health. Users can prioritize which of these criteria are most important to them, plus indicate their preferred home pricing, population size and region of the country, to create their personalized Top 100 Best Places to Live.
Livability and AGS collected data for the more than 2,000 U.S. cities with populations between 75,000 and 500,000, using a weighted algorithm to then select the 100 best places to live. That algorithm also factored in additional affordability criteria based on analysis of average rents and home prices relative to local income. The resulting list of 100 places represents the top 5% of U.S. cities with populations in the studied range.
While the 2023 Top 100 Best Places to Live does not represent a ranking until users select their preferences, a sampling of some of the cities featured include:
- Johns Creek, GA
- Olathe, KS
- Cranston, RI
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Meridian, ID
- Norwalk, CT
- Castle Rock, CO
- Madison, WI
- Eugene, OR
- Knoxville, TN
The complete selection of the 2023 Top 100 Best Places to Live is featured on Livability.com, along with filters to create your personalized Top 100 list and detailed articles about what makes each city an exceptional place to live.
Our own Mike Christenson was recently on the Livability podcast, Inside America’s Best Cities, discussing the use of data for economic development and an insight into how AGS enhanced their list this year. You can listen to that podcast here: Livability Media Episode 21: BONUS Episode: How Data Can Fuel Economic Growth
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