A big institution and access to the great outdoors makes Boulder, CO a great place to live. (Photo: Boemski / Flickr)
How often do you visit a city for a business trip or vacation, and walk away thinking, “Gee, I’d really like to live here!”?
It happens to me a lot… especially when I get off the well-worn, major city business travel circuit and venture into small and medium-sized towns.
Every time I go back to Boulder, I start looking a real estate and imagine living there. When passing through Missoula on a transcontinental car trip a few years back, I wanted to park the car and just stay. When I venture out of cold and foggy San Francisco (my hometown) to the more Mediterranean climates of Palo Alto or Santa Barbara, I’m ready to call the movers.
That’s why I always like to take a spin through Livability.com’s excellent annual Top 100 Best Places to Live ranking, released today, which takes a seriously scientific stab at studying 2,000 small and medium sized cities by analyzing more than 40 data points in eight categories – economics, housing, amenities, infrastructure, demographics, social and civic capital, education and health care.
(This is a Blast from the Past post — one of last year’s most popular– making a reappearance on TravelSkills. Enjoy! Read the original post and comments here.)
Madison is the capital of Wisconsin (John Maniani)
So what makes a small city great? Primarily, it’s institutions. “The cities at the top of the list were often home to a major institution like a university, hospital or state capital,” says Matt Carmichael, Livability’s editor. “Institutions like that help these smaller cities compete in terms of sports, culture, jobs and entertainment.”
Here are the top 10 best medium-sized cities to live in the US in 2015 according to Livability.com.
1) Madison, Wisconsin
2) Rochester, Minnesota
3) Arlington, Virginia
4) Boulder, Colorado
5) Palo Alto, California
6) Berkeley, California
7) Santa Clara, California
8) Missoula, Montana
9) Boise, Idaho
10) Iowa City, Iowa
Want to see the the full list of 100? Click here.
Are you lucky enough to travel frequently to any of these cities? If you had the means to move right now, which of the top 10 would you most likely choose? Why? I’d move to Boulder!
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Mark Gerrard says
July 5, 2015 at 9:59 pmAgree with Arlington, VA. Years ago, it was my place of desire, where I hoped to end up one day. Now Arlington, WA is on the horizon!
John says
July 5, 2015 at 4:35 pmI grew up in Redwood City, California where the city is considered to have the best climate in the world. “Climate Best by Government Test” is the motto of this city 22 miles south of San Francisco, 5 miles from Stanford University and Palo Alto. Silicon Valley is now exerting great influence on the San Francisco Peninsula, and it now very very expensive, Our family home was 14,000 in 1958 when my father first impulsively bought it…HA !, now worth over 1 million. I remember the simpler days, and nicer times. So folks have moved in droves to California for the climate. Hopefully they can find kindness and humility in their communities versus the rampant indifference in cities like San Francisco. Hospitality is still very good in The City by the bay, but the costs and crowding is unnerving. Best to live in the humble towns as the noise makers will always be there. Cheers !
Don M says
July 5, 2015 at 9:38 amI grew up in Arlington, VA. The only issues my wife and I had were the climate, too cold in the winter and too hot and humid in the summer. I loved being in the dc area but the climate issues made us desire to live somewhere else. we are now in Danville, CA which does have dry heat in the summer time, but winters are pretty mil.
cmcguinness says
July 4, 2015 at 9:16 pmClearly livability.com just fed data to a simplistic algorithm to come up with this list. And that, my friends, is why robots will never take over. They will end up deciding the best way to destroy mankind is to attack Yellow Springs, Ohio because of its top ranking college culture, small town feel, and low cost of living. And then, in their robot brain’s last CPU cycles, they’ll wonder how we so cleverly lured them into the middle of nowhere to be destroyed.