Top 100 Best Places To Live: Methodology & Ranking Criteria

With a name like Livability, we take our Best Places To Live list very seriously, and we want you to understand the data and other factors that drove the creation of this year’s list.

The Livability Top 100 actually is not a ranked list telling you the No. 1 to No. 100 best places to live in America. Instead, we’re giving you the top 100 cities according to our research while also empowering you to filter and rank criteria as you see fit to create a personalized list of your best places to live. You can prioritize which of our eight data categories are most important to you, plus indicate your preferred home pricing, population size and region of the country. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to finding the right place to live, and we want our list to help folks find the best place for their specific needs. 

What Qualifies a City as a ‘Best Place’?

What makes a city a great place to live? The most livable cities in the U.S. offer a combination of affordability, opportunity and quality of life factors.

Livability partnered with Applied Geographic Solutions (AGS) to curate the Top 100 Best Places To Live in the U.S., based on about 100 data points measuring eight broad categories:

• Economy, including data points like:
  • Unemployment rate
  • Employment opportunity index
  • Income relative change
• Housing & Cost of Living, including data points like:
  • Tax rates
  • Home & rental affordability indexes 
  • Income inequality index 
• Amenities, including data points like:
  • Cultural amenities (museums, arts, etc.) 
  • Leisure amenities (parks, golf, sports venues, etc.)
  • Shopping/retail/nightlife indexes 
• Transportation, including data points like:
  • Walkability
  • Median commute time
  • Average vehicles per household
• Environment, including data points like:
  • Population density
  • Air quality
  • Various natural disaster risks
• Safety, including data points like:
  • Various crime rates
• Education, including data points like:
  • School quality
  • Educational attainment 
• Health, including data points like:
  • Life expectancy
  • Doctor & hospital access

What Is a Livability Score (LivScore)?

Based on a proprietary algorithm weighting each of the above categories, we then assigned a Livability Score to more than 2,000 cities that fit our population parameters (75,000-500,000). That LivScore essentially grades a city based on its performance across the prescribed categories.

The top 100 scoring cities, with constraints limiting the number of neighboring cities, form our Top 100 Best Places to Live. These 100 cities represent the top 5% of U.S. cities with populations in the studied range. 

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. 

Where Do We Get Our LivScore Data?

Livability and AGS used a variety of public and private data. Some of the federal sources included:

• Census Bureau
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
• USPS
• Department of Education
• Department of Homeland Security
• Social Security Administration
• Department of Health and Social Services
• Housing and Urban Development
• Federal Reserve
• Department of Defense
• Bureau of Land Management
• Internal Revenue Service
• National Geological Survey
• National Weather Service

Some of the private sources included:

• Satellite imagery for identifying new construction in growth areas
• Open Street Map foundation for streets, changes to streets, etc.
• Business establishment files from private list and business credit sources
• Business associations (e.g. to build a complete list of U.S. ski resorts)

Intrigued? Check out this year’s Top 100 Best Places To Live in the U.S.

Looking for more guidance on choosing the best place to move to? Check out our Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Best Place to Live.