Top cities with best quality of life

[The North One]

Originally Posted by UrbanRevival

Typically, these lists are just a proxy for which cities have the highest concentrations of highly-educated white people. There's a very obvious bias, and they're not at all novel.

And I can't think of a more subjective term than "quality-of-life." Also, in like 90% of cases, if you're at least somewhat well-off in relative terms (based on a local earnings scale), then your personal quality-of-life is very likely going to be high pretty much anywhere.

Ergo, it's not that places that have a high quality-of-life; people have a high quality-of-life.

Agreed. Pretty much everywhere in the US will have the same "quality of life". Some states have better minor benefits than others (states with things like free school lunches or somewhat better social programs, abortion access, more reasonable cost of living, etc.), but other than that its all arbitrary.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by UrbanRevival

It's not "wokey dokey" to acknowledge demographic differences.

And yes, there's a very obvious correlation with the top-scoring cities and their "palatability" as places to live amongst the affluent/educated class of white people.

That might be uncomfortable for some to hear; I couldn't care less.

SJ is probably one of the exceptions on this list, at least if you're looking at the top half. It is, for the most part, relatively affluent and educated, as you noted.

In terms of city proper, for the 2020 census, it showed:
38.19% Asian
31.21% Hispanic/Latino
23.3% White
2.71% Black

For Santa Clara County:
38.91% Asian
28.7% White
25.17% Hispanic/Latino
2.18% Black

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Dariusb

US News World Report
https://www.entrepreneur.com/busines...-report/469811

Top 15 cities with best quality of life:
1. Ann Arbor, MI
2. Boulder, CO
3. Madison, WI
4. San Jose, CA
5. Portland, ME
6. Boston, MA
7. Green Bay, WI
8. Hartford, CT
9. Rochester, NY
10. Trenton, NJ
11. Boise, ID
12. Washington DC
13. Raleigh, NC
14. Grand Rapids, MI
15. Ft. Collins, CO

Were you surprised about any of the cities on the list? Were there any cities you were surprised that didn't make the list?

Only one city from the south (I guess some would maybe lump DC with Raleigh and say that there are two southern cities, but I don't consider DC a southern city; it's Boswash!), two Colorado cities, and no cities from the deep south. Not a major surprise, but the list seems sort of random, other than the high preponderance of Midwest and Northeast cities. Quite a few rust belty cities on the list.

Mostly just clickbait, I reckon.

[Crawford]

Rochester is really the only Rust Belty metro. GR and AA are in the Rust Belt but not Rust Belt metros. Trenton and Hartford are just NE corridor sprawl.

[sopas ej]

Yes, but are they HAPPY?

Another listicle!

Fremont, CA named happiest city in "America"

[homebucket]

^ Looks like San Jose, Madison, and Portland appear on both lists. So these three all have high quality of life scores as well as happiness ratings.

[MolsonExport]

The list is BS without Jacksonville. That skyline (way better than Toronto) would make the denizens euphoric with glee.

[JManc]

My niece just moved to Jax (from South Florida) and she loves it there.

I can see where Fremont would rank high, safe, quiet, close knit (mostly S. and E. Asian) and lots of family and outdoor activities. But boring if you're young and single. Gotta go to SJ, SF, Berkeley or across the bay into Palo Alto to anything fun.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Chisouthside

Sounds about right, alot of the drivers for the coaches/shuttle network for the company i worked for had to move out to tracy/stockton to be able to afford a house but still commuted to silicon valley for work. Theres still huge swaths of working class areas on north/east sides but when those homeowners retire and sell their homes their kids wont be able to afford to stay in the city it seems.

Yes, the Bay Area's commute shed has notoriously spread out into the Central Valley due to its lower housing costs. I should note that my family had the money to continue living in San Jose. But they wanted less traffic (which is no longer reliably on offer) and more for their money (which still is). The new house was so sprawling that it had an intercom system.