Bloomberg's 50 Best American Cities

[Archbob]

If you think their metrics suck, what would you use to rank a city?

In order of importance:

1. Crime
2. Education
3. Cost of living ratio with average salary
4. Traffic/Transportation
5. Weather
6. Culture/Nightlife
7. Environment/pollution(5, 6 and 7 are interchangeble)

For long-term residents(people raising families, 1 and 2 are by far the most important or should be. For retired people 5 and 7 I would think would be more important.

 

[Disgustipated]

My city isn't even in the top 50

hmmm. To me it's home. But I was born and raised here, so that is one reason. After living here, then living in the Southeast in the military, it's a huge difference. I could never feel at home in a conservative place like Virginia. The cops in Virginia are so strict and are aholes.

But most importantly I love hiking in mountains. And I like living in a place where you can find some pretty fun hiking with just a 30 minute drive. And it's close to Southern Utah which has some amazing hiking. Southern Utah I consider one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

 

[downtown]

Are you kidding me? Mid-size cities and towns and far better living places that huge metropolitan areas. How is NO ranked above Madison?

Well, it is called "best cities", not "best places to live, period".

In order of importance:

1. Crime
2. Education

These are both broad, and tricky to factor in a ranking like this. How do we figure crime? Do we weight violent crime more, or just any crime? What about the ability to avoid crime?

Chicago and New Orleans are both violent cities, at least statistically. In Chicago though, violent crime in primarily concentrated in specific neighborhoods controled by gangs, whereas gunfire in New Orleans is spread out over most of the city. Chicago might technically be more "dangerous", but it would be pretty easy to live there for a long time and never know that. That's trickier to reduce to just a single metric or two I think.

I think # of universities or quality of local universities is a good metric (you can benefit from living in close proximity to a great college even if you never go there), but K12 stuff is much harder. City Public Schools are going to be pretty bad in virtually all of these cities I think.

I would probably put Madison in my five cities, all things considered.

3. Cost of living ratio with average salary

I wish they had included this though.

My city isn't even in the top 50

I think their violent crime rate and the fact that Nevada's economy completely fell into the toilet killed Vegas there.

 

[Mango Elephant]

Anyone who's been around Georgia can tell you, the picture the website gave Atlanta is NOT Atlanta. It's obviously Savannah. Savannah is infinitely more times prettier than Atlanta so I can kind of understand, but just in case anyone is wanting to see Forsyth Park, don't go to Atlanta, go to Savannah.

http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/2012-09-26/americas-50-best-cities#slide36

 

[Archbob]

Chicago and New Orleans are both violent cities, at least statistically. In Chicago though, violent crime in primarily concentrated in specific neighborhoods controled by gangs, whereas gunfire in New Orleans is spread out over most of the city. Chicago might technically be more "dangerous", but it would be pretty easy to live there for a long time and never know that. That's trickier to reduce to just a single metric or two I think.

A lot of downtown Chicago is pretty bad, even along the lake and especially around Chinatown. Maybe not super-violent crimes but a high possibility of me getting mugged does lower my quality of life significantly.

As for education, number of colleges/universities is a good metric, but also % of people in the population who have a Bachelors or higher degree. Test scores for K-12 students and reading/math comprehension for k-12 are all metrics that need to be considered. Quality of the K-12 education should be a top priority for families. One of the main reasons I don't think large inner cities should be ranked so high.

I don't understand how you don't factor cost of living vs salary into rankings like these. Obviously if you can't afford things, your life is going to suck

I've lived/visited lots of places and Madison would be in the top 3 places I prefer to live. The only thing holding it back from #1 is the winter.

Oh yeah, from what I can remember of Atlanta, the city proper actually kind of sucks.

 

[downtown]

A lot of downtown Chicago is pretty bad, even along the lake and especially around Chinatown. Maybe not super-violent crimes but a high possibility of me getting mugged does lower my quality of life significantly.

Downtown Chicago is the Loop (and the south and west loop neighborhoods I guess). That isn't dangerous. It's all offices and rich people condos/theater stuff, and its crawling with cops. There aren't very many reasons to be downtown after 8 PM, and you're not going to get mugged in broad daylight there. The only possibly sketchy places I can think of in the entire area would be Union Station and the Clark and Lake subway interchange, and only after midnight for both places.

Chinatown isn't downtown, its in the southside surrounded by developing neighborhoods, and yeah, its sketchy. The far North Side near the lake has some housing projects that aren't very safe, but unless you go to Loyola or want Indian food, there isn't a reason to go up there anyway.

For most of the North Side/Near Westside (Ravenswood, Lincoln Park, Old Town, Wicker Park, Bucktown, half of Logan Square, Gold Coast, Boystown and Andersonville)...you're about as likely to get mugged as you are on State Street in Madison. They aren't dangerous at all.

 

[Archbob]

I've never been a fan of the Clark/Lake area after dark honestly, all the way to around Eerie street.

 

[downtown]

I've never been a fan of the Clark/Lake area after dark honestly, all the way to around Eerie street.

For the life of me, I don't know why. Outside of the underground subway station, there is literally nothing scary about that part of the loop..there are almost no bars, no liquor stores, and the only residential areas are very expensive condos. The east side of the river along Erie is also nothing but expensive white people housing, expensive shopping and Chipotles.

The west side of the river has a few places that might be kiiinda sketchy, but then you aren't downtown by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Cutlass]

Thanks for showing the whole list.

I'm most familiar with the north-east, but I'm surprised that neither New Haven nor Hartford made the cut.

It's funny that LA is lower on the list than Anchorage - I've been to Anchorage (but not LA) and I'm surprised it's there at all. I found it to be a depressing swath of strip-mall carelessly splotched onto a gorgeous landscape. Anchorage would be beautiful without all the Anchorage.

Even if the 200k cutoff wasn't true, Hartford certainly isn't a great place to live. And while I think New Haven has a lot more going for it than Hartford does, that doesn't necessarily make it good enough for the list.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm vaguely impressed with myself that I've actually heard of these places. Whether I know more than a handful of utterly token facts about them, well, that's a different story...

The west side of the river has a few places that might be kiiinda sketchy, but then you aren't downtown by any stretch of the imagination.

Is this meant to imply that you're exceptionally likely to get mugged, or am I reading it wrong?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Agreed. Southwest Maryland and northern Virginia are pretty nice.

By SW Maryland, you mean "Southern Maryland?" In my opinion, it's gotten worse in the last 10-15 years. Too much of the rest of MD creeping in.

I take the subway every day to Farragut North and the bottom of my pants are frequently covered in this black grimy crap.

I didn't know you were in the area. How come you never come to our meetups?

 

[GamezRule]

Not that I've ever been there, but shouldn't NYC be in the top 3?

 

[Super55]

As a partisan Michigander, I feel slighted by this list not including any cities from my State . Ok, Detroit has a pretty bad reputation, but what about Grand Rapids? Or Ann Arbor? Madison is on there, so I'm assuming college towns are up for consideration.
Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan have a lot of cool buildings, and there are some cool free museums on the U of M campus!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeverett55/7586809484/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeverett55/6942354515/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeverett55/7586809234/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeverett55/7586867120/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeverett55/7587029730/

 

[Archbob]

They might only consider cities with over 100,000 people. Madison has around 230,000 now I think.

Otherwise, I'd think places like Mountain Home, Arkansas would make the list. Really lovely little town.

 

[Super55]

They might only consider cities with over 100,000 people. Madison has around 230,000 now I think.

Otherwise, I'd think places like Mountain Home, Arkansas would make the list. Really lovely little town.

Grand Rapids population is 188,040, while Ann Arbor's is 113,934. Anyway, city limit population alone is a woefully inadequate way to measure city populations for US cities, especially in States like Michigan. Due to our ridiculous municipality annexation laws, it's almost impossible for cities in Michigan to annex suburbs or surrounding townships.
Comparing Grand Rapids and Madison for a moment, it appears just from comparing city limits population that Madison has Grand Rapids beat handily, 236,901 to 188,040. But wait. Grand Rapids urban area population, the population of it's continuous urban development is 569,935, while Madison's is only 329,533. Further compare their metro populations, and you have Grand Rapids at 774,361 and Madison at 568,593. You start to get a pretty different picture at that point.

 

[Archbob]

Maybe they just didn't think it was good enough to be in the top 50.

But NO in the top 15 totally invalidates this list anyways. And DC at #3 --- please.

 

[Super55]

Maybe they just didn't think it was good enough to be in the top 50.

But NO in the top 15 totally invalidates this list anyways. And DC at #3 --- please.

50 slots, and no room for any of the cities from America's 8th most populous State. Slighted! We've been slighted, I say!

 

[downtown]

Population is a great way to determine if something IS a city or not. Metro measures suburban growth, and suburbs are totally different entities.

Michigan has a ton of mid-sized places, but only one real CITY, and that's Detroit. I don't think you can claim you were slighted if Detroit doesn't make a big American cities list.

Grand Rapids is a perfectly lovely place, but it's pretty small. Ann Arbor, of course, is a whore.

 

[illram]

LA in dead last place means this list is probably the most accurate list ever created.

 

[Disgustipated]

But it's not actually last. My city is last because we didn't even make the list.