Thinking of moving anytime soon or looking for a hot new market to start building? SmartAsset analyzed 100 cities and boiled the list down to the top ten most livable cities based on factors such as unemployment, population density, and walkability. Their findings show that there is regional diversity in the best places to live, but low crime rates, affordability, and job opportunities across the board are important to landing on the list.
When choosing where in the U.S. to settle down and take out a mortgage, people consider a variety of factors like housing costs, cost of living, safety and dining and entertainment options. It is possible to measure livability by evaluating how cities rank on these fronts.
Since U.S. city environments can vary drastically, SmartAsset ran the numbers and uncovered the most livable cities in America in this study. Looking at 100 of the largest cities, we considered seven metrics: walkability, violent crime rate, property crime rate, unemployment rate, population density, housing costs as a percentage of income and housing cost-burdened rate. For details on our data sources and how we put the information together to create our final rankings, check out the Data and Methodology section below.