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Community Corner
The research and data site Numbeo ranked dozens of cities for quality of life. These are the best — and worst.
Travis Loose, Patch Staff
Travis Loose, Patch Staff
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Everyone can agree that having a high quality of life is a good thing. That’s easy. Pegging what exactly goes into it is a bit trickier. Fortunately the folks at Numbeo did it using data and put together a list of cities in North America that have the highest quality of life.
Seattle ranked 12th on the index with an overall index score of 188.9. We placed just ahead of Portland, Oregon, and just behind Dallas, Texas, on the index.
Spokane also ranked among the top 20 at 18th — just ahead of Sacramento and just behind Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
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Here’s how Seattle ranked in each category:
Purchasing power: 139.50
Safety: 54.76
Health care: 72.69
Cost of living: 84.10
Property price to income ratio: 6.12
Traffic commute time: 42.92
Pollution: 28.13
Climate: 91.73
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Raleigh has the highest quality of life in North America, according to the index. The North Carolina city scored 215.24 overall and ranked 2nd in buying power, 5th in safety, 6th in pollution and 14th in property price to income ratio out of 59 cities. Raleigh also ranked 15th for health care, 19th in climate, 29th in traffic commute time and 34th in cost of living.
Here are the top 10 cities on the index:
- Raleigh, NC
- Madison, WI
- Charlotte, NC
- Ottawa, Canada
- Columbus, OH
- Victoria, Canada
- Austin, TX
- San Diego, CA
- San Jose, CA
- Quebec City, Canada
Detroit ranked dead last on the index with a score of 132.83. Michigan’s largest city was the least safe of all cities and had the single worst commute time, even ahead of Los Angeles. Detroit was also among the worst in the nation for buying power, health care and pollution.
New York City had the second-lowest quality of life on the index, followed by Winnipeg, Regina and Toronto, all in Canada. Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Las Vegas were the next-lowest.
Click any of the following links to see how the metrics were calculated: purchasing power (including rent) index, pollution index, property price to income ratios, cost of living index, safety index, climate index, health index and traffic index.
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Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
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