This small Pennsylvania city was ranked the best in the US, according to a new study
A Pennsylvania city has been named the best in America.
Lancaster was ranked the No. 1 small city in a WalletHub report released Tuesday. The personal finance site compared more than 1,300 cites with populations of 25,000 to 100,000 using 43 metrics across five categories: affordability; economic health; education and health; quality of life; and safety.
Lancaster finished in the 99th percentile, representing the top 1% of cities in the report. The city had a total score of 71.04 and reported the lowest crime rate.
State College, meanwhile, finished in the 77th percentile with a score of 62.75. The borough had one of the highest percentages of population in poverty among the locations in the report, along with several other college towns.
WalletHub gathered data for the report from several sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, Federal Bureau of Investigation, TripAdvisor, county health rankings and Yelp.
These are the top 10 cities:
- Lancaster, Penn.
- Carmel, Ind.
- Fair Lawn, N.J.
- Lexington, Mass.
- Brentwood, Tenn.
- Melrose, Mass.
- Zionsville, Ind.
- Needham, Mass.
- Portland, Maine
- Westfield, Ind.
Among the factors that were ranked under the affordability umbrella were median household income, cost of living and homeownership rate.
Economic health looked at topics such as population growth, job growth, unemployment rate and median credit score.
Education and health included factors such as high school graduation rate, percentage of residents fully vaccinated against COVID-19, share of obese adults and share of insured population.
Quality of life covered metrics such as average commute time, number of attractions and average weekly work hours.
Under the category of safety were violent crime weight, property crime rate and vehicle crash deaths per capita.
Experts interviewed by WalletHub said the cost of housing was the most important financial factor to consider when choosing a place to live.
“The opportunities for finding housing that matches one’s family income,” said Protip Biswas, vice president of homelessness for United Way of Greater Atlanta and part-time lecturer in the School of City & Regional Planning at Georgia Tech. “While most people dream of large houses and large properties, it is the availability of apartments or smaller houses that make a place more accessible for the majority of the population.”
What factors combine to make the best small city? It depends, said Elizabeth Delmelle, an associate professor in the department of city and regional planning and director of the Master of Urban Spatial Analytics program at the University of Pennsylvania.
“This will differ for a retiree versus a recent college graduate versus a family and vary according to preferences. It is impossible to generalize,” Delmelle said. “High-quality schools are usually an unanimously good indicator though — it holds housing values.”