One notable and welcome change this year: With the pandemic seemingly coming under control, we’ve restored to the list some college towns omitted last year for fear the pandemic would deprive them of the low-cost cultural and educational opportunities that make them so appealing. Our choices are listed alphabetically below. You can read more about our methodology and sources below the list.e compare data on nearly 800 places, with populations above 10,000, in all 50 states.
Since living well is just as important as living affordably, we look at a number of quality of life indicators, including the rate of violent crime as compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We eliminate from consideration cities with beyond-the-pale crime rates as well as places that are well below the national average when it comes to physicians per capita or air quality. The doctor data comes from countyhealthrankings.org while air ratings are from the U.S.
As noted in the story above, we also give serious consideration to climate change and natural hazards. Plus, we consider factors that promote an active retirement. These include ratings by walkscore.com for walkability and by walkscore.com and the League of American Bicyclists on whether dedicated lanes and other measures make it easy to bike around town.
Sources for our data include zillow.com, trulia.com, bestplaces.net, the National Association of Realtors, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, websites of individual state tax agencies and the latest Milken Institute report on Best Performing Cities.
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