New Safest Cities Ranking: Two Places In New York Make The List

It's a scary world. WalletHub quotes Gallup's survey that finds 40 percent of Americans fear being a victim of a mass shooting (only 24 percent are concerned about terrorism).

So WalletHub took a look at something more comforting — safest cities in the country. WalletHub compared 182 cities — including the 150 most populated U.S. cities, plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state — across three key dimensions: 1) Home & Community Safety, 2) Natural-Disaster Risk, and 3) Financial Safety.

"Some cities are simply better at protecting their residents from harm. To determine where Americans can feel most secure — in more than one sense — WalletHub compared more than 180 cities across 39 key indicators of safety," researchers said. "Our data set ranges from assaults per capita to unemployment rate to road quality."

Only two cities in New York state made the new list. New York City, which has a low per-capita crime rate to the surprise of everyone who doesn't live in the tri-state area; and Yonkers.

Yup, the Hudson Valley's largest city — and it came in at No. 7 overall.

Its highest score was for home and community safety, where it came in second. That offset its poorest showing under financial risk, where it came in No. 121, and its "natural disaster risk" rank of 39.

New York City came in at No. 107.

Its highest score was under natural disaster risk, where it came in at No. 34. It clocked in at No. 71 for financial risk, and was down at No. 131 for home and community safety.

Source: WalletHub

"We should be proactive and mitigate risk where we can, and build resiliency into our localities," said Jennifer L. Schnieder, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "There are many options to help local decision-makers with this. The challenge is to make it city-specific (and I mean down to the action or project level AND the measures of performance that we track over time). Plans are great, but specifics in those plans and the implementation of them help localities actually accomplish something that makes a measurable difference."

Image via Google Maps

Map via WalletHub