Best Places To Live: Air Quality Shakes Up U.S. News Top 10 Ranking

ACROSS AMERICA — Affordability and relatively clean air, even more than its job market, drove changes in its annual rankings of the Best Places to Live, U.S. News & World Report said with the release of the 2022-2023 report Tuesday.

Nationally, Huntsville, Alabama, moved up two spots to top this year’s list, knocking out Boulder, Colorado, as the best place to live in America. New in the Top 10 is San Jose, California, which moved up from No. 36 last year. This year, the 10 best places to live in America are:

1. Huntsville, Alabama (No. 3 last year)
2. Colorado Springs, Colorado (No. 6 last year)
3. Green Bay, Wisconsin (No. 21 last year)
4. Boulder, Colorado (No. 1 last year)
5. San Jose, California (No. 36 last year)
6. Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina (No. 2 last year)
7. Fayetteville, Arkansas (No. 4 last year)
8. Portland, Maine (No. 8 last year)
9. Sarasota, Florida (No. 9 last year)
10. San Francisco, California (No. 15 last year)

Cities knocked out of the Top 10 were Austin, Texas (No. 5 last year and No. 13 this year); Naples, Florida (No. 7 last year and No. 12 this year); and Portland, Oregon (No. 10 last year and No. 22 this year).

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted Americans to re-evaluate where they live, U.S. News said last year with its Best Places to Live ranking. This year, affordability and desirability and quality of life — the latter two being given more weight by a new index in the ranking, air quality — were the main drivers, the publication said.

“Much of the shakeup we see at the top of this year’s ranking is a result of changing preferences,” Devon Thorsby, real estate editor at U.S. News, said in a news release. “People moving across the country today are putting more emphasis on affordability and quality of life than on the job market, which in many ways takes a back seat as remote work options have become more standard.”

This year, U.S. News added air quality as a measurement in its Quality of Life index, noting that environmental factors are among those Americans consider before moving to a new place. Huntsville and Albany, New York, topped this measure, though Albany ranks 21st overall.

With the addition of an environmental index, three Colorado metro areas affected by catastrophic wildfires saw their rankings drop. Boulder slipped three places to No. 4. But Denver plummeted to No. 55 from No. 14 last year, and Fort Collins fell to No. 54 from No. 17.

All three metro areas ranked in the bottom 15 on air quality scores among the 150 on the list, U.S. News said.

Huntsville also moved up in the rankings because of strong scores in housing and quality of life, though its desirability ranking was at the lower end of the 150 metro areas, U.S. News noted.

Green Bay, which moved up 18 positions to No. 3 this year, ranked high for housing affordability, and San Jose’s meteoric rise to No. 5 from No. 36 the year prior was “due in part to its strong quality of life,” U.S. News said.

In New York, Syracuse moved to 38, up from 63 in 2021-2022, because of its strong value and quality of life scores; Rochester climbed 30 positions to No. 42, and Buffalo moved 25 positions to 45. Those values, along with its high air quality score, also fueled Albany’s move of 24 positions to No. 21.

Two metro areas in Pennsylvania saw significant moves due to strong value and quality of life scores: Pittsburgh, up 45 positions to No. 26, and Harrisburg, up 26 positions to No. 35.

Florida joined Colorado among states whose metro areas' stature as a great place to live declined last year. In Colorado, wildfires were mainly responsible. In Florida, desirability was cited among survey respondents for the 31-position drop of St. Lucie to No. 78 and Fort Myers’ 57-position drop to No. 100. In Oregon, Eugene plummeted 54 spots to No. 119, while Salem fell 61 spots to No. 123.

To come up with the ranking, U.S. News looked at the job market, value, quality of life, desirability and net migration ratings determined in part by a public survey of thousands of Americans on the qualities they consider important when deciding where to live. As part of the methodology, U.S. News also looked at federal data from the Census Bureau, FBI, Labor Department, the digital health app Sharecare, and its own rankings on the Best High Schools and Best Hospitals.