Are You Building in One of the Most Livable Cities of 2020?

SmartAsset ranked the 100 largest U.S. cities by comparing walk scores, violent crime rates, property crime rates, unemployment, and housing costs. All of the data combined created a livability ranking for each city. SmartAsset renews their rankings each year, reviewing any changes in data. This year, the same city ranked highest for the fourth year in a row: Arlington, Va. This is due to the city’s low unemployment and crime rates. Both Plano, TX and Madison, Wis. made the list for four years in a row as well. Other top ranking cities include four in Arizona: Gilbert, Chandler, Scottsdale, and Mesa.

1. Arlington, VA

Arlington, Virginia, located right outside of Washington, D.C., is the most livable city in America in this year’s edition of our study. Arlington has been our most livable city since 2017. It has the second-lowest property crime rate (1,298 incidents per 100,000 residents) and the fourth-lowest violent crime rate (138 incidents per 100,000 residents) in our study. It also has a September 2020 unemployment rate of just 4.5%, the fourth-lowest rate in the study.

2. Boise, ID

Boise, Idaho saw just 283 incidents of violent crime per 100,000 residents in 2019, the 13th-lowest rate for this metric in the study. It comes in seventh for property crime, at just 1,595 per 100,000 residents. Only 28.0% of residents of Boise are burdened by their housing cost, making it the seventh-least housing cost-burdened city we analyzed.

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