Honolulu is Business Week’s third best city to live in U.S.
From Bloomberg Businessweek.com
Where would you live in the U.S. if money were no object? Many might pick New York, San Francisco, New Orleans or Boston, but they might be missing out. All these cities are great, but other cities are even better.
Businessweek.com’s first “America’s Best Cities” rankings evaluated 100 of the country’s largest cities based on 16 criteria, including: the number of restaurants, bars, and museums per capita; the number of colleges, libraries, and professional sports teams; the income, poverty, unemployment, crime, and foreclosure rates; percent of population with bachelor’s degrees, public school performance, park acres per 1,000 residents, and air quality.
Greater weighting was placed on recreational amenities such as parks, bars, restaurants, and museums, and on educational attainment, school performance, poverty and air quality. The data came from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Sperling’s BestPlaces, GreatSchools, Onboard Informatics, RealtyTrac, and the Trust for Public Land. Read on to find out which cities top the ranking. Here are the top ten cities:
- Raleigh, N.Car.
- Arlington. Va.
- Honolulu, Hi.
- Scottsdale, Ariz.
- Irvine, Calif.
- Washington, D.C.
- San Diego, Calif.
- Virginia Beach, Va.
- San Francisco, Calif.
- Anchorage, Alaska
The authors profiled #3 Honolulu, a city of 374,359, in these words: “From the prominent slopes of Diamond Head to the white beaches of Waikiki, Honolulu is a beautiful place to live and play. The area has done well through the recession, with extremely low unemployment and a low level of foreclosures. Go surfing and hang 10, then breathe deeply, because the air quality is about as good as it gets.”
Honolulu’s criteria:
- Percent with bachelor's degrees: 35.3
- Percent under poverty level: 10.5
- Median household income: $57,936
- Violent crime rate: 279.7
- Property crime rate: 3,679.2
- School score: 72.72
- Pro sports teams: 0
- Foreclosure rate: .0028
- Percent Unemployment: 5
- Park acres per 1,000 residents: 6.7
- Bars: 130
- Restaurants: 1,264
- Museums: 64
- Colleges: 10
- Libraries: 32
- Air Quality Index: 80
