Detroit doesn’t always show up on Best Cities lists. But it does on one of these.
It seems like every other day there’s a new “top cities” list. There are the top cities for foodies, the happiest cities, the best cities for families, and even the weirdest cities. And of course, we care most about the best cities for transit — walking, biking, public transportation, and traffic flow.
While it’s hard to compare lists, we thought it might be useful to see if there are any notable similarities or differences on these “best cities” lists.
Here are five lists from the past few years. Let’s see how they compare.
Livability’s Top 10 Best Downtowns
Livability ranks America’s best places to live, work and visit, based on a wide array of criteria. This particular list, created in 2014, looks at cities; downtowns, based on population growth, the ratio of residents to jobs, income growth, home vacancy rates, affordability of housing, and the vacancy rates of retail and office spaces. We like this list because it is includes some lesser-known cities in lieu of the major U.S. cities seen on most lists.
- Fort Worth, Texas
- Providence, R.I.
- Indianapolis
- Provo, Utah
- Alexandria, Va.
- Frederick, Md.
- Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
- Bellingham, Wash.
- Eugene, Ore.
- Birmingham, Ala.
Top 10 Best American Downtowns, ranked by Top Tenz
Top Tenz, a site solely dedicated to top 10 lists, included the usual favorites in this list from 2012. But this list deviates from the norm with its inclusion of Detroit and Milwaukee, both of which appear do not appear on any of the other lists we looked at for this post.
Detroit in particular is a noteworthy choice — it seems to wind up on more “worst cities” lists than those that rank the best. But Top Tenz calls Detroit’s downtown “one of the most architecturally impressive in the country” and notes that the city has been revitalized in the recent years following intensive development.
- New York City
- Washington, D.C.
- Chicago
- San Francisco
- Philadelphia
- Miami
- Boston
- Seattle
- Detroit
- Milwaukee