For many families, the slower pace of a smaller city outweighs the benefits of a larger one.
Families looking for a small city to settle down are in luck–a study by WalletHub, a personal finance company, ranked the top small cities across the country.
Michigan had a decent showing on the list, with five small cities in the top 10% nationwide.
The study classified a small city as having a population between 25,000 and 100,000. Analysts looked at five livability factors to determine the rankings: affordability, economic health, education and health, quality of life and safety.
Which small cities in Michigan made the cut?
Wallethub analyzed 1,318 small cities across the country and competition was steep. The top scoring small city in Michigan is Holland, with a score in the top two percent nationwide.
Some metro Detroit cities like Troy and Rochester Hills also scored highly. Here’s a list of the top small cities in the state in the top 10%.
- 98th percentile: Holland
- 96th percentile: Troy
- 95th percentile: Rochester Hills
- 93rd percentile: Novi
- 91st percentile: Royal Oak
How did Michigan’s small cities score?
The analysis ranked 1,318 cities based on the most important factors for livability. Each small city was given a separate ranking for each of the five categories: affordability, economic health, education and health, quality of life and safety.
Here’s how Michigan’s top small cities scored in their individual rankings out of 1,318.
Holland
- Affordability: 277
- Economic health: 350
- Education and health: 544
- Quality of life: 48
- Safety: 298
Troy
- Affordability: 100
- Economic health: 223
- Education and health: 421
- Quality of life: 365
- Safety: 121
Rochester Hills
- Affordability: 81
- Economic health: 185
- Education and health: 416
- Quality of life: 686
- Safety: 36
Novi
- Affordability: 182
- Economic health: 65
- Education and health: 413
- Quality of life: 677
- Safety: 45
Royal Oak
- Affordability: 238
- Economic health: 441
- Education and health: 411
- Quality of life: 376
- Safety: 62
How the rankings were decided
The five key factors–affordability, economic health, education and health, quality of life and safety–were broken down using 45 metrics which were then weighed.
For example, in the safety category, WalletHub used data on the violent crime rate, alcohol-impaired driving fatalities per capita, property crime rate and more.
The data come from a range of sources. Some of the metrics come from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while other information was gleaned from user-generated content from companies like Yelp.
For a full breakdown of the process used to create the rankings, visit WalletHub’s methodology section.
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