The Queen City is now ranked among the top 20 best places to live in America, according to the 2017 U.S. News & World Report. This year, our official rank was #14, one spot higher than our 2016 ranking.
We beat out San Francisco at #16, Houston at #20, Charleston at #27, Tampa at #35, and Atlanta at #50 – and just narrowly lost to Nashville (which jumped up from #22 in 2016 to #13 this year).
The publication analysed the top 100 most populous cities in America, by comparing each one’s quality of life, value, job market, desirability and net migration. This year, Charlotte achieved an overall score of 7.1 out of 10 (up from our 2016 score of 6.9 – for comparison, the #1 city on the list, Austin, TX only scored a 7.8).
The came to the total score for each city by weighting each category as follows:
Job Market Index – 20 percent
Value Index – 25 percent
Quality of Life Index – 30 percent
Desirability Index – 15 percent
Net Migration – 10 percent
The report comments that, “Charlotte has become a place filled with new restaurants to try and events that attract people from all over. It’s a standalone destination area now, no longer living in the shadow of Atlanta or Charleston, South Carolina. Though Charlotte has evolved significantly in the past decade, the transformation is only continuing, as evidenced by the numerous construction cranes across the skyline.”
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