How Boston Ranks For Quality Of Life

Everyone can agree that having a high quality of life is a good thing, but deciding what that means is a bit trickier. Fortunately, the folks at Numbeo crunched some data to put together a list of North American cities with the highest quality of life.

Boston ranked 25th out of 60 cities on the overall index, just behind St. Louis and ahead of Cincinnati. Boston's score was 180.60, compared to No. 1 Raleigh, North Carolina, with 215.64.

Here’s how the Hub ranked in each of eight categories used to compile the index:

Purchasing power: 25th
Safety: 9th
Health care: 12th
Cost of living: 54th
Property price to income ratio: 55th
Traffic commute time: 56th
Pollution: 13th
Climate: 35th

Raleigh ranked 2nd in buying power, 5th in safety, 6th in pollution and 14th in property price to income ratio out of 59 cities. Raleigh also ranked 15th for health care, 19th in climate, 29th in traffic commute time and 34th in cost of living.

Here are the top 10 cities on the index:

1. Raleigh, NC
2. Madison, WI
3. Charlotte, NC
4. Ottawa, Canada
5. Columbus, OH
6. Victoria, Canada
7. Austin, TX
8. San Diego, CA
9. San Jose, CA
10. Quebec City, Canada

Detroit ranked dead last on the index with a score of 132.83. Michigan’s largest city was the least safe of all cities and had the single worst commute time, even ahead of Los Angeles. Detroit was also among the worst in the nation for buying power, health care and pollution.

New York City had the second-lowest quality of life on the index, followed by Winnipeg, Regina and Toronto, all in Canada. Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Las Vegas were the next-lowest.

Click any of the following links to see how the metrics were calculated: purchasing power (including rent) index, pollution index, property price to income ratios, cost of living index, safety index, climate index, health index and traffic index.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Photo credit: Shutterstock