Saturday, September 29, 2012

Boston is the 4th Best City in America



(BostoninnoBoston is hipster; Boston has great colleges; Boston is cool. The rankings about the Hub are endless, confusing and often, kind of meaningless. But that doesn’t mean they’re not fun. So, Bloomberg Businessweek decided to take the rankings game up a notch, crowning Boston the 4th best city in America. Yep, just “the best.”

To calculate the “America’s 50 Best Cities,” Bloomberg Businessweek analyzed the country’s 100 most populous cities ”based on leisure attributes (the number of restaurants, bars, libraries, museums, professional sports teams, and park acres by population); educational attributes (public school performance, the number of colleges, and graduate degree holders), economic factors (2011 income and June and July 2012 unemployment), crime, and air quality.”

That was a mouthful, but basically, it means they looked at every single aspect of a city that exists, gave them weighted values, and listed them in order.

Here’s what the article says about Boston, which comes in 4th overall:

Boston isn’t always one of the nation’s safest towns. But few cities can match Beantown’s blend of history, night life, and education. With 22 universities, Boston can seem very much a college town, owning a grimy charm. As New England’s cultural center, Boston combines Gilded Age class with some Atlantic brine, from L’Espalier to B&G Oysters.

Bars: 136
Restaurants: 2,064
Museums: 51
Libraries: 54
Pro sports teams: 3
Park acres per 1,000 residents: 8
Colleges: 22
Percent with graduate degree: 13.8
Median household income: $62,180
Percent unemployed: 6.6

As the drunkest city in America, I’m actually surprised we don’t have a better bars to restaurants ratio. Also, I would consider the Patriots a Boston sports team, so it’s a shame they left them off the list. Still, that unemployment rate is looking pretty fine, as is our number of colleges. You go, Boston.

Maybe next year we can beat out Washington D.C., Seattle and San Francisco, who hold the third, second and first best cities spots, respectively.