Don’t take our word for it—Rochester, Minn. is officially a great place to live. At least according to Liveability.com, which ranked Rochester as the second-best place to live in the United States for 2015.
This is the second year in a row that Rochester has made the top-10 list of “best places to live” in the U.S. from Liveability, with our fair city improving over the No. 7 spot earned in 2014. At the risk of sounding overly self important, Liveability cited DMC and the projected job growth as a primary factor for the bump in this year’s ranking.
Overall, Wisconsin’s capital, Madison, edged out Rochester for the No. 1 spot this year by just 2.8 percentage points. We agree that Madison is a beautiful city with a diversity of cultural and educational offerings, and are happy they can claim the top spot. However—and we might choke on a couple sour grapes, here—Madison’s mayor convened a task force last year aimed at converting the city’s No. 5 ranking in 2014 to a No. 1 for 2015.
In the next 20 years, fueled by $6 billion in development from public and private sources, Mayo will build the “Destination Medical Center” here. That could lead to 40,000 new jobs and as many as 100,000 new residents.
— Liveability.com
This year, Liveability.com focused on 2,000 medium-sized cities, with populations ranging from 20,000-300,000 residents and included data from the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, as well as private-sector sources, such as Esri, Walk Score, and Great Schools, and nonprofits like Americans for the Arts.
While we couldn’t agree more that Rochester is just great, here’s an overview of the methodology that Liveability.com used to figure this year’s top 100 cities.