12 Most Livable Small and Midsize U.S. Cities: 2025

“As Americans face shifting economic conditions in a year wrought with inflation, evolving work dynamics and a growing desire for a better quality of life, our ‘Top 100 Best Places to Live’ list celebrates the cities where Americans are creating dream careers, building families, launching businesses and leading meaningful lives,” the platform’s editor-in-chief, Amanda Ellis, said in a statement

Livability.com partnered with Applied Geographic Solutions to analyze data from some 2,000 U.S. cities with populations between 75,000 and 500,000. Researchers identified the best places to live based on 100 data points measuring these eight broad categories:

• Economy, including unemployment rate, employment stability and opportunity and industrial diversity 
• Housing and cost of living, including tax rates, home and rental affordability and discretionary income
• Amenities, including cultural and leisure offerings 
• Transportation, including walkability, median commute time and average number of vehicles per household
• Environment, including population density, air quality and various natural disaster risks
• Safety, including various crime rates
• Education, including school quality and educational attainment 
• Health, including life expectancy, doctor and hospital access and prevalence of health concerns 
  

The researchers then assigned a Livability Score to each city based on its performance across the above categories. The 100 cities represent the top 5% of U.S. cities with populations in the studied range. Per the platform’s emphasis on affordability, only cities with a median home value of $500,000 or less were included in the final list.