Appleton ranked #5 on a recently released list of the nation’s “best small cities.”
Only Carmel, Indiana; Brookfield, Wisconsin; Lexington, Massachusetts; and Fishers, Indiana ranked higher.
WalletHub, a personal finance company, compared more than 1,300 U.S. cities with populations between 25,000 and 100,000 in five categories:
- Affordability
- Economic Health
- Education and Health
- Quality of Life
- Safety
Each of the five categories included several measures of livability, for a total of 45 key indicators. Among the key indicators were housing costs, the quality of the school system, and the number of restaurants per capita.
Appleton performed best on the Quality of Life measure, ranking 64th nationwide. It ranked 172nd on Affordability, 252nd on Economic Health, 172nd on Education and Health, and 149th on Safety.
By comparison, the nation’s best small city, Carmel, Indiana, ranked much worse than Appleton on Quality of Life (280th), but much better on Affordability (26th), Economic Health (169th), Education and Health (44th), and Safety (4th).
In the map below, WalletHub groups cities by percentile. The 99th percentile — shown here as teal circles — represents the top 1 percent of small cities in America. Appleton is among the top 1 percent.
To see the percentile for other small cities, hover over a colored circle. For example, hover over the blue circle for Bangor, Maine in the upper right of the map, and you’ll see it’s in the 42nd percentile. In areas where the circles are too close together, hover over an area and a better view of distinct circles will pop up, allowing you to hover over one of those distinct circles to see the percentiles.
