Bloomberg Names Boston America's 4th Best City

Skyline image via Shutterstock

Bloomberg Businessweek released the second annual “America’s 50 Best Cities” list, and … do you want the good news or the bad news? Okay, we’re “bad news first” folks, so here it is: Boston did not win. No, Boston came in a very, very respectable fourth place behind San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C. The good news, as we see it—other than coming in fourth out of 50, which isn’t really bad news—is that New York came in seventh. Yes, as it turns out, the center of the universe was put in its place by a magazine that’s based in New York. Here are the factors Businessweek included:

We looked at 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 rate of graduate-degree holders), economic factors (income and unemployment), crime, and air quality.

We have to figure the emphasis on higher education helped put us up so high. Whoever wrote the blurb on us for the magazine doesn’t actually sound like that big a fan. (First sentence: “Boston isn’t always one of the nation’s safest towns.” Other epithets used: “grimy charm.” And “Beantown,” yuck.)

Anyway, Seattle and San Francisco are very far away, and Washington D.C. might be liveable but it’s pretty square. So basically, you’re stay where you are, Boston residents. [Businessweek]