Best Places To Live In California: LIST

CALIFORNIA – As Californians, we know how lucky we are to live in the Golden State. That's why it should come as no surprise that California has the most cities of any state on Livability.com's Top 100 Best Places to Live in 2018 ranking.

Twenty cities in California – one-fifth of the list – made the fifth annual ranking of the best places to live in the country.

To come up with the list, Livability.com polled the country to learn what matters most in communities across the United States. The online community research publication then sourced public and private data to find the small- to mid-sized cities, towns and villages that met the standards of a "Best Place to Live."

This year, nearly 2,300 cities were ranked on more than 40 data points measuring economics, housing, amenities, infrastructure, demographics, social and civic capital, education and health care. (Read more about Livability.com's ranking criteria and methodology.)

Palo Alto and Santa Cruz were the only two cities that cracked the top 10. Livability.com ranked Palo Alto sixth and Santa Cruz eighth among 100 cities across the country. Ann Arbor, Michigan, took the top spot.

These are the cities from California included in the rankings. National rankings are in parenthesis:

1. Palo Alto (6)
2. Santa Cruz (8)
3. Berkeley (13)
4. Irvine (15)
5. San Luis Obispo (17)
6. Davis (18)
7. San Rafael (26)
8. San Mateo (29)
9. Santa Barbara (30)
10. Alameda (51)
11. Walnut Creek (57)
12. Redwood City (65)
13. Santa Monica (66)
14. Burlingame (70)
15. Pasadena (72)
16. Novato (77)
17. Newport Beach (82)
18. Huntington Beach (83)
19. Mountain View (85)
20. Fullerton (94)

Click here to see the full rankings for the Top 100 Best Places to Live.

Image via Evgeny Atamanenko/Shutterstock.com