Washington DC Quality Of Life Ranks Above Honolulu, Baltimore

WASHINGTON, DC — Everyone can agree that having a high quality of life is a good thing, but settling questions over whether commute time is more important than cost of living or housing costs is more subjective. Pegging what exactly goes into it is a bit trickier. Fortunately the folks at Numbeo did it using data and put together a list of cities in North America that have the highest quality of life.

Washington, D.C., ranked 42nd on the index with an overall index score of 168.27. We placed just ahead of Cleveland and just behind Houston, on the index. Nearby Baltimore ranked 45th on the index, while Honolulu was five spots behind DC.

Here’s how DC ranked in each category:

• Purchasing power: 129.40
• Safety: 42.72
• Health care: 71.58
• Cost of living: 91.66
• Property price to income ratio: 4.67
• Traffic commute time: 41.63
• Pollution: 39.04
• Climate: 81.62

Charm City's commute was better than nearby Washington, D.C., by about 10 minutes and the climate scored much higher than No. 2 Madison, Wisconsin, or No. 6 Columbus, Ohio.

Raleigh has the highest quality of life in North America, according to the index. The North Carolina city scored 215.24 overall and ranked 2nd in buying power, 5th in safety, 6th in pollution and 14th in property price to income ratio out of 59 cities. Raleigh also ranked 15th for health care, 19th in climate, 29th in traffic commute time and 34th in cost of living.

Here are the top 10 cities on the index:

1. Raleigh, NC
2. Madison, WI
3. Charlotte, NC
4. Ottawa, Canada
5. Columbus, OH
6. Victoria, Canada
7. Austin, TX
8. San Diego, CA
9. San Jose, CA
10. Quebec City, Canada

Detroit ranked dead last on the index with a score of 132.83. Michigan’s largest city was the least safe of all cities and had the single worst commute time, even ahead of Los Angeles. Detroit was also among the worst in the nation for buying power, health care and pollution.

New York City had the second-lowest quality of life on the index, followed by Winnipeg, Regina and Toronto, all in Canada. Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Las Vegas were the next-lowest.

Click any of the following links to see how the metrics were calculated: purchasing power (including rent) index, pollution index, property price to income ratios, cost of living index, safety index, climate index, health index and traffic index.

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Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Image via Shutterstock