2 Illinois Cities On Best, Worst For Singles List

ILLINOIS — If you’re single, looking for a partner in your city can be easy or difficult, depending on a number of factors. WalletHub, the Washington D.C.-based personal finance website, crunched the numbers and came up with a list of 182 cities around the country, ranked by how single-friendly they are, and Illinois cities account for two on the list.

Chicago took the No. 7 spot. Even though it's expensive — the 25th most expensive on the list — Chicago ranked at No. 21 for fun and recreation and for dating opportunities in addition to its overall No. 7 rank. Chicago came in just behind Seattle and just ahead of Portland, Ore.

The other Illinois city to make the list was Aurora, coming in 116th place. It's relatively inexpensive, and ranked 160th for fun and recreation. In dating opportunities, it came in 69th place.

San Francisco took the top spot of WalletHub’s 2017 “Best and Worst Cities for Singles,” and South Burlington, Vt., took the last spot at No. 182.

San Francisco, while it’s the third most expensive city on the list, ranked at No. 3 and No. 4 for fun and recreation and dating opportunities, respectively, so it grabbed the top spot. Atlanta, Los Angeles, Denver and San Diego fill out the top five of the list.

The worst cities in the country to date, according to WalletHub, are South Burlington, Brownsville, Texas, Pembroke Pines, Fla., Hialeah, Fla. and Warwick, R.I.

The study was done by measuring several factors that have to do with how easy dating can be. The economics of an area, what sort of fun and recreation it offers and dating opportunities were the three categories they used, each given a ranking.

Economics looks at the affordability of the area, like the costs of restaurants and meals, alcoholic drinks, movie costs, taxi costs, housing costs and even haircut and salon costs. The fun and recreation category is made up of the number of attractions, coffee shops, restaurants, city walkability, nightlife options per capita and more.

Dating opportunities seems a bit harder to measure, but WalletHub use share of single population, gender balance, online dating opportunities, mobile dating opportunities and the most active Tinder users ranking.

Article image public domain via Pixabay