Best Big Cities For Business: How Chicago Fared

CHICAGO, IL — Carl Sandburg called it "the city of the big shoulders," and there's no denying the residents of Chicago are by and large a hard-working crew. But what about the best big cities to start a new business? As it turns out, Chicago doesn't rank so high.

Consumer finance site WalletHub recently compared startup opportunities in 182 of the nation's big cities. "We did so using 19 key metrics, ranging from five-year business-survival rate to office-space affordability," the site notes.

The rankings used three key dimensions to determine the best cities to start a business: 1) Business Environment, 2) Access to Resources and 3) Business Costs.

Chicago came in at No. 135 overall out of 182, ranking 118 for business environment, 44 for access to resources and 143 in terms of the costs of starting a new business.

Warwick, Rhode Island — one of the smaller "big" cities with a population just over 81,000 — ranked dead last on the list.

These cities were the top five best places to launch a business, according to WalletHub:

1. Oklahoma City
2. Austin, Texas
3. Sioux Falls, South Dakota
4. Missoula, Montana
5. Durham, North Carolina

Read the full rankings here.

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