Community Corner

Troy Makes Best and Worst Cities List

Here's another best-and-worst listing, but before you attach your city's institutional self-esteem into the ranking, consider other lists.

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Several southeast Michigan communities made WalletHub’s 2015 list of the Best & Worst Small Cities — some in more spectacular fashion the others.

The personal finance website looked at four criteria to come up with the ranking of 1,268 small cities: affordability, economic healt, education and health and quality of life. Cities with populations between 25,000 and 100,000 residents were compared.

The data set includes a total of 22 metrics, ranging from housing costs to school-system quality to the number of restaurants per capita. Data used to create these rankings were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Areavibes, Yelp and WalletHub Research.

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You can find a complete ranking here and more on the methodology here.

But before you tie too much of your city’s institutional self-esteem into the rankings, keep in mind that Farmington Hills, ranked 344th in the WalletHub analysis, was the No. 14 city in America, according to a 24/7 Wall St. report released last week.

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And Rochester Hills, ranked 583rd by WalletHub, was No. 9 on Money Magazine’s best 50 cities in America in 2014, although it didn’t make the list in 2015.

So, these lists are subjective, based on the criteria used for comparison. Here’s what WalletHub had to say about several small cities:

Royal Oak, No. 268

  • Overall score: 48.80
  • Affordability: 281
  • Economic health: 236
  • Education and health: 632
  • Quality of life: 358

Novi, No. 290

  • Overall score: 48.36
  • Afforability: 412
  • Economic health: 205
  • Education and health: 414
  • Quality of life: 635

Farmington Hills, No. 344

  • Overall score: 47.51
  • Affordability: 446
  • Economic health: 340
  • Education and health: 239
  • Quality of life: 860

Troy, No. 349

  • Overall score: 47.48
  • Affordability: 154
  • Economic health: 417
  • Education and health: 581
  • Quality of life: 649

Wyandotte, No. 451

  • Overall score: 46.13
  • Affordability: 17
  • Economic health: 906
  • Education and health: 662
  • Quality of life: 614

No. 583, Rochester Hills

  • Overall score: 44.73
  • Affordability: 184
  • Economic health: 481
  • Education and health: 586
  • Quality of life: 1181

St. Clair Shores, No. 677

  • Overall score: 43.69
  • Affordability rank: 6
  • Economic health: 881
  • Education and health: 888
  • Quality of life: 1024

Dearborn, No. 713

  • Overall score: 43.41
  • Affordability: 199
  • Economic health: 1015
  • Education and health: 837
  • Quality of life: 515

Dearborn Heights, No. 950

  • Overall score: 40.77
  • Affordability rank: 99
  • Economic health: No. 1098
  • Education and health: No. 1082
  • Quality of life: 850

Source: WalletHub

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