Skokie Named One Of Top 100 Places To Live In U.S.

Skokie has been named one of the Top 100 Best Places to Live by Livability.com, a website that ranks quality of life and travel amenities of America’s small and mid-sized cities.

Skokie was ranked No. 71 on the list, between Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Cincinnati, Ohio. It had a LivScore of 589, compared to 646 for the first-ranked city on the list, Palo Alto, Calif. Skokie was the only Illinois city to make the list.

See the full list at: livability.com/top-100-best-places-to-live.

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Following is additional information from Livability.com. 

The list is the result of a months-long study of U.S. cities and the factors that make them better places to live, work and play. Livability.com partnered with the Martin Prosperity Institute, the world's leading think tank on the role of location, place, and city-regions in global economic prosperity, to produce the list.

"This is the first time we have focused on measures for specific cities instead of metropolitan regions," said Kevin Stolarick, PhD, Research Director at the Martin Prosperity Institute. "While getting consistent, reliable data at the cities level had its challenges, the results were worth the effort."

Livability recruited Ipsos Public Affairs, a leading market research firm, to conduct a survey to find out what quality of life amenities residents value most. Respondents were asked about factors that make their communities better places to live, as well as the factors they would consider in selecting another city.

Those factors were narrowed down to eight categories – economics, housing, amenities, infrastructure, demographics, social and civic capital, education and healthcare – that were used to score and rank cities. Researchers narrowed their field to small-to-mid-sized cities with populations between 20,000 and 350,000 before collecting data for each city from a wide range of sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, Walkscore and GreatSchools.com.
Skokie scored high in the areas of education and demographics as well as social and civic capital.

"Great cities are more than just a check-list of bars, coffee shops and museums. Our goal was to collect the best data available, from the best sources and the best partners to gauge the true measures of livability. Access was important, but so were utilization and affordability," said Livability.com editor Matt Carmichael. "By using data from the public sector, the private sector and non-profits focused on these issues, we have compiled an Index that celebrates America's great cities and towns."

The top 100 cities are featured on Livability.com, along with their LivScores and information about the amenities that helped them make the list.

About Livability.com:
Livability.com explores what makes small to mid-sized cities great places to live, work and visit. We examine issues related to livability such as walkability, cultural amenities, transportation, urban planning and sustainability through exclusive research and discussions on our blog. We celebrate the accomplishments of these cities through our monthly top 10 lists, our annual ranking of Livable Cities, our rich photography and our conversations with readers in social media. Livability.com is a division of Journal Communications, Inc.