How to Use Data to Choose the Best City to Move To in 2026

Every January, dozens of publications release their "Best Cities to Live In" lists. A coastal magazine crowns a beach town. A finance outlet picks somewhere cheap. A tech blog favors a startup hub. The lists disagree because they each weigh different things — and none of them know what you actually care about.

If you're seriously considering a move, you deserve better than someone else's top ten. You need raw data, transparent metrics, and a framework that reflects your priorities — whether that's safety for your family, affordability on a single income, short winters, or all of the above.

This guide walks you through the eight data categories that matter most when evaluating a city, the specific metrics to look at in each, and where that data comes from. By the end, you'll have a research checklist that turns a vague "maybe we should move" into a confident, evidence-based decision.

1. Crime and Safety

Why it matters: Safety shapes daily life in ways most other factors don't. It determines whether your kids walk to school, whether you feel comfortable on an evening jog, and what you'll pay for homeowners insurance.

What to look at:

• Violent crime rate per 100,000 residents — this includes murder, robbery, aggravated assault, and rape. A rate below 200 per 100K is generally considered very safe; above 600 signals well-above-average risk.
• Property crime rate per 100,000 — burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. This affects your day-to-day sense of security and insurance costs.

Where the data comes from: The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program and the newer National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) publish annual crime statistics by agency. The most recent complete dataset covers 2022. For cities too small to report directly, state-level rates provide a reasonable estimate.

Pro tip: Don't just look at a city's overall "safety rating." A city with low violent crime but high property crime is a very different proposition than the reverse. Look at both numbers.

2. Cost of Living

Why it matters: A $90,000 salary stretches dramatically further in a city where the cost of living index sits at 82 than in one where it's 155. Failing to account for cost differences is the single most common mistake people make when comparing job offers across cities.

What to look at:

• Overall cost of living index — measured on a scale where 100 equals the national average. Below 90 is genuinely affordable; above 120 starts getting expensive.
• Median home price — the clearest single indicator of housing cost.
• Monthly rent — both one-bedroom and two-bedroom, since these reflect very different household situations.
• Groceries and utilities indices — these ongoing costs add up far more than most people expect.
• Tax rates — state income tax (ranging from 0% in states like Texas and Florida to over 10% in California), sales tax, and property tax. A city that looks affordable on rent alone can become expensive when you factor in a 2.5% property tax rate.

Where the data comes from: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS), and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) all contribute to cost-of-living estimates. Tax data comes from the Tax Foundation and state revenue departments.

3. Schools and Education

Why it matters: Even if you don't have children, school quality strongly correlates with property values, neighborhood stability, and community investment. If you do have kids, this might be the single most important factor on the list.

What to look at:

• School rating — aggregated scores on a 1-10 scale based on test performance and growth metrics.
• Graduation rate — the percentage of students who finish high school in four years. The national average hovers around 87%.
• Student-to-teacher ratio — lower is generally better. Under 15:1 indicates more individualized attention.
• Spending per pupil — districts that invest more per student tend (though not always) to deliver better outcomes. The national average is roughly $14,000 per year.

Where the data comes from: The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data provides school-level data. GreatSchools and similar platforms aggregate this into consumer-friendly ratings. The Urban Institute's Education Data Portal offers additional detail.

4. Climate and Air Quality

Why it matters: Climate is the one factor you'll experience every single day, and it's the one most people evaluate with gut feeling rather than data. "I like warm weather" isn't specific enough when you're choosing between 95-degree Houston humidity and 95-degree Phoenix dry heat.

What to look at:

• Sunshine days per year — ranges from around 100 in the cloudiest cities to nearly 300 in the sunniest. This has a documented effect on mood and mental health.
• Summer high and winter low temperatures — the extremes matter more than averages.
• Annual rainfall and snowfall — expressed in inches. Some people love snow; most underestimate how much they'll deal with if they move to a city that gets 60+ inches a year.
• Humidity — peak humidity percentage, typically measured in August. The difference between 45% and 78% is the difference between pleasant and oppressive.
• Air Quality Index (AQI) — an annual median score where 0-50 is good, 51-100 is moderate, and anything above 100 is unhealthy for sensitive groups. This has become increasingly important as wildfire smoke events affect cities hundreds of miles from the fires.

Where the data comes from: Historical weather data comes from NOAA and services like Open-Meteo. AQI data is published annually by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with the most recent complete dataset from 2023.

5. Jobs and Employment

Why it matters: Unless you're fully remote or retired, the local job market determines your earning potential, career mobility, and financial security. Even remote workers benefit from a city with a strong local economy — it supports better services, infrastructure, and property values.

What to look at:

• Unemployment rate — the national average fluctuates around 3.5-4%. Cities significantly above that may signal economic trouble.
• Job growth rate — year-over-year percentage change in employment. Positive growth (especially above 2%) indicates an expanding economy.
• Labor force participation rate — the percentage of working-age adults who are employed or actively seeking work. Low participation can indicate a discouraged workforce.

Where the data comes from: The BLS publishes monthly employment data by metropolitan statistical area. The Census Bureau's ACS provides labor force participation figures. Major employer and industry data comes from BEA regional economic accounts.

6. Healthcare Access

Why it matters: Healthcare access varies enormously across the United States, and it's nearly invisible until you need it. A city with a single small hospital and few specialists will serve you very differently than one with multiple trauma centers and 300+ doctors per 100,000 residents.

What to look at:

• Hospitals and hospital beds per 1,000 residents — more beds per capita means shorter wait times and greater capacity during emergencies.
• Doctors per 100,000 residents — above 300 indicates excellent access; below 120 signals potential shortages.
• Average monthly health insurance premium — these vary significantly by region, from under $450 to over $650 per month.
• Specialty access — presence of trauma centers, teaching hospitals, and VA hospitals (if applicable).

Where the data comes from: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Area Health Resource File, the American Hospital Association (AHA), and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) all publish healthcare access data.

7. Natural Disaster Risk

Why it matters: This is the factor most people completely ignore — until they're filing an insurance claim or evacuating. Homeowners insurance in high-risk areas can cost thousands more per year, and some insurers are pulling out of entire states. Climate patterns are shifting, making historical "safe" zones less predictable.

What to look at:

• FEMA's National Risk Index (NRI) — a county-level dataset that scores risk across natural hazard types using expected annual loss, social vulnerability, and community resilience. The five most relevant for relocation decisions are earthquake, flood, wildfire, tornado, and hurricane risk.
• Composite risk score — a weighted combination of individual hazard scores, normalized to a 1-10 scale where 1 is minimal risk and 10 is severe.

Where the data comes from: FEMA's NRI (version 1.20) provides the most comprehensive publicly available disaster risk data in the United States. It covers every county and can be mapped to individual cities.

Pro tip: Risk varies dramatically even within a single state. Coastal Florida and inland Florida have very different hurricane and flood profiles. County-level granularity matters.

8. Walkability and Commute

Why it matters: Your commute is time you'll never get back. Americans spend an average of 27 minutes each way commuting — that's over 200 hours a year. Walkability also correlates with physical health, local business vitality, and reduced transportation costs.

What to look at:

• Walk Score — a 0-100 index where 90+ means daily errands require no car, and below 25 means you're driving everywhere.
• Average commute time — measured in minutes. Below 20 is excellent; above 35 starts eating into quality of life.
• Work-from-home percentage — Census ACS data now tracks this, revealing which communities have built infrastructure and culture around remote work.

Where the data comes from: Walk Score, Transit Score, and Bike Score are published by Redfin's Walk Score methodology. Commute and work-from-home data comes from the Census Bureau's ACS.

Putting It All Together

Here's the hard part: you now have eight categories with dozens of individual metrics. Researching them one city at a time across multiple government websites would take weeks. And even then, you'd struggle to compare cities side by side in any meaningful way.

This is exactly the problem that DonQX was built to solve. It's a free, interactive platform that aggregates all eight data categories — crime, cost of living, schools, climate, jobs, healthcare, natural disaster risk, and walkability — across more than 20,000 US cities on a single map.

What makes it genuinely useful for data-driven relocation is the Best Fit scoring system. You assign weight to each of the seven scoring categories based on your personal priorities — maybe safety and schools matter most to you, or maybe affordability and climate do. DonQX calculates a composite 0-100 score for every city and color-codes the map accordingly, so you can instantly see which regions light up green for your specific criteria.

Beyond scoring, you can filter by over 25 individual metrics simultaneously — set a maximum violent crime rate, a minimum school rating, a cost index ceiling, and a sunshine floor all at once. The map updates in real time to show only cities that pass every filter.

When you've narrowed your search, pin up to four cities for a detailed side-by-side comparison covering nine data sections, then export the results as a PDF or CSV to share with your partner, family, or anyone helping you decide.

You don't need to take someone else's word for the "best" city. The data is there — you just need the right tool to see it clearly.

Try DonQX for free at donqx.com and build a relocation scorecard that actually reflects what matters to you.