Here’s what makes somewhere the best place to live

The Ipsos Consumer Tracker asks Americans questions about culture, the economy and the forces that shape our lives. Here's one thing we learned this week.

Why we asked about the best place to live: Over 10 years ago, Ipsos began tracking what makes a good place to live. This was a methodology developed by noted urbanist Richard Florida, Kevin Stolarick and their team at the University of Toronto for an annual Best Places to Live ranking produced by Livability.com, where, full disclosure, I was then-editor. Time to add another data point.

What we found: Whether or not you buy into Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it’s always been on display in this data. We want places that are affordable, safe, have a good climate, and offer us the ability to take care of ourselves and our households. Super foundational stuff. It’s like what makes a good place to work. It’s not the foosball table, it’s having engaging work and being compensated fairly for it. Further down the ranking (or up the pyramid of needs) are cultural amenities, commute time, the people around you. And finally, some options that matter a lot to some folks but not enough to shake the overall balance. Public transportation is important to people in cities. Schools are important to people with kids, or who are attending them themselves. Less so to everyone else. 

Also floating perennially near the bottom is the political leaning of a place, despite all the headlines you read about people moving to red states from blue states and vice versa. For most, that’s really not a driver of relocation. However, that could be because we mostly already live in like-voting bubbles and maybe don’t think about it as much as the other factors.

More insights from this wave of the Ipsos Consumer Tracker:

Is Buy Now, Pay Later here to stay? Here’s what the data says

The Ipsos Care-o-Meter: What does America know about vs. what does America care about?