U.S. News & World Report‘s 2017 ‘100 Best Places to Live in the USA’ rankings are out, and Detroit ranks 89th. Not bad, right? Wrong. This doesn’t mean Detroit is the 89th best place to live in the whole United States, it means Detroit is one spot off the top 10 WORST places to live among the 100 most populous metro areas in the country… And here are the top 5 reasons US News is wrong about Detroit.
1. Detroit scored a 6.5 out of 10 in the US News Job Market category, but the Detroit region has gained more than 225,000 private sector jobs since 2010, and even the US News report acknowledges that salaries in Detroit are higher than the national average.
2. Detroit scored a 5.0 on Desirability and a 5.6 on Quality of Life, but it’s 25% cheaper to live in Detroit than elsewhere in the country, and you can get more for your dollar in Detroit than in any other U.S. city.
3. Detroit scored a 5.0 in the Crime category, but the US News statistics date back to 2014 — before the City became “America’s great comeback story.”
4. Using U.S. Census data, SmartAsset ranks Detroit the number-one city for U.S. home buyers, and Realtor.com lists Detroit as one of the 10 BEST cities for real estate investing.
5. In its brief writeup on ‘what there is to do’ in Detroit, US News included little about the culture of our country’s first UNESCO City of Design, reverting instead to the old cliché about the City’s reliance on sports; meanwhile, the likes of The New York Times, National Geographic and the London Free Press have each recently heralded Detroit for its “new energy” — and not because the Pistons are moving downtown.
Indeed, “small businesses are once again setting up shop in the area, and new restaurants are luring suburbanites back to Motown,” writes Nicole Jankowsi for US News. “Detroit currently sits on the edge of a renaissance.”
According to Travel+Leisure, we’ve already crossed over.
