If you're single, choosing the best place to live often means prioritizing differently than families, even though there are some things that everyone has in common, such as cost of living and career growth.
If you're unsure of what your priorities might be, check out the article on how to find your best place to live to determine what's most important to you.
What Do Singles Look For in Choosing the Best Place to Live?
According to Forbes, the ultimate in scoring cities on livability, singles look at the following factors in choosing their best place to live:
- Singles: They also included in their ranking, the percentage of people over 15 who has never been married. They also gave this category double weight since it is probably the most important factor in determining the best place to live for singles.
- Culture: Forbes looked at the number of cultural events and places per capita. Included in their list were the number of live theaters, concert venues, sport teams, and museums. They also included in this category the number of colleges and universities, which would definitely add flavor to a city with their own brand of theater, film and art exhibits.
- Coolness: Coolness factor definitely needs to be included. While this is a difficult concept to truly define since it means different things to different people, a polling company conducted a survey of adults from across the U.S. and asked them which cities do they think are the coolest? This data was used to define a city's level of "coolness".
- Online Dating: The number of online dating forums and companies were determined by the number of the number of active profiles for each city as listed on dating site Yahoo! Personals.
- Nightlife: For nightlife, Forbes included the number of restaurants, bars and nightclubs per capita.
- Cost Of Living Alone: This is always an issue when moving to another city; can you afford the price of an apartment? To determine the cost of living alone, Forbes averaged out the cost of rent, pizza, the price of a movie ticket and the cost of beer. What they also took into consideration was salary, based on an entry level position.
- Job Growth: Forbes included job growth for each metropolitan area over the next five years.
Forbes' Top 5 Places to Live for Singles
- San Francisco-Oakland
We used to live in San Francisco and can attest to its magnificence. While Forbes states that 34% of city residents are not married, if you venture out of the metro's core, into the Bay area, including Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose and the valley, you'll probably find even more singles.
Read more: San Francisco City Guide
- New York
With 33% of the over 14 million New Yorkers, there are probably a lot of "Sex and the City" scenarios happening each and every night. And in terms of a cool factor, it's difficult to get any cooler.
Read more: Manhattan City Guide
- Los Angeles
At the Forbes' site they list the top bachelor and bachelorette for each city. While most of the cities listed, include the semi-famous or even people you may never have heard of, Los Angeles is in its own ranking with George Clooney and Cameron Diaz being the top singles in that town. If that has you a little down in terms of the competition, the city boasts of having a single population of 35%.
Read more: Los Angeles City Guide
- Atlanta
Atlanta is a city that has so much to offer and with a cost of living alone so much cheaper than the previous ranked metropolitans, it's worth checking out. The city's single population is 32%.
Read more: Atlanta City Guide
- Chicago
Chicago, with 33% of its 6,453,960 population base being single and with a slightly lower cost of living alone than San Francisco and New York, this is a good bet for anyone seeking a cool place to be. And of course, culturally speaking, there's a lot to see and do in this hip and happening town.
Read more: Chicago City Guide
To view the rest of the top listings, 40 in total, go to Forbes' Best Cities for Singles listing.
