Another day and another list comes out pitting the country’s cities against each other in seemingly arbitrary competitions. This time around, WalletHub released a list proclaiming .
Unfortunately, Denver didn’t make the top 20. Nor the top 30. Actually, it didn’t even make the top 50.
Instead, Denver landed no. 66. The list thinks Denver is the 66th happiest city to live in. Really? The list put Bismarck, N.D., at No. 2 and it doesn’t have pro sports teams or mountains.
Aurora fared better, landing at no. 55 position. Meanwhile, Colorado Springs also is hanging in the sixties at no. 68. Boulder didn’t even make the list due to its population size.
To determine happiness, a quotient that seems far too ephemeral to really pin down, WalletHub’s authors focused on 28 metrics in three categories: emotion and physical health, income and employment, and community and environment. WalletHub is a personal finance website that routinely compiles ranking lists.
Authors turned their lens to the county’s 150 most populated cities plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state for a total of 182 cities.
Giving each category varying weights, the metrics were compiled for a final score.
Denver’s score? 61.39.
Although the city scored well in the health and financial categories, it got bogged down by the community rating.
The official community and environment category has six metrics: strength of social ties, , separation and divorce rate, ideal weather, acres of parkland per 1,000 residents and average leisure time spent per day. Denver got marked down for its separation and divorce rate, weather (they must have missed the 300 days of sunshine memo) and leisure time.
So if Colorado apparently isn’t a happy place — even though a deemed the state the 15th happiest — where are the happy places?
The top 10 happiest cities according to this WalletHub study:
- Fremont, Calif.
- Bismarck, N.D.
- San Jose, Calif.
- Pearl City, Hawaii
- Plano, Texas
- Fargo, N.D.
- Sioux Falls, S.D.
- Irvine, Calif.
- Huntington Beach, Calif.
- Grand Prairie, Texas
If the list upsets you, it’s OK.
Denver still is the and the . It’s also the and the . And who can forget that we’re the and the ?
