Best Cities For Singles

Elisabeth Eaves 08.21.07, 6:00 PM ET

It's been a long time since single adulthood was just a hurried way station between adolescence and marriage. Today the median age of first marriage is rising for both men and women, and singles make up 41% of American adults 18 and over. In fact, most Americans can expect to spend fully half of their adult lives unmarried.

Singles are an increasingly diverse group. Being unmarried these days could mean living with an opposite-sex partner--as 9.8 million Americans did in 2005--or becoming a single mother by choice rather than necessity, a growing trend. Only about one-third of America's 90 million unmarrieds live alone, and about 14% of single adults are over the age of 65. As what it means to be single changes, the growing economic clout of singles as a class means that cities can ill afford to lose them, as sociologist Richard Florida argues in The Rise of the Creative Class.

So what lucky cities stand the best chance of attracting this crucial class? We answer that question in our seventh annual Best Cities for Singles special report. We looked at 40 of the largest urbanized areas in the country and judged them on culture, nightlife, job growth, the cost of living alone, online dating, the number of other singles and that ever-elusive quality, cool. For our complete methodology, click here.

There have been major changes in the rankings this year. The winner: San Francisco, up from fourth place. It ranked first for culture and received high marks for number of singles, nightlife, online dating and cool. (For more on the winning city, see "San Fran's Sexy Solo Scene.") The "city that never sleeps," New York, N.Y., came in a strong second place, thanks to its performance as the country's No. 1 spot for nightlife. Entertainment mecca Los Angeles came in third, Atlanta fourth and Chicago fifth. Rounding out the top 10 are Washington D.C., San Diego, Seattle, Dallas-Fort Worth and Philadelphia.

Denver, meanwhile, our top-ranked city from 2004 to 2006, has dropped to 16th place. But before Denver city elders start beating themselves up over this, we should note that this is largely because, amid several refinements to our methodology this year, we've switched to a new way of defining each city. In the past, the boundaries and population of each city were drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau's list of "Metropolitan Statistical Areas." But in 2007, we've begun using the Census Bureau's "Urbanized Area," which provides a tighter focus on cities themselves.

That means the youthful, nearby city of Boulder is no longer included in our assessment of Denver, and that hurt the Mile-High City a lot. But Denver still has one major draw for singles: It's ranked No. 1 on affordability.

Our switch to the Census Bureau's "urbanized area" definition also means several cities that had been on our list in previous years--Nashville and North Carolina's Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh-Durham--are no longer included, since they lack a large enough central population in their urban centers. Several new cities--Jacksonville, Fla., Buffalo, N.Y., Memphis and Baltimore--replace them.

Also new this year: We selected a "most eligible" bachelor and bachelorette for many of our cities. Like any such list, our picks are a bit subjective and somewhat eclectic. We started by getting nominations from locals and held a newsroom poll to determine the winners. We considered only public figures--which is why the list is heavy on athletes and news anchors--and which is also why your brother the charming and handsome surgeon didn't get chosen. To determine eligibility, we merely confirmed that our selections were not married. We did not check to see if they had a "serious" boyfriend or girlfriend.

Of course, being single is about much more than just dating. Providence, R.I., fell to the bottom of our list this year. That's partly because it came in last in the online dating category. But it also scored low in several other categories, coming 35th in job growth. Singles want to know that they'll be able to nurture an interesting and prosperous career, and Providence just doesn't look that promising.

The ease of mobility these days means that the young, educated and unattached can live pretty much where they please. Our special report provides a dash of guidance for singles themselves, as well as to the cities and companies that want to lure them.

San Francisco-Oakland
New York
Los Angeles
Atlanta
Chicago
Washington
San Diego
Seattle
Dallas-Fort Worth
Philadelphia
Boston
Austin
Minneapolis-St. Paul
Houston
Phoenix
Denver-Aurora
New Orleans
Las Vegas
Columbus
Miami

Forbes List: Best Cities For Young Professionals

Matt Woolsey, 11.26.07, 6:00 PM ET

Head to the Big Apple, and your chances of getting the corner office might not be as far off as you think. That's because New York City tops our list as the No. 1 city for young professionals. That likely comes as a shock to, well, no one. Many of America's best companies, as determined by Forbes rankings of the best 400 big businesses and best 200 small businesses, including financial giant Goldman Sachs and media conglomerate News Corp. are in New York. Throw in New York's bars, clubs and world-class dining, and you get a city teeming with young professionals. In Pictures: Best Cities For Young Professionals

San Francisco clocked in at No. 2 and Atlanta at No. 3. Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Boston and Seattle filled spots four through seven, and Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Denver closed out the top 10.

Behind The Numbers

Our list was compiled by tracking where the graduates of top universities across the country ended up 10 years after commencement; where the best business opportunities exist; which cities had the most young and unmarried people; and which cities paid young professionals the best.

To see where graduates of elite schools chose to pursue their careers, we looked at Class of 1997 alumni location data from six elite universities across the country--Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern and Rice. The data indicated where graduates have settled 10 years later, and where their professional lives have matured.

We then excluded alumni that remained close to school. Harvard grads in Massachusetts--nixed; Dukies who stayed in North Carolina--gone; Stanford Cardinal roosting in California--tossed.

The goal: to determine which cities offer such strong opportunities for young professionals that they're willing to pick up and move across the country for them.

Some cities are bigger than others, of course. So we adjusted where elite grads ended up against overall population size to measure the respective concentrations of young professionals. This allowed smaller cities such as Portland and Austin to compete equally with heavyweights such as New York and Los Angeles.

In Depth: Ladder Climbers Sweet On The Big Apple

In Depth: Cloudy Skies For Tampa's Young Professionals

Then we stirred the locations of prized jobs into the mix. Each year, Forbes selects America's 400 best big businesses and 200 best small businesses. We used the locations of those 600 companies to determine which cities had the best professional opportunities for the under-35 set.

Money is important too. To figure out how far yearly income will go, we measured cities' variations in starting salary using data from New York-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting and adjusted it for cost of living with our own Forbes index; the idea being that the more greenhorn grads a city can attract with a decent salary to cost of living ratio, the more likely they'll stay and develop in that area.

Of course, even the most driven young professionals need to let off steam. With that in mind, the final metric was measured which cities had the highest share of never-married people in their 20s and 30s. Never married is an important qualifier. For example, of the 40 largest cities, Salt Lake City has the third-highest population share of people ages 25 to 34, but its standing as No. 27 in the never-married category really puts a damper on the nightlife. The bottom 10 cities were brought down by a variety of causes. Salary to cost of living submarined Miami, Norfolk, Va., and San Antonio. The inability to attract top grads and top companies hurt Detroit and Las Vegas, and all our measurements converged on Tampa, Fla., beating it down to last place on our list.