City Quality-of-Life Composite Score
Build your own weighted quality-of-life index. Combine seven dimensions of city livability with custom weights to match your priorities.
Build Your Custom Quality-of-Life Index
Select one or two cities and adjust the dimension weights to reflect what matters most to you. Get a personalized composite score based on your priorities.
Choose Cities
Enter one or two US cities to compare
Adjust Weights
Prioritize what matters to you
Dimensions: Housing Affordability, Job Opportunity, Commute Ease, Transit Access, Climate Comfort, Safety, Amenities
Understanding the Quality-of-Life Composite Score
Our composite score combines seven key dimensions of city livability into a single weighted metric. Adjust the weights to reflect your personal priorities.
How the Composite Score Works
The composite score is a weighted average of all seven dimension scores. Each dimension is scored 0-100, where higher is always better (even for costs and crime, which are inverted so that lower costs and lower crime produce higher scores).
Weight normalization: Your custom weights are normalized to sum to 1.0 (100%). If you set housing to 2 and all others to 1, housing gets about 25% weight while each other dimension gets about 12.5%. This ensures the composite score stays on a 0-100 scale.
Formula: Composite = (Dimension₁ × Weight₁) + (Dimension₂ × Weight₂) + ... + (Dimension₇ × Weight₇)
Housing Affordability
Measures how affordable housing costs are relative to typical income levels in the city. Higher scores mean lower housing burden. This dimension considers median home prices, rents, and overall housing cost indices.
Job Opportunity
Evaluates the strength of the local job market including wage levels, unemployment rates, job growth trends, and diversity of industries. Higher scores indicate more robust employment prospects.
Commute Ease
Assesses how light or heavy the typical commute burden feels, factoring in average commute times and estimated transportation costs. Higher scores mean shorter, less costly commutes.
Transit Access
Measures public transportation availability and convenience including transit stop density, service frequency, and coverage. Higher scores indicate cities where residents can more easily rely on public transit.
Climate Comfort
Evaluates year-round weather comfort based on temperature extremes, humidity, and the number of comfortable days. Higher scores indicate more pleasant, moderate climates throughout the year.
Safety
Reflects relative crime levels in the city using composite crime indices. Higher scores indicate lower overall crime rates. Note that safety varies significantly by neighborhood within any city.
Amenities
Measures access to quality-of-life amenities including parks, cultural attractions, dining options, entertainment venues, and recreational facilities. Higher scores indicate richer amenity offerings.
Interpreting Composite Scores
80-100
Excellent
60-79
Good
40-59
Moderate
20-39
Below Avg
0-19
Low
Scores are based on aggregated city-level data and may not reflect neighborhood-level variation. Use this tool as one input among many when researching cities. Always conduct additional research and consider visiting in person before making relocation decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about the City Quality-of-Life Composite Score tool.
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