Where should I live?
The ultimate guide to your brand new amazing life
Published June 28, 2024
Do you want to live in a city 🏙? Do you want to move as far away as possible 🏃♂️? How about somewhere less hot 🥵? And what kind of impact does the risk of natural disasters have 🌪?
The list of factors is long, so let’s start from the beginning.
CNN identified 6,699 towns and cities across the United States with a population of 5,000 or more for this project. Read more about our methodology.
Narrow down your results
Compared to where you live now, are you looking for a place that has more or less...
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Population density
Young people
Lower median age
Unmarried people
% of population that is single
Rainy days
Hot days
Temps above 90° F
Cold days
Temps below freezing
Avoid places that are more vulnerable to:
Hurricanes
Tornadoes
Wildfires
Earthquakes
Flooding
Other factors that are important to you
Credits
- Developers
- Curt Merrill, Byron Manley and Sean O’Key
- Designers
- Henrik Pettersson and Tal Yellin
- Illustration and animation
- Taylor Su
- Additional animation
- Patrick Gallagher and Yukari Schrickel
- Art director
- Tal Yellin
- Data analysis
- Janie Boschma, Curt Merrill, Renée Rigdon and Matt Stiles
- Project editor
- Anna Brand
- Contributors
- Eric Zerkel and Lucy Bayly
CNN’s Adulthood, But Better series helps you make more informed decisions around personal finance, career, wellness and personal connections.
Methodology
CNN relied on a variety of data sources for this story. Data is provided at the smallest geographic level possible: census-designated place, county or state, depending on the specificity of the source data. User locations were grouped into the above geographies based on the US Census Bureau’s cartographic boundary files.
For housing costs, CNN relied on Zillow’s county-level calculations of price per square foot, which factors in both home and rental prices. The population density and diversity index values were derived from the 2020 Census. Age results are based on the median age of a place or county, and marital status results are determined by the percentage of people aged 15 or older who are unmarried. Both data sets come from the Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey five-year estimates.
Weather values are derived from climate normals published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from hundreds of weather stations across the country. Data on natural disasters was derived from FEMA's national risk map for six categories: coastal flooding, earthquakes, hurricanes, riverine flooding, tornadoes and wildfires.
Data reflecting the status of abortion access by state is current as of June 20, 2024, and was sourced from the Guttmacher Institute and the Center for Reproductive Rights. Information on LGBTQ-friendly policies and laws was provided by the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), which tracks state-level LGBTQ-related laws and policies that affect the lives, experiences and equality of LGBTQ people. For this project, states with low scores are those with an overall policy tally below 50% of total possible points as of June 24, 2024.