Four Bay Area cities made the top 20 in a study of U.S. places that combine career opportunities and quality of life — but in the questionable category of “small cities.”
The report by Coworking Cafe culled data on cities with populations under 250,000 without weeding out those that were part of metropolitan areas with millions of people. The result was that many of the communities it purported to contrast with “big, bustling cities” are, basically, in big, bustling cities — suburbs of Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, Salt Lake City.
In its summary of Mountain View, Santa Clara and Palo Alto (nos. 3, 4 and 5 on the list), the report does acknowledge they “sit at the heart of Silicon Valley and come with some of the highest living costs in the country.” San Ramon landed on the list at No. 13.
No. 1 on the list is Alpharetta, Georgia, at the north edge of the Atlanta metro area. The highest ranked that is not part of a metro area of 2 million or more is Portland, Maine, a city of about 70,000 in a metro area of 570,000 people.
Coworking Cafe, a “listing service for flex workspace solutions,” said it ranked 298 U.S. cities on a scale that considered economic, workforce and quality-of-life factors and came up with “tight-knit communities” that are also “career powerhouses.”
The top 20:
Alpharetta, Georgia
South Jordan, Utah
Mountain View, California
Santa Clara, California
Palo Alto, California
Carmel, Indiana
Fishers, Indiana
Franklin, Tennessee
Kirkland, Washington
Portland, Maine
Frisco, Texas
Bellevue, Washington
San Ramon, California
Boca Raton, Florida
Flower Mound, Texas
Troy, Michigan
Pflugerville, Texas
Richmond, Virgina
Alexandria, Virginia
McKinney, Texas