Where Should You Live? (US)

The best city for you is the one that matches the life you want: how big a place feels right, how close you want the ocean, how near you want wild open country, and how often you need to fly. This quiz turns those choices into a ranked shortlist of real American cities.

The United States is enormous, and most people choosing where to move compare the same handful of famous names. That leaves out dozens of cities that could suit you better. Starting from what you want, instead of from what you have heard of, opens the whole map up.

You tell us what matters and how much. We compare a hundred of the largest US cities on the same facts, and hand you the five that fit best, with the reasons for each written underneath. Each city also gets a match score, so you can see at a glance whether your top two are neck and neck or miles apart, and the full ranked list sits below for anyone who wants to keep scrolling.

It works just as well if you are not planning to move tomorrow. Plenty of people use it to pick a city for a long visit, to test a hunch about a place a friend loves, or simply to see which corner of the country fits the way they already live.

We use our own proprietary structure: every city is scored on four facts, each weighted by how much you said it matters, and the closest overall fit rises to the top.

• Population size: you choose big city, small city, market town or village life. Cities are compared on a sliding scale of size, so one a little off your ideal still scores well. On the US list, the smaller choices pull the more compact cities forward.
• Distance to the coast: you say how near the ocean you want to be. A high score favours coastal cities on the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf. A low score is happy for you to be deep inland.
• Green space: you say how much you want wild country on the doorstep. We measure each city's distance to the nearest national park, so a high score favours places within reach of the big landscapes.
• Airports: you say how close you want a major airport. Frequent flyers get cities with a hub nearby. If you rarely fly, distance stops counting against anywhere.

For each of the four you also choose whether it "doesn't matter", "matters a little" or "matters a lot". A preference that matters a lot counts three times as much, so the ranking bends towards what you really care about.

The quiz asks fourteen short questions about the life you want. The core four (size, ocean, wild country and airport) drive the ranking, along with a region filter based on the nine Census divisions. You can rule out New England, the Middle Atlantic, the South Atlantic, the East and West North Central, the East and West South Central, the Mountain states or the Pacific in one tap each.

The rest build a fuller picture of how you live: your monthly housing budget, whether a quick train into a big city matters, how much nightlife and culture you want, whether you prefer young and buzzy or settled and calm, sunshine or mild and green, a fast-growing place or one that stays as it is, independent shops or big retail parks, car or car-free, and how often you work from home.

Those extra answers are saved with your result. The ranking itself stays focused on the four facts we hold for every city on the list, which keeps every match fair and every reason on the card real.

Your result is five American cities, all five marked on a map, each with the population, coast distance and airport distance that drove the match. Here are the kinds of shortlist people see.

• Big-city life: choose big city, a major airport close by and the ocean as a low priority, and the country's largest metros lead the list.
• Coastal cities: score the ocean high and the Atlantic seaboard, the Pacific coast and the Gulf cities come forward.
• Mountains and wild country: score green space high and you get cities within easy reach of national parks, especially across the West.
• Heartland cities: score the coast low and set size to small city, and compact inland cities across the Midwest and South rise up.
• Well-connected mid-size cities: pick small city and a nearby airport and you get places with a manageable size and an easy route anywhere.
• The surprise match: plenty of people find a city in their top five they had never considered. That is often the most useful result of all.

Answer for the life you live, not the one on a postcard. If you fly twice a year, an airport does not need to matter a lot.

Use "doesn't matter" freely. Switching a preference off is one of the quickest ways to widen the map, because it stops that fact pushing good cities down the list.

Rule out divisions only where you truly would not move. The United States covers a lot of ground, and each division you remove tightens the shortlist fast. Try it twice, once with nothing ruled out and once with your real constraints, then compare. The cities that appear on both lists are the ones to visit first.