How we grade cities and neighborhoods
Every grade on this site comes from public data and the same simple math. This page explains all of it, so you can judge the scores for yourself.
The short version
- We collect measures of daily life from the Census Bureau, the CDC, the Texas Education Agency, the FBI, FEMA, NOAA, HUD and Overture Maps.
- For each measure we work out where a place sits compared with similar places, as a percentile from 0 to 100.
- We average those into ten category scores, then into one overall score using the weights below.
- The overall score becomes a letter grade. You can change the weights on any ranking page.
Who each place is compared with
A big city and a small suburb are very different places, so we compare like with like.
- Cities of 50,000 or more, cities of 10,000 to 50,000, and towns of 1,000 to 10,000 each form their own group.
- Cost, income, commute, education, health, home ownership and internet compare a place with US places in its size group (876 cities of 50,000+ people, 3,321 cities of 10,000 to 50,000 people, 11,466 towns of 1,000 to 10,000 people).
- Schools, safety and errands compare a place with Texas places in its size group, because school ratings and crime reporting differ from state to state.
- The overall grade blends two views equally: how a place ranks within its Texas size group, and how it ranks among all Texas places. This keeps big cities from being judged only against rich suburbs.
- Neighborhoods are compared with every Census block group in Texas, about 18,000 small areas.
Categories, measures and weights
| Category | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of living | 16% | Rent, home prices compared with income, and how many renters spend 30% or more of income on rent. |
| Jobs and income | 12% | Household income, unemployment and the share of people below the poverty line. |
| Schools | 14% | Texas Education Agency A to F ratings for the public schools in and near the area. |
| Safety | 12% | Violent and property crime per 100,000 people, reported by the local police to the FBI. |
| Errands and things to do | 10% | How many grocery stores, pharmacies, cafes, restaurants, parks, gyms and clinics are within a mile of where people live. |
| Getting around | 10% | Average time to get to work, and how many people walk, bike or take transit. |
| Education levels | 6% | Share of adults with a high school diploma and with a bachelor’s degree. |
| Health | 10% | Adults without health insurance, with no exercise outside work, and with frequent mental distress. |
| Home ownership | 6% | Share of homes lived in by their owners, and how many homes sit vacant. |
| Internet access | 4% | Share of homes with a broadband internet plan. |
For measures where lower is better, like rent, commute time or poverty, the percentile is flipped so a higher score always means better.
What we never score
We show race and ethnicity, age and households with children on city and neighborhood pages because people ask about them. They are never used in any score or grade. A place is not better or worse because of who lives there.
Grades
| Grade | Overall percentile |
|---|---|
| A+ | 95 and up |
| A | 88 to 95 |
| A- | 80 to 88 |
| B+ | 72 to 80 |
| B | 64 to 72 |
| B- | 56 to 64 |
| C+ | 48 to 56 |
| C | 40 to 48 |
| C- | 32 to 40 |
| D+ | 24 to 32 |
| D | 16 to 24 |
| D- | 8 to 16 |
| F | below 8 |
How neighborhoods are drawn
There is no official map of US neighborhoods. We build them from Census block groups, small areas of roughly 600 to 3,000 people. Each block group inside a city takes the name of the closest neighborhood on the Overture Maps neighborhood layer, if one is within about 1.2 miles. Block groups with no name nearby are grouped by direction, like “Northeast Austin”. Block groups with the same name are combined into one neighborhood.
This means neighborhood edges are approximate and may not match what locals call an area.
Limits of the data
- Census figures are survey estimates averaged over five years (2020-2024 ACS 5-year). Small areas can have wide error ranges.
- When a block group median is not published, we use the value for the surrounding Census tract.
- Neighborhood medians are weighted averages of block group medians, so they are close estimates rather than exact medians.
- Health figures are CDC model-based estimates at the tract level.
- Census does not publish total commute time for block groups. For neighborhoods we estimate the average from the travel time ranges, using range averages fitted on Census tracts where both are published.
- Crime rates come from what each police department reports to the FBI. Departments that reported only part of a year, or nothing recent, are shown but not scored. Crime is not graded for single neighborhoods.
- School ratings are the Texas Education Agency 2025 A to F ratings for each campus. A city is scored on the campuses inside it, or the closest ones when it has none. Attendance zones are not used, so always check the school for a specific address.
- Errands counts grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants, cafes, parks, gyms, clinics and childcare within one mile of where people live, from Overture Maps. Map data can miss places, mostly in small towns.
- Hazard ratings are from the FEMA National Risk Index and describe a whole Census tract, not a single home. Weather is the NOAA 1991 to 2020 climate normal from the closest station.
See every dataset on our data sources page. Scores were last built on 2026-10-04.