Best US cities for amenities and things to do

Restaurants, bars, parks, museums, entertainment, and the everyday things that make a city feel alive.

Other rankings

Overall Environment Transportation Safety Health Shops Education Quality of Life Cost of Living Employment

Top 25 cities

What amenities & things to do means here

Restaurants and bars, live music, cinemas, museums, libraries, gyms, community events — and crucially whether they're within reach of where people live rather than concentrated in a downtown they rarely visit.

Why it's worth weighting

Amenities are what turn a place you live into a place you enjoy living, and they matter most for people arriving without an existing social network. A city with a dense weeknight scene makes it far easier to build a life than one where everything requires planning and a drive.

What to check before you commit

1Weight weeknight options over weekend ones — that's when you'll actually use them.
2Check what's within fifteen minutes of the specific neighbourhood, not the city as a whole.
3A smaller city with a real centre often beats a bigger one where everything is spread across strip malls.
4Look for the things you'd use weekly. An excellent opera house you'll visit twice a year isn't the point.

How these rankings work

Every score comes from residents rating the place they live, not from an index we calculated. People score amenities & things to do from 0 to 10 alongside nine other life aspects, and write about what works and what doesn't. Each review is read by a person before it appears.

Cities are ranked on the mean of their amenities scores. Any city with at least one approved review is eligible, which means a highly-rated city with two reviews can currently outrank a well-known one with five — worth keeping in mind when reading the table above.

We're early. The rankings get more reliable with every review, so if you know one of these cities, add your own.