National Geographic and Gallup’s social scientists recently compiled a list of the 25 happiest cities in the United States. They interviewed nearly 250,000 adults from 2014 to 2015, establishing 15 metrics for happiness applied across all metropolitan areas.

While Boulder, Colorado was at the top of the list, eight California cities also made it — the largest contingent from any one state. Colorado (three) and Florida (two) were the only other states to feature more than one city.

So which California cities made the cut?

  1. Santa Cruz / Watsonville
  2. San Luis Obispo / Paso Robles / Arroyo Grande
  3. San Jose / Santa Clara / Sunnyvale
  4. Santa Maria / Santa Barbara
  5. Salinas
  6. San Francisco / Oakland / Hayward
  7. Oxnard / Thousand Oaks / Ventura
  8. San Diego / Carlsbad 

For those keeping score, that’s four apiece for both Northern and Southern California. Of the largest cities in the state, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Sacramento were all absent (while San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego, and Oakland are all represented).

While the article doesn’t dig into every aspect of why a city ranks where it does, there were some points that seemed to show a correlation to happiness. Among them, bikeability and water quality exhibited some of the strongest connections. Though LA has been working to address its shortcomings on bike-friendly roads, many of those fixes have come more recently than the study’s timeframe. Happiness also doesn’t just change overnight, either.