Want to Live a Happy and Healthy Life? Move to Santa Cruz
There are hundreds of factors to quantify the city or neighborhood you could live in next, but how often do you consider your overall health? Gallup-Healthways recently released their Community Well-Being Index, which ranks U.S. communities in terms of physical, emotional, financial, community, and social health.
What they discovered is that hubs for quality of life are found all over the country, but you’re more likely to find the cities and towns at the top of the list close to a body of water. Naples, Immokalee, Marco Island, FL, the number one overall community, borders the Gulf of Mexico. Barnstable Town, MA is the largest community on Cape Cod, which is on the Atlantic Ocean. And over on the Pacific Ocean, the top place to live for well-being and overall health is Santa Cruz in California.
Santa Cruz ranked in the top ten in four of the five categories, including Community Well-Being, Physical Health, Sense of Purpose, and Financial Health. The only category where it was outside of the top ten was in Social Health, where it still came in 20th overall. Given that there’s a university, boardwalk, amusement park, and redwood forests all located here, it’s easy to see how locals are living the good life.
Northern California also saw strong rankings from Santa Rosa (No, 17), Salinas (No. 19), San Francisco, Oakland, Hayward (No. 31), and San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara (No. 39).