Really.
New York City ranks No. 1 in the new Geography of Prosperity Index, a ranking of 250 urban areas in America by global analytics firms HumanChange and Motivf.
Why does New York City rank highest for retireAt the other end, the cities millions of Americans choose for retirement — pulled by warm weather, low taxes, low density, and a low cost of living — rank at or near the very bottom of this measure of urban health. “These features make them structurally fragile over a two- or three-decade horizon,” Bradley Schurman, demographic strategist and CEO of HumanChange, told Yahoo Finance.
The Villages in Lady Lake, Fla, for example, ranks dead last. It’s the largest retirement community in the United States but scores near the floor on every metric that predicts long-term urban vitality.
The conversation that has been ‘largely ignored’
“For retirees planning to spend two or three decades in these markets, the data raises urgent questions about long-term livability, financial stability, and quality of life that the conventional relocation conversation has largely ignored,” he said.
Choosing where to move isn’t something to decide on a whim, and if you’re moving with a partner, there will be all kinds of considerations about where you’ll land: community, cultural, financial, and health factors.
“The retirement relocation conversation in this country has been dominated by weather, taxes, and cost of living for decades,” Schurman said. “Those are real factors, but they tell you almost nothing about whether a place will remain livable and financially viable over the 25 years that matter most to a new retiree.”
Take Palm Springs, where 35% of the population is over 65 people, Schurman said.
“It’s always been a retirement destination. Ten years ago the population was 25% over 65. It’s getting older and yes, people are active and they’re engaged, but if you don’t have a pipeline of people coming in to work, you’re kind of out of luck.”
While Schurman was visiting recently, the state announced that people in Palm Springs and the whole Coachella Valley will have to cut water consumption by 40% by 2040. “That means that you won’t be able to irrigate the golf courses anymore,” Schurman said. “No one’s going to be allowed to have grass on their properties, including the hotels, or be able to top off their pools in the summer.”
What’s being measured
Researchers compiling the new index evaluated five characteristics: climate resilience, automation readiness, social cohesion, population renewal, and governance and foresight.
“Think of it as a stress test for American cities — not a measure of where prosperity has already accumulated, but of which cities are actually prepared for what’s coming,” Schurman said.
When it comes to population renewal, for instance, you want to know that a place has a pipeline to keep the population stable. If the population is stable or growing, it is more likely that the basic services of the government will be funded.
Those can be social services that you might need at some point, said Schurman. “But it can also be like really rudimentary things like garbage pickup and road maintenance. If you don’t have the tax dollars to support that with a large working-age population, things have got to get cut from somewhere.”
The second is the hot-button issue of climate resilience. The index considers an urban area’s exposure to drought, wildfires, flooding, and storms, and its capacity to respond to those events when they happen.
“New York City did pretty well on climate resilience,” he said. “New York City floods all the time, but it has the institutional capacity to respond to those things when they occur.”
Prosperous places aren’t those untouched by climate and extreme weather—they’re the ones investing early, reducing risk, and building systems that can withstand repeated shocks, according to Schurman.
The third is social cohesion: How well does the place knit together?
The top cities in the index, for one, are all highly walkable.
“Places that have walkability tend to have higher chances of ties between people,” Schurman said. “They’re weak ties, but just by walking every day, just by seeing people on the streets, you’re more likely to have empathy and you’re more likely to avoid loneliness and isolation.”
The fourth is automation readiness within a region. “It’s important because the economy is transitioning now, and a good number of jobs are being automated,” Schurman said. “There are certain cities that are better prepared for this than others are. So if you live in a manufacturing city, those jobs are really at risk of being made redundant in the coming years.”
Why does Boston do so well? Good elementary and secondary education, a great library system, and dozens of community colleges and universities.
The last factor is governance and foresight. The government and the institutions within the city need to be thinking about the future, and acting on the future, he said.
When these things don’t align very well, a city can lose its footing pretty quickly.
After New York, Durham, N.C., and Ann Arbor, Mich., rank No. 2 and No. 3 in the index, followed by Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Mid-size university cities consistently outperformed metros many times their size.
Other Florida locales, including Port Charlotte, Sarasota, Vero Beach, Ocala, Bonita Springs, and Cape Coral, along with Myrtle Beach, S.C., Palm Springs, Calif., and McAllen, Texas, all rank near the bottom.
It should go without saying that the top five are incredibly expensive places to live.
“Folks seeking affordability should factor that into their decision-making and cross-reference those options,” Schurman said. “That said, places that market themselves to retirees aren’t the best, and it’s important to be aware of that.”
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