Equally important as the cost of living and ease of doing work, safety is one of those criteria that most people look for in a city before deciding to go there. A city can give you the highest income rate, the best universities, and the liveliest nightlife, and yet it can fail in that one essential criteria.
So which of the American cities are considered to be the safest? Forbes.com recently made a study of American cities and based its decision on four factors: violent crime rate, workplace fatality rate, traffic death rate, and natural disaster risk. The city that topped the rankings? The Minneapolis metropolitan area.
The metropolitan area was ranked 9th (out of 40 cities) for most favorable violent crime rates, 1st for most favorable workplace-related deaths, 7th for traffic deaths, and 7th as well for natural disaster risk. Forbes.com got its data for workplace-related rates from the data taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2008 data); 2008 traffic deaths from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; natural disaster risk from information gathered from green-living site SustainLiving.com, while historical natural disaster data was taken from various government agencies. Meanwhile, the violent crime rate data were taken from the FBI's 2008 uniform crime report.
According to the official website of the Minneapolis government, the city is now experiencing double-digit reduction in crime rates, which has been falling for three straight years and the lowest level in a decade. Proactive policing, targeting of big criminals, and focus on youth crime reduction were said to be instrumental in these efforts.
Milwaukee, Portland, Boston, and Seattle completed the top 5 of the Forbes.com list.
Is topping the aforementioned list a definite plus for you to consider settling here? Definitely. Aside from being the country's safest city, it also came in third in Forbes.com's list of best US cities to earn a living. The job market is still looking up despite the recession, and this is mostly attributed to the ten of the Forbes 100 companies based there. The only problem might be the cold weather.
