Cambridge, Wellesley Named Top Places to Live in Greater Boston for 2025
Boston magazine has released the results from its first-ever rankings for the top places to live in Greater Boston. Cambridge and Wellesley topped the list, with Brookline, Newtown, Somerville, Needham,…
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Boston magazine has released the results from its first-ever rankings for the top places to live in Greater Boston. Cambridge and Wellesley topped the list, with Brookline, Newtown, Somerville, Needham, Lexington, Medfield, Weston, and Arlington rounding out the top 10.
Boston magazine editors considered several factors when evaluating cities and towns. Their rankings were developed in collaboration with research firm DataJoe's CityScore system, which evaluated 141 cities or towns within, or partially within, Massachusetts' I-495 boundary. Each city or town was ranked across eight categories that matter most to homebuyers:
- Housing: Scores considered homeowner rates, median home prices, and home-price appreciation, using data from across five years from the U.S. Census American Community Survey (ACS) and data from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors/MLS PIN.
- Safety: These rankings were curated from FBI Crime Data Explorer statistics.
- Mobility: These assessments averaged walking and biking scores from walkscore.com.
- Health Care: Evaluations in this category considered the number of hospitals and nursing homes within a 5-mile radius using data from medicare.gov.
- Community: Metrics in this category used ACS Census data to examine non-English primary language speakers and their racial and ethnic makeup.
- Education: Here, factors included local high school rankings from the magazine's Top Schools list and the percentage of residents possessing bachelor's degrees or advanced education.
- Employment: These assessments examined ACS Census data on poverty rates, high-income earners, household income, and unemployment figures.
- Entertainment: These rankings considered liquor-license counts and restaurant totals, using data from the Massachusetts Licensing Portal and Google Maps.
Using the data from DataJoe's scoring system, communities receive ratings ranging from zero to 10 in every category. The final position was determined by a weighted average across all the categories.
View the full list of community rankings on Boston magazine's website or in the March 2025 print edition.
