the thesis
The best place to live is different for everyone, so published "best places" rankings aren't really about you. If you can turn the dials yourself (say, education over leisure, or affordability over weather), you can find the place that fits your life.
what i built
- a scoring engine for ~500 US cities across weather, affordability, economic opportunity and education. every dimension normalizes to a 0–100 score so any weighting you choose compares apples to apples.
- weather that reflects how it feels: six years of daily history per city, scored on eight sub-factors like days below freezing, dew point, seasonal swing and humidity discomfort.
- public data, end to end: pipelines pulling from the US Census (ACS), Open-Meteo and the NCES school directory (~90k public schools) into one database.
- an interactive front end where you set your own priorities and watch the ranking reshuffle.
what it shows
How I like to work: start with a clear thesis, be rigorous and transparent about the methodology, then make it simple enough for anyone to use.