The Best Cities to Enjoy an Active Lifestyle
An active lifestyle is one that integrates physical activity into daily life. Sure, you can take the stairs instead of the escalator, or park a little farther away at the grocery store, but that's not going to cut it.
To really get active, you need access to places where you'll enjoy walking, running, biking, swimming or playing sports. You need a little inspiration - whether from nature, the people around you, or the fun you have doing activities.
You also need to be able to afford it, and you don't have a lot of time to spare to take two buses and a train just to get to a gym, a pickup game or a walking trail.
It's probably no surprise that some cities are more conducive to an active lifestyle than others. A city supports an active lifestyle by prioritizing things like parks, hiking trails, basketball and tennis courts, swimming pools and other facilities. Organized team sports in a community help kids and adults incorporate physical activity into their lives. Access to nature, whether mountains, lakes, woods or the ocean takes us out of the daily grind.
To determine the best cities for an active lifestyle, personal finance site Wallet Hub ranked the 100 biggest U.S. cities for their costs and availability of various facilities and activities. They also factored in walk score, bike score, air quality and weather (and weather isn't everything - some of the lowest ranking cities were in warm states such as Florida, California, Nevada, and Texas.)
Some of the metrics included were the cost and availability of: fitness clubs, sporting goods stores, bowling alleys, tennis courts, soccer fields, little league, volleyball courts, skate parks, ice skating rinks, dancing schools, bike rental facilities, playgrounds, golf courses, parklands, hiking trails, pickup soccer and basketball meetups, and proximity to a ski resort and major lake or ocean. WalletHub determined each city's weighted average across all metrics to calculate an active lifestyle score and used the resulting scores to rank the cities.
These are the best cities to enjoy an active lifestyle.
