Austin Becomes The World’s No. 1 City to Move To In Global Ranking

British personal finance platform money.co.uk ranks Austin the No. 1 city in the world for people hunting for a new place to live. Earlier this year, polling results released by the Boston Consulting Group and The Network, a recruiting alliance, placed London atop the list of the world’s best spots for relocating workers.

No one seems to agree on the planet’s best cities to live in, though. For example, Condé Nast Traveler hands that honor to Auckland, New Zealand, while the Time Out Index anoints San Francisco the world’s top city to live in. Vienna, Austria, continually grabs the top spot in an annual quality-of-living ranking for global cities published by consulting giant Mercer.

How did Austin, in the eyes of money.co.uk, become the relocation capital of the world? The website examined eight factors: home prices, cost of living, average salary, weather, number of restaurants, number of green spaces, internet speed, and life expectancy.

After crunching the numbers, money.co.uk awarded Austin a relocation score of 6.02 out of 10. The platform gave Austin high marks for internet speed (87.5 megabits per second), average temperature (68.7 degrees), and average monthly salary ($5,501).

As determined by money.co.uk, here are the top 10 cities for people wanting to relocate:

  1. Austin
  2. Tokyo
  3. Charleston, South Carolina
  4. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
  5. Los Angeles
  6. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
  7. Miami
  8. Muscat, Oman
  9. San Francisco
  10. Las Vegas

In all, 84 cities appear in the ranking. Except for Austin, none of those cities are in Texas. Ten of the 84 cities are in the U.S. — Austin (No. 1 overall), Charleston (No. 3), Los Angeles (No. 5), Miami (No. 7), San Francisco (No. 9), Las Vegas (No. 10), Washington, D.C. (No. 13), Chicago (No. 17), New York City (No. 21), and Boston (No. 67).