California has it all--sunshine, wine, incredible landscapes, earthquakes, and more of the nation's wealthiest cities than any other state.
A new study by American City Business Journals Inc., publisher of 42 metropolitan business newspapers nationwide, ranked 261 U.S. cities by the wealth of their residents using seven categories including per capita income, households with incomes of at least $200,000 and median home value. All of the cities have at least 100,000 people.
California is home to five of the top 10--Thousand Oaks (2nd), Irvine, (6th), San Francisco (7th), Huntington Beach (9th), and Sunnyvale (10th).
The wealthiest city on the list was Arlington, Va., the suburb of nearly 200,000 people across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. Among its attributes are highly-educated residents (one-third of adults hold graduate degrees) employed in high-paying government, law or lobbying jobs in the nation's capital, or in the northern Virginia's high-tech industry.
The rest of the top 10 are the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Ill.; another Washington suburb, Alexandria, Va.; Stamford, Ct.; and Scottsdale, Ariz.
Among the category leaders, the cities with the highest per capita income are Arlington ($53,543), Alexandria ($52,530) and Scottsdale ($48,293). The cities with the most households with incomes of at least $200,000 are Naperville (15%), Arlington (13.5%) and Thousand Oaks (12.8%). The top three in median home value are San Francisco ($806,700), Huntington Beach ($767,400) and Berkeley, Calif. ($752,500).
Cities on the list were ranked by an overall wealth score. Arlington's score was 14.97, and only 107 cities had a positive wealth score. California has 56 cities with positive scores, or 52% of the total.
Brownsville, Texas finished No. 261. The rest of the bottom 10--in ascending order--are Flint, Mich.; Syracuse, N.Y.; Rochester, N.Y.; Dayton, Ohio; Cleveland; Detroit; Buffalo; Erie, Pa.; and Waco, Texas.
The survey's raw data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey. The entire list is found at www.bizjournals.com/specials/pages/190.html.