In recent years, Minneapolis, Minnesota has been recognized as one of the happiest cities in the world. This recognition makes it the only U.S. city to receive this honor. The Institute for Quality of Life, which releases an annual “Happy City Index,” determined that Minneapolis is not just a happy city in the United States, but also ranks highly globally.
Rankings are based on thousands of indicators related to quality of life and overall happiness among residents. Each city is evaluated on 24 different areas within five categories: citizens, governance, environment, economy, and mobility. Despite being one of the largest cities in the U.S., Minneapolis earned gold status and placed at No. 17 among 37 total cities in this category. The top-ranked city globally was found to be Aarhus, Denmark.
Minneapolis received particularly high scores in two categories: citizens and economy. While it was the only U.S. city to earn gold status, several others were recognized with silver and bronze awards as well including Boston, Baltimore, Washington D.C., San Francisco and Salt Lake City along with Madison Wisconsin another midwestern location like Minneapolis .
This recognition highlights the many strengths of Minneapolis’ community members and their high quality of life which includes access to resources such as healthcare services and job opportunities while also being environmentally friendly through its green initiatives .
