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(NEXSTAR) – The city you call home should feel exactly like that: home. Ideally, it should be a place where you can feel comfortable going about your day, and knowing that you’re safe while doing so.
This can be a bit tricky sometimes, particularly in some of the largest cities in the country.
Some are safer than others, of course, and a new study from SmartAsset tried to determine which of the country’s major cities is the safest.
To find this, SmartAsset compared 50 of the largest cities in the country based on their population and looked at a few different variables, including violent crime rate, property crime rate, vehicular mortality rate, and several other metrics.
Landing on top of the list is a city on the West Coast: San Jose, California. Finishing top 10 in every metric that SmartAsset studied, San Jose had the third fewest violent crimes in the country relative to its population, and the fifth fewest property crimes.
Five hours south of San Jose was the second safest city in the country, Los Angeles, which stacked up similarly in terms of all crime metrics and actually had a significantly lower vehicular mortality rate (in terms of traffic deaths per 100,000) compared to San Jose.
Three Texas cities also landed in the top 10, with Fort Worth at No. 3, Arlington at No. 7, and El Paso at No. 8. All three cities have lower percentages of adults who excessively drink compared to the rest of the top 10 (except for San Jose, which has a lower percentage).
Here’s how the top 25 safest cities shook out on SmartAsset’s rankings.
- San Jose, CA
- Los Angeles, CA
- Fort Worth, TX
- Omaha, NE
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Las Vegas, NV
- Arlington, TX
- El Paso, TX
- Charlotte, NC
- Raleigh, NC
- Long Beach, CA
- Miami, FL
- San Diego, CA
- Phoenix, AZ
- Sacramento, CA
- Atlanta, GA
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Dallas, TX
- Boston, MA
- Tucson, AZ
- Mesa, AZ
- Seattle, WA
- Tulsa, OK
- Houston, TX
- New York, NY
On the other end of the spectrum, Memphis, Tennessee, was listed as the most unsafe large city in the country. Albuquerque was listed just ahead of Memphis as the second most unsafe city, and Detroit was ranked as the third most unsafe city.
To see the full rankings and stats, check out SmartAsset’s study on their website.
