Best Cities for Every Stage of Your Life

Criteria for Our Best Cities PicksWhich City Is Best For You?PODCAST: How We Picked the Cities

Now Florida, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, is using creative-class criteria to pick great places to live for different times in your life -- whether you're just starting out, married with children, a midlife professional, an empty-nester or retired. We partnered with Florida and his associates to generate our Kiplinger/Richard Florida 25 Best Cities.

The 25 winning cities were selected not just because they have a strong creative class (see all our criteria). Each is well suited in several ways to a different stage of your life. Those judged best for raising families have great schools, for example. Those for retirees provide exceptional and reasonably priced health care. Each winning city has a large number of people who are in a particular stage of life. Some locales are pricey, but higher salaries in those cities may mitigate the cost of living.

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We think our cities will resonate in particular with the group that makes up so many of our readers. "Baby-boomers," Florida points out, "are making more moves strictly to improve their lifestyle."

Best Cities for Young Singles

The cities that ranked highly for young singles score well on rental affordability and have a high number of bars and restaurants per capita.

Best Cities for Mid-Level Professionals

Areas with lots of career opportunities, growth in wages and affordable housing made our cut.

Best Cities for Married With Kids

All these cities have wholesome environments and plenty of things families can do together.

Best Cities for Empty-Nesters

We picked cities with a strong cultural mix and plenty of outdoor amenities.

Best Cities for Retirees

These places offer vibrant cultural and education amenities, reasonable health-care costs, good health-care availability and a low total crime rate.