photo by: Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World

Downtown Lawrence is pictured in this aerial photo from September 2023. The intersection of West Sixth Street and Vermont Street is at lower left.

There are multiple paths to becoming one of the best small cities in America. One might involve really affordable housing, another might involve really high incomes, or another might involve robust job growth.

Or, you could eat and drink your way there.

Lawrence indeed has been identified as one of the best small cities in America, and a quality of life score that involves measuring the amount of bars, restaurants, and coffeeshops per capita — plus attractions like parks, arts centers and fitness clubs, too — did a lot to drive Lawrence’s high ranking.

Lawrence ranked in the 85th percentile of a recent study by the financial services firm WalletHub that measured 1,318 cities that are between 25,000 and 100,000 people in population. In other words, Lawrence was among the top 200 small cities in America, by this firm’s measurements.

Such rankings can be a mixed bag, as some of them are clearly based on pretty flimsy data. But I’ve always liked this one by WalletHub because it uses a broad set of official databases from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the FBI, among others, and through its business partnerships it also has high quality data from the major credit rating companies, like TransUnion.

The report measured each community in areas like affordability, health & education, economy and several other categories. Lawrence had the top score in Kansas — the 105th best score of any small city in America — in the category of quality of life. That’s may not be too surprising. Being a fun town has been Lawrence’s calling card for a long time.

But there was another category that drove Lawrence’s high ranking even more — safety. Lawrence also was the top-ranked small city in Kansas in terms of safety, and was No. 81 nationally. That may surprise some, as anecdotally you hear a fair amount about crime being a bigger part of daily living. Of course that could be true, and so too could the ranking. It is all relative. For all we know, other communities may be feeling the same thing about crime, but to an even larger degree.

Whatever the case, Lawrence scored well in WalletHub’s “Best Small Cities in America” report. It did not, however, take home the crown of Best Small City in Kansas. A big reason why: Our next door neighbor — Johnson County — is a magnet for highly-ranked small cities. JoCo had three cities rank in the top 100 nationally.

But Lawrence can lay claim to the Best Small City in Kansas Not Located in Johnson County. That banner might be large enough to stretch across two city streets, but nonetheless, Lawrence can solidly claim it. The distance between Lawrence and the other Kansas communities in the rankings was pretty large. Here’s a look at all the cities in the state that were ranked. As a reminder from math class, the higher the percentile, the better your rank. A community in the 99th percentile is among the top 1% of communities, while one in the 1st percentile is among the very lowest ranked.

• Leawood: 98th percentile

• Shawnee: 95th

• Lenexa: 93rd

• Lawrence: 85th

• Salina: 54th

• Manhattan: 51st

• Leavenworth: 43rd

• Dodge City: 41st

• Hutchinson: 40th

• Garden City 26th

How each community was ranked in each category also is interesting. I’ve already reported that Lawrence had a best-in-state ranking in safety and quality of life, so let’s look at those. Here’s the safety category. For these category rankings, the cities are not broken into percentiles but rather ranked No. 1 through No. 1,318.

Safety

• Lawrence: 81

• Leawood: 100

• Shawnee: 114

• Lenexa: 115

• Manhattan: 226

• Leavenworth: 746

• Salina: 865

• Dodge City: 879

• Hutchinson: 943

• Garden City: 1,053

The safety category measured data such as violent crime rate, property crime rate, motor vehicle crash deaths, pedestrian fatalities, DUI fatalities, and drug poisoning deaths.

Here’s the ranking for quality of life, which measured data such as commute times, walkability, per capita restaurants, bars, coffeehouses, movie theaters, museums, arts centers, parks and several other attractions.

Quality of Life

• Lawrence: 105

• Manhattan: 197

• Salina: 392

• Dodge City: 587

• Shawnee: 624

• Hutchinson: 661

• Leavenworth: 731

• Garden City: 746

• Lenexa: 770

• Leawood: 786

Of note was how low JoCo powerhouses Lenexa and Leawood ranked. Residents there certainly don’t lack for available attractions, but many of them are in the greater KC metro, rather than inside their own city limits.

Now, on to some categories where Lawrence did not fare as well. Lawrence ranked second to last among Kansas communities in terms of affordability. The category measured median household income, cost of living, home ownership rate, and share of households with severe housing cost burdens, among others.

Affordability

• Leawood: 11

• Shawnee: 58

• Dodge City: 267

• Lenexa: 271

• Salina: 328

• Hutchinson: 344

• Garden City: 456

• Leavenworth: 465

• Lawrence: 742

• Manhattan: 830

It probably is important to note that this isn’t a proxy for home prices. The selling prices of homes in Leawood, for example, are quite a bit higher than homes in Lawrence, but Leawood incomes also are a lot higher. Also, none of the metrics used to come up with this ranking are particularly good for college communities. The percentage of renters in a college community, for instance, will typically be higher than non-college communities, regardless of affordability issues.

In the economic health category, data such as population growth, income growth, job growth, poverty rates, personal debt levels, foreclosure rates, and bankruptcy rates were measured.

Economic Health

• Lenexa: 250

• Garden City: 281

• Dodge City: 392

• Leawood: 457

• Shawnee: 458

• Salina: 524

• Hutchinson: 595

• Leavenworth: 786

• Lawrence: 814

• Manhattan: 850

I thought it was interesting that Garden City and Dodge City — the two most western communities ranked in Kansas — were among the most economically healthy in the state. That’s goes against the script of western/central Kansas decline, although a closer look may indeed show there are pockets of western/central Kansas showing some solid economic growth.

The education and health category measures data such as school rankings, high school graduation rates, percent of the population with health insurance, premature death rates, percentage of low birthweight babies, obesity rates, among others.

Education & Health

• Leawood: 116

• Lenexa: 137

• Shawnee: 156

• Lawrence: 545

• Manhattan: 813

• Leavenworth: 834

• Salina: 906

• Hutchinson: 962

• Dodge City: 1,173

• Garden City: 1,260

This category seemed more geared towards health than education. Lawrence, for instance, usually is among the most highly-ranked in the country for the percentage of residents with a college degree, but that wasn’t one of the metrics used in this ranking. Also of note is Dodge City and Garden City, again. While they scored well on the economic front, they were among the very worst in terms of health and education. In Garden City’s case, the report ranked it as one of the 60 worst small cities in the nation in terms of education and health.