The Big Tomato won itself a spot on a list of the world’s greatest cities. Not a particularly high spot, but it is Sacramento, after all.
Sacramento scored 83rd in a list of the World’s 100 greatest cities, besting Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (94); Toulouse, France (93); Valencia, Spain (86); and Glasgow, Scotland (100); as well as American cities San Antonio (88); Tucson (89); and Pittsburg (92).
The first three spots, not too surprisingly, go to London, Paris and New York. Somewhat less acclaimed American cities including Tampa (73), Dallas (42), Houston (31), and Orlando (30) placed ahead of Sacramento.
The only other California cities on the list are San Francisco (9), Los Angeles (12) and San Jose (26).
For this ranking, Resonanceco.com analyzed 174 cities, looking at those with a metropolitan population of 1 million or more with at least 50,000 reviews on TripAdvisor.
Although rankings of best and worst cities can seem arbitrary at best (and flagrantly spurious at worst), the Best Cities ranking is based on a metric of ‘Place’ including information about pollution, weather, crime and parks and outdoor activities; ‘Product,’ including key institutions, attractions, infrastructure as well as university rankings, convention center, entertainment and museums; ‘Programming,’ including the arts, culture, entertainment, shopping, culture, culinary and nightlife; ‘People,’ including immigration rate, diversity, and education; ‘Prosperity’ including employment, corporate head offices, GDP per capita, and Global 500 companies, and ‘Promotion,’ a category featuring ‘the quantity of stories, references and recommendations shared online about a city, including those from Google search results, Google Trends, Facebook check-ins and TripAdvisor reviews.
Cute. They have a whole alliteration thing going on there.
Best and worst city rankings vary widely from survey to survey.
This year, Sunset Magazine ranked Sacramento first on its ‘game-changing places to live’ list.
Last year, WalletHub ranked Sacramento 21st in its list of best big cities to live in and 15th best for recreation.
Also last year, Bankrate.com ranked Sacramento third on its list of ‘Worst Cities to Start a Career.'
In 2016, WalletHub deemed Sacramento the most sinful city in the state, and 38th in the nation.
In 2012, Forbes ranked Sacramento the fifth most miserable city in America.
Clearly best and worst rankings are to be taken with a grain of salt. Preferably a few grains, around the rim of a margarita glass (after all, a RoadSnacks study ranked Sacramento the Fifth Drunkest City in California). Make up your own mind. Just remember, in the immortal words of Buckaroo Banzaii in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzaii across the Eighth Dimension, "Wherever you go, there you are."