Skip to content

Cincinnati Is 2022’s 3rd Best City for Recreation

  • Ron 

In a recent comparison of the 100 largest cities across the U.S., Cincinnati ranked third for recreation friendliness.

WalletHub based the ranking on 47 key indicators of recreation-friendliness. For each city, they examined the accessibility of entertainment and recreational facilities, the quality of parks, and the weather.

Neighborhood parks are one of the most beneficial types of recreation a city can offer. Research has found that having a park within 500 to 600 feet of your property can have significant impact on its value. In addition, parks help people stay fit, saving them as much as $1,500 in healthcare costs per year, and they reduce the overall costs of air pollution by $3.8 billion per year. It’s also important for cities to offer recreation opportunities that don’t require good weather, though, so things like movie theaters, music venues and coffee shops also contribute to each city’s recreation-friendliness.

Recreation in Cincinnati (1=Best; 50=Avg.):

  • 12th – Spending on Parks and Recreation per Capita
  • 19th – Parkland as % of City Area
  • 20th – Bike Rental Facilities per Capita
  • 23rd – % of Population with Walkable Park Access
  • 6th – Music Venues per Capita
  • 13th – Tennis Courts per Capita
  • 1st – Park Playgrounds per Capita
  • 1st – Swimming Pools per Capita

Cincinnati stood out as a strong midwest candidate for the rankings, coming in behind Las Vegas and Orlando, and ranking just ahead of Tampa and Scottsdale.

The Methodology

To determine the best and worst cities for recreation, WalletHub compared a sample of the 100 most populated U.S. cities across four key dimensions: 1) Entertainment & Recreational Facilities, 2) Costs, 3) Quality of Parks and 4) Weather. Their sample considers only the city proper in each case and excludes cities in the surrounding metro area.

They evaluated the four dimensions using 47 relevant metrics. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the highest level of recreation-friendliness. For metrics marked with an asterisk (*), the square root of the population was used to calculate the population size in order to avoid overcompensating for minor differences across cities

Finally, they determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order their sample.

Tags:
Bike World News