Three Southern Utah Cities Rank In Top Half Of Best Small Cities

Apparently, we have finally reached the point where someone has figured out how to determine whether your city is a good place to live.

And by “figured out,” I mean WalletHub has developed a system involving 45 different measurements, 1,318 cities and enough statistical gymnastics to make your head hurt.

Small Cities Defined

WalletHub has released its 2026 ranking of the best small cities in America, looking at communities with populations between 25,000 and 100,000. The cities are judged on affordability, economic health, education and health, quality of life and safety.

Person rides bicycle on a path with blurred figures around

And Utah is well represented.

Cedar City, Washington City and St. George are all included in the study, along with several other Utah communities.

Cedar City lands in the 71st percentile, meaning it performed better overall than roughly 71 percent of the cities in the study. Washington City comes in at the 65th percentile. So, according to the WalletHub mathematical machinery, both Southern Utah communities are comfortably above the middle of the pack.

St. George, meanwhile, gives us one particularly entertaining piece of information.

When WalletHub gets around to measuring coffee shops per capita, St. George comes in at No. 1,300 out of the 1,318 cities studied.

cappuccino cup

That means there are only 18 cities in America with fewer coffee shops per person.

I’m not entirely sure what we’re supposed to do with that information.

Apparently, there are places where you can walk out your front door and trip over a coffee shop. St. George, according to WalletHub, is not one of those places.

And then there’s Key West, Florida, which ranks No. 1 for restaurants per capita. Because naturally, when determining the quality of life in a city, we need to know how many restaurants are available for every resident.

people sitting on chair inside room

WalletHub also looks at things like bars and clubs, movie theaters, museums, performing arts centers, fitness centers, bike-rental facilities, parks and department stores.

Read More: Utah Town Names Can Trip Up Outsiders

It considers how many people walk to work. It considers how many hours people work each week. It considers housing costs, crime, insurance coverage, economic growth and a whole collection of other things that somebody apparently decided would help determine whether you like living where you live.

The whole thing is impressively complicated.

But for those of us in Southern Utah, the takeaway is pretty simple: Cedar City is in the 71st percentile, Washington City is in the 65th, and St. George is apparently suffering from a severe national shortage of coffee shops.

Outdoor seating area with parked cars and buildings

So there you have it.

Science has spoken.

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Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go find a coffee shop.