Atlantans know how to have a peachy-keen time, what with all the festivals, restaurants and parks around town. So, it's no surprise that the metro was recently recognized as one of the most fun cities in America.
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The new ranking from personal finance site WalletHub features a comparison of the most populated cities in the country based on three key dimensions: entertainment and recreation; nightlife and parties and costs.
Analysts evaluated the dimensions using 65 relevant metrics, including number of attractions, restaurants per capita, diversity of food, hiking trails, movie theater costs, weather, number of music festivals, price of wine and more.
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Of the 182 cities on the list — including the 150 most populated — Las Vegas earned top honors, ranking first for nightlife and parties, sixth for entertainment and recreation but 81st for costs.
Orlando, Florida; New York; Atlanta and Miami rounded out the top five and Pearl City, Hawaii, ranked last.
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Here’s more on how Atlanta fared:
- Overall rank: 4
- Entertainment and recreation: 13
- Nightlife and parties: 4
- Costs: 91
- Dance clubs per capita: 1
- Festivals per capita: 6
- Restaurants per capita: 8
- Fitness centers per capita: 10
- Bar accessibility: 14
- Number of attractions: 19
- Playgrounds per capita: 38
- Parkland acres per capita: 60
While Atlanta’s got some major bragging rights when it comes to having a killer good time, the cost of entertainment is relatively high compared to other big cities.
In fact, the metro has the highest movie costs of any city on the WalletHub list. Movie ticket prices in Atlanta are about double the cost of the lowest movie costs in Port St. Lucie, Florida, according to the report.
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And the city's high costs transcend recreation. Atlanta's cost of living is beginning to skyrocket as well, with rising housing and rent prices plaguing residents in recent years.
Compared to America's 61 other big cities with populations of more than 300,000, Atlanta is among the top 10 for best quality of life, but its health safety scores are on a slight decline, according to a previous WalletHub report on the country's top cities.
