What Makes a City Prosper? New Index Aims To Find Out

You may know the cost of living in your city, or even how much its population has shifted in recent decades. But do you know how prosperous it is?

It’s a question that Bradley Schurman and Jaymes Cloninger set out to answer with the Geography of Prosperity Index, a new framework for measuring long-term civic viability. The project moves beyond traditional economic data, which Schurman argues provides an incomplete picture of a city's health.

"Economic measures are lagging indicators," Schurman explained during the index's launch at this year’s SXSW. 

"Leaders were telling us that they didn't feel like they had the right measures in place for their cities to really understand if they were doing well or not ... this project has opened the aperture quite significantly,” he added.

Schurman is a demographic strategist and founder of Human Change, and Cloninger is the CEO of Motivf, a consulting firm. Together, they argue that modern prosperity is no longer defined by "cranes in the sky," but by the alignment of five critical dimensions: population renewal, climate resilience, automation readiness, social cohesion, and agile governance. 

By weighing these factors evenly across the 250 largest U.S. metro areas, the duo has created a diagnostic tool that reveals a new map of the American dream—and the results may surprise you.

The most prosperous city: New York City

New York City skeptics will be surprised to learn that the Big Apple claimed the top spot as the most prosperous city in the country.

Yes, the city needs a rat czar to keep the rodent population in check. And yes, it costs a fortune to rent a shoebox basement apartment with no windows. But the city scored an astounding 94.5 out of 100 on social cohesion—the highest in the country—followed by a strong climate resilience score of 82.5—another standout.

The city that never sleeps scored modestly across automation readiness (58), population renewal (56), and governance and foresight (40).

Today, the median list price for the city sits at just under $750,000, with a median asking rent of $2,849, according to data from Realtor.com®. 

So is prosperity baked into these prices? Probably not, says Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel.

“It's hard to say whether a summary metric like the prosperity index is already baked into prices,” he explains. “People are probably not choosing where to live based on something like ‘automation readiness’, per se. However, a place that scores highly on that metric might also already have a strong, resilient, and industry-diverse labor market. So that's what's attracting new residents and, increasingly, keeping existing residents there.”

Second-most prosperous city: Durham, NC

In the No. 2 spot is Durham, NC—a metro area that has been hailed for its affordability in recent years. Indeed, today the median list price is $455,000—a cool $295,000 less than New York’s. 

“Several of the nation's most expensive metros are on this list,” notes Krimmel. “But so are smaller, more affordable places.”

“What's notable is some of the smaller places tend to be dynamic college towns, anchored by research jobs and vibrant local cultures,” he adds.

Krimmel is right to point this out. Durham is home to Duke University and not far from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill—two leading institutions.

Their influence is a likely contributor to the city’s standout climate resilience score (83) and automation readiness (82). Durham also scored well across governance and foresight (57), population renewal (53), and social cohesion (51).

That kind of performance is much more in line with what Cloninger and Schurman expected to see.

“We knew there was going to be a medium-sized city, probably in North Carolina [in the top three],” Cloninger said. “[Durham] has the highest performing average scores of all cities. It's very well balanced across the board.”

Schurman said that this success is no mistake.

“Sixty years ago, when the furniture industry basically collapsed on itself, they started investing in technology,” he argued. “So this is a 60 year bet that's now paying off in Raleigh-Durham so well that they made the top of this list."

Third-most prosperous city: Ann Arbor, MI

Ann Arbor, MI, follows a similar pattern, scoring well across climate resilience (82), automation readiness (74), and population renewal (60). 

And once again, the presence of a major institution—this time the University of Michigan—likely played a big part in this. 

"What makes Ann Arbor unique ... is they made a leap in the past decade ... from being what is known as a town and gown city to an integrated city,” said Schurman.

That meant making major investments in the community, and breaking down the walls that used to shield the university from the town. The result: a city on par with other major hubs of innovation around the country.

"If you had the option of going to Boston or Ann Arbor 20 years ago, the choice was clear,” said Schurman. But now, it’s not as clear cut.

Even with those investments, Ann Arbor has been able to maintain a relative level of affordability, with a median list price of $446,000. The city also scored well across social cohesion (51) and governance and foresight (55).

Fourth-most prosperous city: Boston

While Boston faces its own set of rising costs, the Prosperity Index reveals it as one of the most resilient cities in the country. 

"Something like climate resilience (or more likely climate risk) is highly visible and something that people may be looking more directly at when choosing where to live," says Krimmel. "It's not clear yet though whether climate risk is being fully capitalized into house prices, but I would expect that to change in the near future as homeowners start to feel the pain from high insurance premiums in high-risk locations."

For a buyer looking at Boston’s median asking price of $799,000, the city’s 90 climate resilience score represents a hedge against the huge annual insurance hikes seen in the Sun Belt.

However, the city’s lower score in governance and foresight (49) echoes Schurman’s warning that "the bigger the city gets, the more distance that comes between the individual and the institution." 

While Boston offers a knowledge system that is highly automation ready (62), its future prosperity depends on whether its leadership can bridge that gap and improve the "soft" social cohesion (66) that currently trails behind smaller, more integrated peers like Ann Arbor.

Fifth-most prosperous city: Seattle

Seattle emerges as a top-tier performer in the West, balancing a high-tech workforce with significant environmental protections. With an automation readiness score of 70, the city is better prepared than most for the AI transition.

However, despite its median asking price of $754,950, Seattle’s long-term prosperity is increasingly tied to a factor that many buyers are only just beginning to calculate: the cost of staying insured.

"I don't care what your perspective is on climate change ... what you should care about is that the insurance companies are pricing it in," says Schurman. 

With a climate resilience score of 83, Seattle offers a much safer harbor than the coastal South or the fire-prone West.

Seattle’s governance and foresight (44) is the primary red flag, echoing the speakers' observation that "big cities across the board really struggle" with transparency and agility. While the city’s social cohesion (63) and population renewal (57) are respectable, the index suggests that Seattle’s "secret sauce" is its ability to attract talent. 

Least prosperous: The Villages, FL

Even the bottom of the rankings delivered a surprise. 

While many might hope that their retirement is a time of prosperity, the index delivered a resounding repudiation of one of the best-known retirement destinations in the country.

The Villages, FL, the world’s largest 55 and older active retirement community, came in dead last—scoring a total of two points for population renewal, and just 12 for social cohesion. It also scored low in governance and foresight (44) and automation readiness (46), with its highest score in climate resilience (61).

The city’s primary failure lies in its extreme age segregation, which creates a massive deficit in the index.

"They got a big knock for population renewal, because the people that are moving there are retirees," Schurman explained.

By turning off the spigot of a younger, working-age population, Schurman and Cloninger argue that the city has created a dangerous imbalance. Without a local workforce to maintain infrastructure or provide health care, the very services the residents rely on are at risk of a total collapse. 

Or, in Schurman’s words: "If you don't have the population there to do those jobs, what happens to those folks?"

How can house hunters use this information?

Cloninger emphasized that while the data was designed for city leaders, its real power lies in helping individuals decide where to tether their lives and their largest financial assets. 

"This is a diagnostic tool for individual citizens to take a look at as they're making decisions: Do we stay? Do we go?" he said.

As Schurman put it, "People become the single greatest asset, and you have to figure out structures and policies to recruit them to stay." 

For a house hunter, that means finding a city that is actively investing in its residents, not just its "cranes in the sky."