Naperville’s safe, livable. An ideal spot for someone seeking to indulge in a good, old-fashioned suburban lifestyle. Where gardening in your birthday suit may not be so out there.
Or so say some of the best-of lists the city has found itself on in recent weeks.
Since April, Naperville has made the grade in 2024 for being among the Top 100 Best Places to Live in the U.S. as determined by the publication Livability; Safest Cities in America, per the home security review site Safewise; Top Destinations for a “White Picket Fence” Lifestyle, from DatingNews.com; and Best Cities for Naked Gardening, from online platform LawnStarter.
Alas, heavy is the crown.
Livability’s appraisal was the most holistic of Naperville’s latest rating accolades. Focused on mid-size cities with populations between 75,000 and 500,000 people, the publication’s best places to live list decided who made the cut based on a slew of factors from walkability to air quality.
In all, Livability bases its ranking on about 100 different data points, according to its website. Those divide into eight broad categories, including: economy, housing and cost of living, amenities, transportation, environment, safety, education and health.
Data is pulled from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Education, Housing and Urban Development, and Department of Homeland Security, among other agencies and private sources.
Based on their performance across factors, cities earned a grade, or a “LivScore.” Livability assigned a LivScore to more than 2,000 cities that fit its population parameters for 2024, then boiled that group down to the top 100 scoring cities.
Naperville earned a LivScore of 862 out of 1,000. There were only a handful of cities that received a higher score than Naperville on the 2024 ranking. Those were Carmel and Fishers in Indiana, Cary in North Carolina and Columbia in Maryland.
In its online overview of this year’s list, Livability commended Naperville for fostering a “vibrant, inclusive community” as well as for having “top-rated schools, pristine parks and a bustling downtown” and offering an overall “high quality of life.”
The publication also nodded to Naperville’s appearance on MoneyGeek’s list of safest cities in America for 2024, a distinction recently echoed by Safewise.
Last month, the site released its 10th annual safest cities report and placed Naperville in the No. 12 spot.
Safewise uses Federal Bureau of Investigation crime report statistics and population data to compile its yearly ranking. Ratings are based on both violent and property crime numbers. For its 2024 list, Safewise reviewed 2022 FBI data, which was the most up-to-date information available at the time of ranking.
A violent crime rate of 0.5 per 1,000 people and property crime rate of 8.1 per 1,000 people is what placed Naperville at No. 12. Naperville was also the only Illinois city to break the top 20 in Safewise’s 2024 list. The next highest scoring Illinois municipality was Palatine at No. 30.
In a more quirky valuation of what Naperville has to offer, the site DatingNews.com lauded the city as a quintessential place in Illinois for enjoying a “white picket fence lifestyle.” Recognized alongside Hinsdale and Geneva, Naperville is where Illinoisians should flock to if they’re itching for a more traditional, genteel environment to call home.
DatingNews.com surveyed 3,000 adults about where they envision living out a traditional white picket fence lifestyle to compile its ranking, according to an online overview of the site’s methodology and results.
For Naperville, DatingNews.com said the city “provides residents with a picturesque setting for a fulfilling and enriching way of life.” It also said that Naperville residents “take pride in properties, often spending leisurely afternoons engaging in outdoor activities in their yards or connecting with neighbors at local events and gatherings.”
Sure enough, outdoor activity is what landed Naperville on LawnStarter’s radar. But a leisurely round of front yard badminton or a friendly game of catch isn’t the metric that did the trick.
No, Naperville broke LawnStarter’s top 50 best cities for naked gardening this year.
Lawnstarter — essentially a venture that connects homeowners with local lawn and moving services, kind of like Uber for lawn care — compared 500 U.S. cities to see where, around the country, gardening sans clothing wouldn’t be so bad, maybe even encouraged. It released its top faring locations at the start of this month, just ahead of World Naked Gardening Day on May 4.
The platform appraised locations based on four different categories: nude gardener friendliness, local interest, weather forecast and safety. Some sub-categories included local legality of public nudity and average monthly Google searches for “nudist” and “naturist” over the past year.
Naperville came in at No. 30. Several other Illinois cities also proved to be up to the bare snuff, with Chicago ranking No.11, followed by Evanston at No. 13, Elgin at No. 17, Schaumburg at No. 23 and Arlington Heights at No. 25.
