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Four Northwest Arkansas cities rank among the nation’s top places to live, a national magazine determined.

Money magazine, in partnership with Realtor.com, on Monday published its new list of Best Places to Live 2017, and it ranked No. 43 Fayetteville, No. 45 Rogers, No. 58 Springdale and No. 68 Siloam Springs.

The magazine publishes a Top 100 list. The four Northwest Arkansas cities were the only Arkansas cities to be noted in the list that’s limited to places with 10,000 to 100,000 residents.

No Arkansas city was ranked when the magazine published a Top 50 list last year.

The magazine said it put an emphasis this year on economic health, cost of living factors and public school performance to select the nation’s best places. In all, 170,000 data points about 2,400 places to arrive at its Top 100.

The No. 1 place this year was Fishers, Ind., which is a city of 86,000 residents that’s 16 miles from Indianapolis. Fishers ranked No. 30 last year.

Northwest Arkansas traditionally performs exceedingly well in the rankings published by national magazines and evaluators. For example, U.S. News & World Report earlier this year put the Northwest Arkansas region at No. 5 on its list of Best Places to Live in the USA.

In its new list, Money magazine indicated 21 Arkansas cities, including Bentonville, Conway and Jonesboro, were among 2,400 nationwide that were evaluated.

Magazine policies ensure that the list includes a true cross section of places in the U.S. Among those policies is that no state can have more than four cities in the Top 100 and no county can have more than two cities in the Top 100.

Money magazine’s ranking drew lots of national attention for the city of Fishers. The Chicago Tribune and Indianapolis Star was among the publications publishing stories about the Money ranking.

The magazine first published its ranking in 1987.

 

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