Depending upon where you live in the United States you have a pretty good grasp of whether or not your hometown and/or county is above average or a heaping pile of coal-covered sh*t. But, because this is the Internet and we feel the need to rank every single thing imaginable, someone collated the data using the “natural amenities index”, which measures the physical characteristics of any given place and applies a score to that place on whether or not it’s a great place to live.
I have quite a few qualms with this map of America and some of the counties that are getting completely dumped on because the “natural amenities index” fails to account for the people living in the locations and treats ‘favorable conditions’ as one uniform set of conditions even if the people living in places deemed to be sh*tty happen to love those conditions…But again, we’ll get to that later.
Below is a screenshot of the map over on Washington Post’s Wonkblog, but you can CLICK HERE to check out the interactive map and see the exact number your county rank. Mine, Sarasota County, ranks 144 out of 3,111, so I’m doing alright. Ventura County is ranked #1, conversely Red Lake County, Minnesota is the worst place to live in all of America, or so says the data.
Every County in America, Ranked by Natural Beauty using the ‘Natural Amenities Index’
As noted on Wonkblog, every single county in the top 10 is located in California. On the flip side, the midwest is by far the worst place to live in America (as you can tell from all the brown on the map).
What kills me about this map, and I mean really kills me, is that based on the “natural amenities index” used to rank counties somehow the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York are deemed as an awful place to live, presumably due to frigid winters. For over 6 months of the year the Adirondacks are one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in America, and in terms of natural beauty is one of the most stunning places worldwide. So I’m not really placing any credence in the “natural amenities index” at all, but I do like the fact that my home county of Sarasota (which is one of the hottest damn places on Earth) is ranked pretty high.
For the full interactive map be sure to follow the links above!