Culture, Outdoors Land ABQ High in Best Small Cities Ranking
Albuquerque’s “diverse cultures, authentic art and dynamic traditions” contributed to it being named one of the Best Small Cities in America.
Global consulting firm Resonance Consultancy released a list of the Best Large and Small Cities in America on Wednesday and found Albuquerque to be the No. 4 best small city.
Resonance compared 23 factors across six key categories, using a combination of statistics and online ratings and reviews, according to a news release. A small city was defined as having a population from 200,000 to 1 million.
The key categories included place, product, programming, people, prosperity and promotion.
Albuquerque scored as a top five small city in the product (No. 2), programming (No. 4) and promotion (No. 5) categories. Honolulu claimed the top overall ranking as it graded first in each of those three categories in addition to the place category.
View the accompanying slideshow to see the top 10 Best Small Cities according to Resonance. Not pictured is Charleston, South Carolina, which was found to be the No. 3 best small city.
Resonance highlighted Albuquerque's natural beauty, including the Sandia Mountains and the bosque along the Rio Grande. Resonance also noted the developments in Albuquerque's Old Town and Sawmill District neighborhoods, and how the city's diverse culture shapes its arts and restaurant scenes.
While Albuquerque scored highly in product, programming and promotion, it ranked 34th in place and outside the top 50 in prosperity and people. Resonance's write-up did not include reasons for the lower rankings in those categories.
Albuquerque received national attention last year when it ranked No. 3 on a Resonance list of America's Best Small Cities. Last month, the Duke City was ranked as the nation's fifth most affordable vacation destination.
Between 2015 and 2017, New Mexico saw a visitor increase from about 34 million to 36 million people, according to a report by the New Mexico Tourism Department. Visitors spent about $6.3 billion in New Mexico in 2015, which increased in 2017 by about $330 million, according to previous Business First reporting.
