Best Cities to Live, Work, and Play: #10 Provo?

Yahoo.com, Kiplinger.com, and the Martin Prosperity Institute (a "think tank that studies economic prosperity") have released a list of the top 10 cities to "Live, Work, and Play". In doing this they used factors such as population and salary growth, cost of living, percent of workers in what they deemed the "creative class" ("scientists, engineers, architects, educators, writers, artists and entertainers"), and a number of other factors. Guess who came in at #10 on their list?

If you guessed Provo, Utah, you are smarter than me. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed going to school at BYU and living in Provo, but if I were to make a list of the top 10 places to "live, work, and play" in the U.S., Provo would not be on it.

However, they do give some very interesting statistics on why Provo is so great. From their survey:

10. Provo

Population: 474,351

Population Growth Since 2000: 20.6%

Percentage of Workforce in Creative Class: 32%

Cost-of-Living Index: 97.7 (100 being national average)

Median Household Income: $50,583

Income Growth Since 2000: 12.2%

So maybe Provo isn't so bad after all, however, I'm still not quite ready to buy into Provo-topia quite yet. You can see the full story here.