Rochester, MN Named One of the 100 Best Places to Live for 2025

Each year, a new ranking comes out of the best places to live in the US according to Livability. They just released their annual list for 2025, and Rochester, along with three other Minnesota towns, landed on the list!

It's the list of the top 100 best places to live in the entire country. To come up with this list, they looked at thousands of cities across the US, so it's quite an honor to end up in the top 100.

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How Livability Ranks the Best Cities in the US

In order to determine the rankings each year, Livability creates their list "based on nearly 100 data points and an algorithm that takes into account measures of a city’s economy, housing and cost of living, amenities, transportation, environment, safety, education and health."

2024 Best Places to Live in Minnesota According to Livability

I wrote about the 2024 rankings from Livability, so let's revisit those before getting into where Rochester and the other Minnesota towns ranked this year.

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• St. Paul came in at number 79 last year.
• Duluth came in at number 66.
• Rochester came in at number 30.
• And Bloomington ranked the highest for us, coming in at number 21.

Rochester has also made the list in 2022, but we missed out in 2023. So going from not being on the list to number 30 last year is quite the jump! Let's see where we're at for 2025.

The Best Places to Live in Minnesota for 2025

Let's start at the bottom of the list. Coming in at number 62 and moving up a hair from last year is Duluth.

Up next, at number 59, is a town not on last year's list: Minneapolis.

Hopping all the way up to number 27, and another that moved up from last year, is our beloved Rochester!

And taking the top spot for Minnesota, coming in at number 20, moving up just one spot, is Bloomington, still at the top.