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NewsCut
Bob Collins

We’re No. 6

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Minneapolis-St. Paul ranked sixth in the nation of best places to live in the annual U.S. News & World Report survey.

Winning the whole thing would've been nice, but we're just happy to be in the same company as Des Moines, Iowa, Fayetteville, Ark., Austin, Texas, Denver, and Colorado Springs, Colo.

It's our "approachable Midwestern feel" that pushed us over the top, according to U.S. News.

Oh, and we've got skyways. That impressed.

The metro ranked highest for jobs, and also for the cost of housing/household income ratio.

The survey noted our average commuting time of 25.3 minutes is one minute less than the national average. The average annual income ($56,030) is $6,000 higher than the national average. The 2.7 percent unemployment rate is 1.2 percentage points lower than the national average. The crime rate is lower than the national average.

Last year, Minneapolis-St. Paul finished ninth in the survey.

Curiously, the area doesn't do so well in the magazine's accompanying list of best places to retire where it finishes 70th (20 places behind Des Moines) although U.S. News doesn't indicate what our problem is other than showing a comparatively low score for health care.

But, perhaps, our ranking isn't surprising. Few of the cities listed as the best places to live rank high on best places to retire, indicative of the notion that people are settling for less in their later years.