Massachusetts is praised for its higher education system, home to some of the best universities in the world that bred some of the most influential people like Mark Zuckerburg, Amanda Gorman, Matt Damon, Martin Luther King Jr., and Daniella Pierson-whether for a semester or four years. To say the educators and students of Boston have changed the world would be an understatement.
And with more top-ranking universities per capita than any other city on the planet, you’d expect Boston to also be the wicked smahtest city in America. However, according to a new study from “Top 10,” Boston is number three, outranked by Washington D.C. and then New York City.
We understand our roads make no sense compared to New Yorker’s fancy grid systems, but we might have to disagree on all other aspects of who’s the brainier city. We digress.
Top 10, a company specialized in national rankings of all sorts, assessed various “smart” aspects of cities, heavily focused on smart, automated technologies that make a city more efficient. According to the SmartAmerica Challenge, city governments will invest about $41 trillion over the next two decades in smart manufacturing, healthcare, smart energy, optimized transit, and disaster response.
Boston took home the third spot on the list due to its education system, efficient medical services, technological advancements, and its prior BBB rating on the Global Smart Index 2020. New York surpassed Boston as the “smartest city in America” one of only two American cities to receive an “A” rating from the Global Smart City Index.
These are America’s smartest cities in 2024 according to Top 10:
- New York City
- Washington D.C.
- Boston
- San Francisco
- Seattle
- Denver
- Los Angeles
- Columbus, Ohio
- Austin
- Pittsburg
Boulder, Colorado made the list as an honorable mention of “America’s smartest small city.” Ironically, just a few weeks ago, Massachusetts was named as WalletHub’s “most educated state.” This study considered more of the book smarts than the tech savy-centric data used for the Top 10 study. A WalletHub assessment of “America’s Smartest Cities” from 2023 ranked Boston as the number 7 smartest city.