Video:How to Use Sperling's Comparison Tool to Compare Cities

Transcript:How to Use Sperling's Comparison Tool to Compare Cities

Hi, I'm Kaytie Sproul, here for About.com, and today, we're going to take a look at how to use Sperling's comparison tool to compare cities. While moving to a new city can be a daunting proposition, Sperling's Best Places site can give you a detailed comparison of the city in which you currently reside, and the one you are considering for your move. Let's take a closer look.

Getting Started Comparing Cities

Located at www.bestplaces.net, Sperling's city comparison tool provides a detailed contrast of two cities over 11 different categories. The categories include: people, cost of living, economy, housing, health, crime, climate, education, transportation, religion, and voting. Begin by selecting the "Compare Cities" link. This will take you to a page that contains the fields where you will enter the cities you want to compare. For our purposes, we'll compare Sacramento, CA to New York, NY. The tool may return several results that we need to narrow down, so be sure to confirm the cities if necessary. Then, click compare.

Layout of City Comparison Chart

The first page will offer a detailed breakdown of the people that live in each city, along with age demographics, race, and marital status. The first two columns compare the stats of the cities in question, and a third column shows U.S. averages. Looking at specifics, we can see that the percentages of married citizens in each city are pretty similar, and both are under the U.S. average. We can see, however, that the population density of New York is much higher than that of Sacramento.

Other Ways to Compare Cities

Just above the first box of comparison stats are links to statistics from all of the other categories offered. Clicking "Cost of Living," for example, takes you to a new screen that shows a detailed breakdown, including overall cost of living, grocery costs, health, housing, utilities, transportation, and miscellaneous. While we can see that both cities have a higher cost of living than the U.S. average, and that New York is a fair bit more expensive than Sacramento, the most marked difference is in the cost of housing. Here, New York is more than twice the cost of Sacramento. Clicking "Economy," we can see that Sacramento has a significantly higher unemployment rate than that of New York, and each city has a slightly lower average household income than is the U.S. Average. With 11 key categories and dozens of sub categories, Sperling's comparison tool for cities can be provide invaluable assistance in finding the right place to live.

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