Online news and culture site The Daily Beast compiled a ranking of the "
Top 15 Aspirational Cities" in the United States, and Minneapolis-St. Paul comes in at no. 10 on the list.
To determine America's aspirational hotspots, the report's authors focused on economic indicators, such as employment growth, per capita income, and unemployment. The authors also looked at demographic factors such as the movement of college-educated people into the area.
Finally, they considered quality-of-life factors like housing affordability, traffic congestion, and cultural highlights. The top three cities considered aspirational were Austin, New Orleans, and Houston.
"[G]iven current conditions and the most likely accrual of current trends, we can expect that most of the cities at the top of the aspirational rankings will remain there for some time to come," the authors note.