Business Insider recently posted an article titled “The 10 Most Exciting Small Cities in America” and, you guessed it, Sarasota was on that list!
In order to measure the level of excitement, Business Insider compiled a list of six criteria that they used to compare 140 cities. These criteria were as follows: nightlife per capita (bars, clubs, comedy, etc.), live music venues per capita, active life options per capita (parks, outdoor activities, etc.), fast food restaurants per capita (the fewer the better), percentage of restaurants that are fast food (the lower the better), percentage of young residents ages 20-34 (the higher the better).
After they crunched the numbers, Sarasota was listed as the 10th most exciting small city in the USA! We even placed 1st overall in the category of music and nightlife and 7th for active life options. Thanks to our local restaurants like Yoder’s and Columbia, we placed 9th in the non-fast food eateries. Also, since we are considered to be a retirement community, it is no surprise that we placed 88th overall for the 20-34 year old criterion.
Our neighbor, Bradenton, also made the list at #20. Just like Sarasota, they ranked highly in the nightlife (4th place) and live music (6th place) categories.