The Top 10 Cities for Technology

To coincide with Scientific American's "Cities" special topic issue, we put together recently compiled lists ranking U.S. cities on aspects of green living, pollution, health and technology. Today, we feature lists that rank cities based on their on their technology opportunities, and then add up each city's rankings to find the best overall technology cities, Part 4 of 5

By Sophie Bushwick

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Top 10 Most Tech-Friendly

Seattle
San Francisco Bay Area
Los Angeles
Austin, Texas
Orlando, Fla.
Raleigh-Durham
Pittsburgh
New York City
Boston
Washington, D.C.

In order to rate cities on their technology access and geek friendliness, Wired magazine combined several factors, including stores that sell tech gadgets, availability of free wireless Internet access, technology jobs, highly ranked engineering schools, and the presence of an "active geek community." The magazine concluded that the list above constitutes America's "top tech towns".

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Top 10 Best Internet Access

Seattle
Atlanta
Washington, D.C.
Orlando, Fla.
Boston
Miami
Minneapolis
Denver
New York City
Baltimore

Forbes assembled this list of American cities with the best Internet access based on connection speed and wireless access. The scores rank cities based on the number of residents with high-speed Internet and the number of companies providing that access. In addition, they take into account the number of public wireless hot spots in each city.

Top 10 Overall Technology Performances

Seattle
Orlando, Fla.
Washington, D.C.
San Francisco
Atlanta
Boston
Los Angeles
New York City
Minneapolis
Pittsburgh

The above cities had to either appear on both technology lists or to rank very highly on one of them. The details of how the scores that led to this ranking were calculated can be found in the note below.

Not all of the above lists were created using conventional statistical or scientific methods, therefore their validity could be suspect. Scientific American gathered the lists from several online sources. To earn a place on the "overall performance" list, cities had to make repeat appearances on multiple lists, and earned points based on their rankings. Each city's points were added up to arrive at the overall score.

Monday: Part 5—The Best of the Best: The Top 10 Cities in All Categories Yesterday: Part 3—The Cities Ranked by Cleanest and Dirtiest Air

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