While Chicago has a reputation for being a violent city, one of its suburbs continues to be named one of the safest places to live in the entire United States.
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Naperville tops the list of the 10 safest cities to live in according to real estate website homes.com. The Western suburb achieved its number one ranking as it is “not only impressive in its lack of crime,” but “also has an excellent school district and an unemployment rate of 3.2 percent which is below the national average of 4.4.”
Here is the full top 10 list:
- Naperville, IL
- Irvine, CA
- Thousand Oaks, CA
- Provo, UT
- Round Rock, TX
- Ann Arbor, MI
- Carlsbad, CA
- Port St. Lucie, FL
- Sunnyvale, CA
- Cape Coral, FL
This isn’t the first time Naperville has been singled out for its safe reputation.
In a survey by alarms.org posted in August, Naperville ranked 41st in the country for safest cities. Although as the Chicago Tribune points out, this ranking is uncharacteristically low.
safewise.com, a website that provides information on home safety and security systems named the town number 19 on their own list. Another real estate website, movoto.com, named Naperville number 4.
Naperville Police Chief Robert Marshall takes great pride in the safety of his town. “Our records show that, in 2016, (Naperville’s) violent crimes actually went down by 6.8 percent. We are still one of the safest cities in America.”
The alarms.org survey ranked other Illinois municipalities a bit higher, such as Des Plaines, Palatine, Arlington Heights, Hoffman Estates, Mount Prospect, and Wheaton. But as Marshall notes, none of these cities are as big as Naperville is, which has a population of 147,122 according to the 2016 census.
Naperville has also made parenting.com‘s list at the #8 spot. “Naperville is one of Chicago’s many suburbs, but it scored impressively in terms of violent and property crimes per capita, which is the first drop down in numbers on the list,” the site says.
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And as if the suburb needed another #1 ranking in safety, they got it from Niche.com in 2016 for their “
Considering the number of other lists that Naperville has been on, it looks like Marshall and his team can sleep easy knowing the streets are safe at night.