Top 10 Places to Live In US

Located 35 miles south of San Francisco and 14 miles north of San Jose, Palo Alto ranks the best city in the United States to lead a healthy and happy life. The Californian charter city scored top marks in the ranking, which was based on eight categories: economics, health Care, housing, social & civic capital, education, amenities, demographics and Infrastructure.

The rankings, released on Wednesday, were developed for Livability.com by the University of Toronto's Martin Prosperity Institute.

The researchers arrived at the rankings after analyzing1,200 U.S. cities with populations of 20,000 to 350,000.

Palo Alto is one of 27 California cities to make the list of 'Top 100 Best Places To Live.' Named after a redwood tree called El Palo Alto, the city boasts some of the leading educational institutions and companies including Stanford University, Hewlett-Packard (HP), VMware, Tesla Motors.

Apart from being the best city to live, it is considered to be one of the most expensive cities in the country, according to a report by Coldwell Banker, released three years ago, Market Watch reports.

Several well-known celebrities have made this city their home like Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page; Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer and it was also home to late Apple founder Steve Jobs.

And more recently, Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, the 29-year-old multi-billionaire has decided to buy four more homes for $30 million, next to his own Palo Alto residence, ,NY Daily News reports.

Berkeley is the second Californian City that has secured a rank within the top 10 in the list. Listed third, the city is known for Sather Tower, also famous as Campanile, measuring 307 feet tall, making it the third tallest bell and clock-tower in the world; has skeletons of a Tyrannosaurus rex and a Pteranodon on display in the Valley Life Sciences Building and four periodic table elements - lawrencium, californium, berkelium, and seaborgium - were discovered by Berkeley researchers.

Top 10 Places to Live In US

*Please read the figures as livscore, economics, health Care, housing, social & civic capital, education, amenities, demographics and Infrastructure.