Bossier City Named One Of 2020’s Worst Small Cities In America

Well, Bossier City did better than last year, but didn't pull themselves up high enough to escape the bottom of the list in this year's rankings of the Worst Small Cities In America.

In the 2020 research from WalletHub.com, Bossier City was in the 91st percentile of cities on the list of Worst Cities. But that was an improvement from last year, when Bossier landed in the 93rd percentile.

Just like last year, WalletHub's research team (which is incredible impressive, including multiple Ph.Ds on the list) the research looked at 5 key metrics, and various other smaller metrics. The five keys included Affordability, Economic Health, Education & Health, Quality of Life, and Safety. Bossier City ranked in the bottom half in 4 of the 5 key metrics, just like last year. Here are the metrics and where Bossier City ranked:

Affordability Rank - 561 out of 1268 cities (672th last year, so better in 2020)
Economic Health Rank - 1,118 out of 1268 cities (1,121st last year, so better in 2020)
Education & Health Rank - 1,126 out of 1268 cities (1,180th last year, so better in 2020)
Quality of Life Rank - 351 out of 1268 cities (371st last year, so better in 2020)
Safety Rank - 1,191 out of 1268 cities (1,187th last year)

Here's how WalletHub explained their methodology:

"In order to determine the best small cities in America, WalletHub compared 1,268 cities across five key dimensions: 1) Affordability, 2) Economic Health, 3) Education & Health, 4) Quality of Life and 5) Safety. For our sample, we selected cities with population sizes between 25,000 and 100,000 and considered only the “city proper” in each case, excluding cities in the surrounding metro area.

We then evaluated the five dimensions using 43 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for small-city residents."

With many of these metrics being reflective of the previous 12 months, it unlikely that COVID was a big impact on many of these.

Like last year, Bossier City's best performing metric was "Quality of Life" which is probably due in most part to the (soon to be renamed) CenturyLink Center. In their research, the only category given Double Weight was "Number of Attractions". With most of this research being reflective of the previous 12 months, COVID probably did not impact this.

All of the other metrics had full weight, and were likely not beneficial for Bossier City. The metrics that probably held Bossier back in the "Quality of Life" category were "Average Commute Time", "Museums per Capita", and "Clubs per Capita".

Bossier City's poorest performance in the metrics was in "Safety Rank", which only featured three metrics in the research. Those included "Violent Crime Rate", "Property Crime Rate", and "Motor Vehicle Crash Deaths Per Capita".

There was also poor performance for Bossier in "Education & Health Rank", it rated almost as low as the "Safety Ranking" for Bossier City. Those metrics included "School System Quality", "Limited Access to Healthy Foods", and "Share of Insured Population" among others.

Even though Bossier City ranked poorly, it still beat area cities like Texarkana, Monroe, and Alexandria in the research.