Sarah Coward/news-press.com
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Cape Coral residents and visitors say the Southwest Florida city has a lot to offer, and Forbes magazine agrees. The national business publication lists the Cape among 25 cities from across the nation as a desirable retirement destination.
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For the first year, Cape Coral has joined the 100 best towns in America in which to retire.
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Naples also made the cut, but this is its fifth time on the list.
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Those two cities are among 18 in Florida, including Punta Gorda, to get a mention in the just-released 2018 edition of the popular guidebook “America’s 100 Best Places to Retire.”
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The book is available at WhereToRetire.com and Amazon. According to a news release, the editors of Where to Retire magazine ranked 800 U.S. towns after 11 months of research and 670 retiree interviews.
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“Cape Coral has so much to offer our retired residents,” said Donna Germain, president/CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Cape Coral. Along with affordable housing, activities for seniors at the Tony Rotino Center, the Lake Kennedy Senior Center and other city facilities, there are programs such as yoga and Zumba classes, dinner dances, day trips, billiard tournaments and golf, she pointed out.
When you’re known as the Sunshine State, you have a bit of a reputation to live up to. One town in Florida takes the nickname very seriously.
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For the second year in a row, Naples, Florida has been named the happiest city in America according to the Gallup-Healthways State of American Well-Being 2016 Community Rankings.
The newly released report measured how residents of 189 cities considered their physical health, financial well-being, social connections, community and sense of purpose in life.
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Getting caught in gridlock traffic every morning and long grocery store lines may be an annoying byproduct of your city suddenly becoming popular, but there are many more reasons to get excited about living in a place that's growing rapidly. It generally means the economy and employment rate is booming, and that can do wonders to woo a younger crowd of new residents who may very well breathe fresh life and energy into the nightlife and dining scene. In short, it's always better to be thriving than dying.
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So, where are the boomtowns in America right now? The team at WalletHub just did the heavy lifting and determined the fastest-growing small, mid-size, and large cities in the United States in 2018.
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The new list comes courtesy of the financial advice site, which looked at a whole slew of metrics and crunched the numbers to figure out where the fastest local economic growth has occurred around the country. Specifically, they compared 515 cities of varying population sizes using 15 key data points like working-age population growth, job growth, poverty rate decrease, median house price growth, and building permit activity growth.
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Topping the list is Fort Myers, Florida, followed by Midland, Texas, and Pearland, Texas. Meanwhile, on the other end of things Decatur, Illinois was the slowest-growing city, with Shreveport, Louisiana and Erie, Pennsylvania rounding out the bottom three respectively. Here's how the top 25 fastest-growing cities ranked.
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25. Seattle, WA
24. Cape Coral, FL
23. Santa Clarita, CA
22. Loveland, CO
21. Manteca, CA
20. Saint George, UT
19. Miami, FL
18. Austin, TX
17. Round Rock, TX
16. Frisco, TX
15. Redwood City, CA
14. Meridian, ID
13. Murfreesboro, TN
12. Pleasanton, CA
11. Milpitas, CA
10. Irvine, CA
9. Enterprise, NV
8. Mount Pleasant, SC
7. Lehigh Acres, FL
6. College Station, TX
5. McKinney, TX
4. Bend, OR
3. Pearland, TX
2. Midland, TX
1. Fort Myers, FL