Boston: America's Most Insecure City?


According to Travel + Leisure‘s 2011 America’s Favorite Cities survey, we’re a city of brilliant, nasty, moderately well-dressed geeks who can’t drive or stop complaining about the weather or the Red Sox. Which sounds just about right. Visitors ranked Boston in the top five for categories, including Intelligent, Sports-Crazed, Classical Music, Tech-Savvy, and 4th of July, and in the bottom five for Driving Ability, Friendly, Winter, and Barbeque.

More interesting, though, was the divide between how visitors ranked us versus how we ranked ourselves: While we think we’re smarter (2 vs. 3 for Intelligent) and more athletic (10 vs. 14) than everyone else, we also think we’re uglier (25 vs. 22 for Attractive), meaner (33 vs. 31 for Friendly), worse-dressed (21 vs. 18 for Stylish), and we can’t even get a decent slice (Pizza, 7 vs. 12).

But while we’re drinking our insecurities away during our Cocktail Hour (33 vs. 26), we can at least take some solace in our self-awareness: New Yorkers think they’re considerably better-looking than they really are (8 vs. visitors’ 17), though their brains are not nearly as peroxide-addled as Dallasites, who consider themselves a solid 10 against visitors who ranked them a 32. But the real surprise is Providence, which visitors rank a surprising 12 for Cocktail Hour, 7 for Intelligent, 4 for Home Decor and Design Stores, 8 for Stylish — and the best city in the entire country to grab a burger. Of course, that’s by people who chose Providence as a place to visit, so your mileage may vary.