TELL A FRIEND TO TELL A FRIEND. We're kinda getting used to our slice of the Midwest getting love from these "Best Places to Live" roundups, but the latest report from Resonance Consultancy actually puts 59 pages worth of data and analysis behind its rankings. In this report, Eau Claire sits at No. 68 as part of the "Best Small Cities" portion. (SHIFT coffee shop pictured)

For some folks, seeing the city of Eau Claire in “Best Places to Live” and adjacent rankings is an immediate trigger for an eye roll. For others, it sparks a bit of civic pride, or is filed somewhere in a brain folder labeled “fun facts.”

Whichever pool you fall into, this newly-released report from Resonance Consultancy, the “2026 America’s Best Cities Report” – which puts Eau Claire at No. 68 in the top 100 “Best Small Cities” rankings – offers a lot more than some of those other “Best Place” roundups (which, while fun to see, sometimes don’t deliver deeper analysis or proof of wide-ranging data sourcing).

This 59-page report offers a three-page source section – including data from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal Communications Commission, Google Trends, Walkscore.com, among others – with the other 50-plus pages diving into some seriously notable insights on a swath of topics relevant to specific regions or the overall country (though not necessarily specific to Wisconsin).

Its methodology is built around three pillars: Livability, lovability and prosperity.

Resonance Consultancy's pillars definitions

Livability: Measures the quality of daily life in a city. Walkability, transit access, air quality, climate risk, green space, housing costs relative to income, broadband connectivity, healthcare access, etc.

Lovability: Captures a city's cultural vitality and its ability to attract visitors and generate desire. Indicators span the quality and volume of restaurants, arts and entertainment venues, museums, outdoor experiences, nightlife, etc.

Prosperity: Measures a city's economic strength and opportunity. GDP per capita, labor force participation, innovation capital intensity, educational attainment, unemployment and poverty rates, university quality, etc. 

The report breaks its rankings down into "Best Large Cities" and "Best Small Cities," with "small" deemed any city with a population of less than 500,000. Eau Claire came in at No. 68 with other Wisconsin cities like La Crosse (No. 62), Green Bay (No. 39), Sheboygan (No. 74) and others also making the top 100 roundup.

While you can dive into the report yourself (if you’re kind of a nerd about these things like I am) – or just stop reading here, if you feel you've gotten the gist –  I’m going to pull out just a few of the many brow-raising and intriguing insights from this report.

Buckle up; we’re going to speed run the report’s findings related to immigration, technology (specifically, semiconductors), affordability and housing, demographics and more.

Everyone’s Favorite Topic: The Economy

“To this day, the United States remains the largest economy in the world,” this section of the report starts. The data to back that up: the U.S. accounts for about 25% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) and its own household consumption value of about $20 trillion – “a consumer market so large it rivals the economic output of entire continents.”

Even so, the economic and population growth across the country varies greatly from region to region and state to state. For instance, over the past five years, the southwest experienced a 26% increase in inflation-adjusted growth of GDP, compared to the national average of 18%. (Florida and Texas are at the top of that growth list, expanding roughly 28%-30%.)

In comparison, middle America saw half that growth in the same time window: Illinois grew 13%; Ohio 12%; Wisconsin 11%.

As a visual learner, this map graphic helps put the impacts of real GDP into perspective. Viewers can see the Midwest, trickling over to the east coast, with lower GDP growth (which is still growth!) than those states on the western side of the country.

Yet, in Wisconsin, an incredible surge in foreign direct investment (FDI) has occurred in recent years – largely thanks to semiconductors (often referred to as the “brain” of electronics; everything from smartphones to Artificial Intelligence chips).

“Wisconsin went from just 15 FDI projects over the entirety of 2021-2023 to 49 in 2024 alone, with pledged capital rising from $356 million to $3 billion, driven by advanced manufacturing investments that validate the region’s industrial resurgence,” Resonance Consultancy notes.

Ultimately, the report found that link between GDP growth and FDI growth is increasingly evident and worth studying. Capital and population move toward conditions that are favorable – where the policy of a place is predictable; where people actually want to work and live.

The Balancing Act of Population, Labor & Affordability

You can’t talk about trends in population, holistically, without considering immigration; especially if you’re also considering fertility rates and an aging population.

Resonance Consultancy likens immigration to a “buffer” that, while once effective in counterbalancing declining fertility rates and more people aging out of the workforce, no longer is under current political conditions in the U.S.

“That buffer (of immigration) is now contracting sharply,” the report states. “Net international migration fell from approximately 2.7 million in 2023-24 to 1.3 million in 2024-25, a 54% decline in a single year.”

As America’s population skews heavily to one end of the spectrum – seniors and retirement-aged folks – there are more people “on the sidelines of the labor market” than we’ve seen in almost five decades (outside of the COVID-19 pandemic).

net international migration fell from approximately 2.7 million in 2023-24 to 1.3 million 2024-25, a 54% decline in a single year.

Per Census Bureau data, between 2020 and 2025, the population of those 65 and older grew about 15.5% while the population of those under the age of 25 declined almost 1%.

While “the most consequential cohort in the American labor market and the most competed-over” – those ages 25 to 54 – grew about 3.5% in that same timeframe, it isn’t enough to offset that wave of retirees.

Where are people moving? Per data from the Census Bureau across a five-year time window (2020-2025), it's a spattering across the country. Nearly every county in Wisconsin is seeing positive growth in migration, for instance, though dark blue counties are most prevalent in the northwest portions of the U.S.

In short, it is critical for every community to attract more of that “prime-age” population (25 to 54). That will impact the housing market, which has seen higher prices in both ownership and rental rates.

“What that means for talent migration is specific,” the study says. “When housing costs price workers out of their preferred destination, those workers go somewhere else. But the cities that are keeping housing attainable for the workers they are trying to attract are the ones best positioned to sustain their growth momentum.”

Urban Reinvention: Downtowns & Economic Development

According to this report, the U.S. is experiencing an era of urban development “unlike anything” it’s seen before, largely due to the “conversion wave” of office-to-residential spaces.

“The number of residential units created out of former office buildings nearly doubled in 2024 with 70,700 units projected in 2025 – a national record, and more than triple the pipeline that existed in 2022.”

“What the most successful cities have understood is that downtown reinvention and neighborhood vitality are not separate from economic development – they are economic development.”

The report notes that, for economic development organizations, that conversion matters in at least two ways beyond housing supply: How a city manages its downtown real estate challenge is a top indictor of governance quality and long-term trajectory; downtown reinvention creates the conditions for neighborhood-level investment that can reshape a city’s competitive brand.

“The corridors and neighborhoods adjacent to converting downtowns are where the next generation of urban investment is forming – and they have their own stories, their own identities and their own competitive value that deserves deliberate cultivation,” the report states.

The final thought this section of the study leaves readers with is this: “What the most successful cities have understood is that downtown reinvention and neighborhood vitality are note separate from economic development – they are economic development.”

If you've made this far, huzzah! These are just a few of the points made and data displayed in the 2026 America's Best Cities Report from Resonance Consultancy, so I would encourage you to view the document to inform your own thoughts and opinions (though there may be something more to come from Volume One, related to all these topics and more, on a hyper-local level...).

Get the 2026 America's Best Cities Report from Resonance Consultancy emailed directly to your inbox by visiting resonanceco.com.