Best cities in California

Los Angeles▲ Rising

The city that turned sunlight into an industry, LA built Hollywood's dream factory and then sprawled 470 square miles in every direction to house the people chasing it. From Central Avenue jazz to Boyle Heights murals to the Getty perched above it all, its argument for the top spot is sheer cultural gravity—nowhere else on Earth exports more imagination per square mile.

Metro pop.: 12,900,000Median home: $900,000Sunny days: 284

added by IJRin 12 rankings

San Diego▲ Rising

America's Finest City earned its nickname with 70-degree winters, a zoo that redefined captivity as conservation, and a Navy harbor that quietly became the backbone of the Pacific fleet. Balboa Park's 1915 exposition buildings still anchor a city that never had to try too hard, which is exactly the case for its high ranking.

Metro pop.: 3,300,000Median home: $900,000Sunny days: 266

added by IJRin 5 rankings

San Francisco▲ Rising

Forty-niners built it on gold fever, the 1906 earthquake nearly erased it, and it rebuilt itself as the birthplace of the beat poets, the Summer of Love, and the tech revolution that followed decades later from garages just south of it. Cramped into seven square miles between two bridges, it punches so far above its weight that its case for greatness barely needs stating.

Metro pop.: 4,600,000Median home: $1,200,000Sunny days: 259

added by IJRin 8 rankings

San Jose▼ Falling

Once orchards and cannery rows known as the Valley of Heart's Delight, it quietly became the capital of Silicon Valley when Fairchild and its offspring set up shop nearby, turning apricot fields into the wealthiest patch of real estate in America. It's the largest city in the Bay Area by population yet the most overlooked—its ranking here is the correction.

Metro pop.: 1,900,000Median home: $1,400,000Sunny days: 257

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Sacramento▼ Falling

Sutter's Fort sparked the Gold Rush that built the entire state, and the city's reward was becoming the capital where California's laws and budgets get hammered out under a gilded dome. Farm-to-fork before that was a slogan anywhere else, it makes this list as the practical, unglamorous engine room that actually runs the place everyone fights to visit.

Metro pop.: 2,400,000Median home: $480,000Sunny days: 269

added by IJRin 5 rankings