Why publish our own ranking?
Because the existing "safest cities" lists are almost never sourced, dated, or comparable across years — they're SEO articles built to rank on Google, not to help a parent choose where to live. Find a Safe Place publishes the ranking transparently: our methodology is public on /methodology, our data sources are named on /our-sources, and every position on the list traces back to public federal + local data with a refresh date attached.
How the list is built
Cities are evaluated on the same three engines every neighborhood on this site is scored on:
- Crime — FBI UCR + NIBRS at the ORI level (nationally comparable) blended with local PD open data (block-level, where the city publishes an incident feed).
- School safety — federal Civil Rights Data Collection (school arrests, restraint, chronic absenteeism) + each state's Department of Education report cards.
- Pedestrian + walk-to-school risk — NHTSA FARS pedestrian-fatality incidents + state DOT crash datasets + OpenStreetMap sidewalk/crossing coverage, routed on the actual pedestrian network.
Cities are grouped in population bands so a small city isn't unfairly compared to a metro of 3 million. Slots per state are weighted to U.S. Census population — larger states get more slots on the list than smaller states.
Delta tracking: the movers
The most useful thing about publishing quarterly is that movement becomes visible. Each release page will call out:
- Cities that climbed 10+ positions (and the underlying reason — a PD reporting change, a real crime-trend shift, a school-data revision).
- Cities that fell 10+ positions (same treatment — no cherry-picking).
- New cities that entered the top 100 for the first time.
- Long-standing top-10 cities that dropped out — the surprise stories.
Next release
Q3 2026 ranking · rolling out. Refresh cadence: quarterly. All release notes will publish here with the last-refreshed date and links to the datasets used. If you want an email when the next release drops, contact hello@findasafeplace.com.
Why this replaces "Tucson's safest neighborhoods 2025"
Find a Safe Place began by scoring one city — Tucson, AZ — where our block-level data ingestion first came online. As of 2026 we're covering U.S. cities nationwide, and our ranking reflects that. Our older Tucson-only "safest neighborhoods 2025" article is still live for reference, but the canonical safest-cities ranking is this page and it now covers the entire country.