This Is America’s Fittest City

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 16, 10:30AM EDT

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This Is America’s Fittest City — © LuckyBusiness / Getty Images

In 2019, over 64 million Americans had fitness gym memberships to approximately 41,000 gyms. In all, these people paid about $33 billion for those memberships, though many people rarely used them. Some go once or twice and then drop out.

The gym membership movement is part of a larger effort by Americans to stay fit. Their efforts bring only modest results. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 53% of Americans over 18 met its “Physical Activity Guidelines for aerobic physical activity.” Only 23% meet its “Physical Activity Guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity.”

Americans exercise for a number of reasons. One is to help control weight, as more than 40% of Americans top the standard for obesity. Others do it for heart health. Still others find that it is a way to get and preserve mental health.

FitRated created a survey of health nationwide to find “America’s Best Cities for Fitness Fanatics.” The authors used Yelp’s “Fitness and Instruction” category and calculated fitness locations per 100,000 people in America’s top 100 cities based on population.
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New York City topped the list by a wide margin, with more than 233 fitness locations per 100,000 people. The study’s authors commented: “Without a doubt, New York City prides itself on a multitude of unique opportunities to burn calories.” Of course, the study did not gauge pride at all.

Las Vegas ranked second with almost 172 locations per 100,000. Many of the cities at the top of the list are in the South, including Dallas, Phoenix, Miami and Atlanta. There is no easy explanation for the geographic pattern.

These are the 20 cities with the most fitness locations per 100,000 residents:

New York (235.5)
Las Vegas (171.7)
Dallas (171.4)
Phoenix (147.0)
Scottsdale, Ariz. (118.4)
Miami (97.7)
San Francisco (97.2)
Orlando (95.9)
Atlanta (82.8)
Seattle (82.0)
Oakland (73.4)
Austin (72.4)
Honolulu (71.6)
Irvine, Calif. (71.4)
San Diego (65.6)
Tampa (62.0)
Sacramento (61.7)
Pittsburgh (61.1)
Denver (60.8)
Portland, Ore. (59.7)

Click here to see which are the 25 healthiest cities in America.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.