Scout Research

What makes a city actually enjoyable to live in?

Scout studies the structure of everyday free time — where people go, what they can do, how much it costs, who can participate, and how well a city keeps working when circumstances change.

Built from Scout's structured place and activity intelligence across U.S. cities, with methodology and research coverage published alongside the results.

Computed, not opined

What Scout Studies

  • Things To Do

    Is there enough worthwhile inventory to keep free time interesting?

  • Variety

    Can your weekends actually feel different?

  • Affordability

    Can you have a good day without spending a lot?

  • People

    Do dates, families, groups, and solo outings all work?

  • Resilience

    Does the city still work when weather, time, or circumstances change?

  • Public Life

    Are there shared places and recurring opportunities to participate?

The theory

Scout Hierarchy of Fun

What conditions make some communities easier to enjoy than others?

  1. Access→
  2. Choice & Agency→
  3. Discovery→
  4. Belonging→
  5. Collective Energy

The Hierarchy of Fun is Scout's framework for understanding the conditions that make everyday leisure easier, richer, and more socially meaningful.

Explore the research framework →

Flagship research

The Scout Fun Index

Which cities are hardest to be bored in?

Scout's broadest outcome measure of how reliably a city can provide a genuinely good way to spend free time across different interests, budgets, audiences and times of day.

#1 City
Phoenix
Score
91
Ranked cities
185
Research coverage
High

Updated Aug 2026

Explore the Fun Index →

What kind of day are we measuring?

The Fun Index asks the broad question. These studies look at specific ways a city succeeds — or falls short.

Community & Public Life

Some of what makes a city enjoyable has less to do with entertainment and more to do with the shared infrastructure that lets people participate in life around them.

Computed, not opined.

Scout Research is designed to turn structured local data into testable questions about everyday life. But numbers are only useful when the metric means something. Every Scout index measures a clearly defined characteristic of the city — not how much content Scout happens to have published there.

How Scout Research Works

  1. 1

    Scout structures local place data

    Scout analyzes places, activities, pricing, hours, audiences, experience types, and other attributes.

  2. 2

    Scout measures real-world usability

    Scores increasingly incorporate whether valid plans can actually be built — not simply raw place counts.

  3. 3

    Scout separates city signals from Scout coverage

    Research coverage is disclosed separately and is never treated as a characteristic of the city.

  4. 4

    Scout compares eligible cities

    Cities must meet minimum underlying coverage requirements before receiving competitive public ranks.

  5. 5

    Scout publishes the methodology

    Every index explains what it measures, what it does not measure, its component logic, and known limitations.

Read Scout Research Methodology →

Rankings are outputs, not the research question.

Each study starts with a meaningful question, a defined construct, and measurable components, then reports findings and comparisons. The leaderboard comes afterward.