2025 Compare Cities Rankings:
Rochester, MN vs Rock Island, IL

#9 Most Comfortable Summer Cities

#10 Most Secure Places to Live 2011 (Mid-Size Cities)

#18 America's Best and Worst Cities for Crime (Smallest Metro Areas)

#101 Best Green Cities

#113 America's Most (and Least) Stressful Cities (117 Smallest Metro Areas)

#144 2005 Best Places to Live

#64 America's Best and Worst Cities for Crime (Mid-Size Metro Areas)

#150 2005 Best Places to Live

#211 Best Green Cities

Roch (and Minnesota) is a great place IF you live off the govt dole; subsidize undesirable things (through generous welfare benefits, lax law enforcement and sentences,  More

Rochester is very vanilla. As a progressive, this place is not good. The area leans conservative and you'll see Trump signs everywhere... so that tells you the type of  More

I moved here over 20 years ago from California and I was in shock for the first couple of years that people actually lived in such a cold climate! Winter starts around  More

Pros: 1. Extremely low cost of living 2. Affordable place to live Cons: 1. High crime rate 2. Poor school system 3. Not much to  More

Rock Island has a varied background and contains many cultural and historic areas. It has been improving its school system and is in a metropolitan area which contains  More

I just moved here for work one year ago. Moving from San Francisco here was a shock but ultimatelly good. The community is a typical midwestern small town. It is part  More