2025 Compare Cities Rankings:
Scotts Valley, CA vs Rochester, MN

#18 Most Competitive Public Colleges

#27 Best Green Cities

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

#124 2005 Best Places to Live

#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

We lived and worked in Scotts Valley for a number of years. It's a nice enough city, safe and clean unlike some areas of Santa Cruz. It's well managed and the schools  More

Great weather and small town feel but it is changing rapidly  More

Scotts Valley is an ideal, small town with many wonderful features. It's just 10 minutes from the beaches in nearby Santa Cruz yet doesn't get the wet fog because it's  More

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