Which of the 10 largest US cities would you rather live in?

[traininthedistance]

Philly, easily.  (NYC is second, Chicago third, and it goes south rapidly after that.)

[traininthedistance]

How did Atlanta not made the cut?

It's based on cities proper, not metro areas.  Atlanta's city boundaries are fairly closely constrained (much like San Fran, Boston, etc.) while the metro is particularly sprawling and low-density.

[traininthedistance]

Guess I can rank all of these:

1) Philly
2) NYC
3) Chicago
4) um... Los Angeles?  Really?  Yeah, LA by default.  Ugh.
5) San Jose
6) San Diego
7) San Antonio
8: Houston
9) Dallas
10) Phoenix

[traininthedistance]

The people who talk sh**t on Los Angeles and then go ahead and rank it ahead of San Diego are absolutely hilarious. It's quite easy to see who hasn't been to San Diego.

Also, can someone explain the appeal of Chicago. It's cold as hell, has some big buildings inside the loop but is mostly a sprawling metropolis much worse than Los Angeles or San Diego (actually most eastern cities are but the east coast people don't like to acknowledge it) and it's famous foods consist of diabetes and heart disease. So what am I missing here? What is there to like?

The question is asking about the cities one would wish to live in, not which cities' suburbs.  Yes, the Chicagoland suburbs sprawl worse than LA, but the urban fabric within the city itself is better and that's what matters here.

Also some of us like "cold as hell".  I would be disoriented and asea without my yearly dose of snow.