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WalletHub has issued its 2024 listing of the nation’s best- and worst-run cities, with a somewhat under-the-radar city ranking highest and a very prominent metropolis occupying the bottom ranking.

For its list, WalletHub compared 148 of the most populated cities across six key categories: financial stability, education, health, safety, economy, and infrastructure and pollution. Within those categories, 36 metrics were considered to determine how each city operates.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the top 10 best-run cities were smaller localities that were mostly in the Central and Mountain Time Zones, with Nampa, Idaho, topping the list as WalletHub’s pick as nation’s best-run city. Rounding out the top 10 were Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky; Boise, Idaho; Nashua, New Hampshire; Oklahoma City; Durham, North Carolina; Provo, Utah; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Wichita, Kansas.

At the other end of the spectrum, San Francisco was declared the nation’s worst-run city, with neighboring Oakland ranking second-to-worst. Mississippi’s Gulfport, New York City, and Michigan’s Flint were also among the bottom dwellers.

“The best-run cities in America use their budgets most effectively to provide high-quality financial security, education, health, safety and transportation to their residents,” observed Cassandra Happe, analyst at WalletHub. “Many of the top cities also have a very low amount of outstanding government debt per capita, which can prevent financial troubles in the future.”