Nashville drops on list of top-performing cities

State of play: Nashville's fall moves us onto Milken's list of "Tier 2 cities." It's a notable shift after two consecutive years in Tier 1.

Zoom in: A deeper look at the metrics gives some hints about Nashville's slide. The city ranked low in Milken's measures of short-term job growth and housing affordability

Reality check: Don't get too down. Twenty is still pretty high on Milken's rankings, which include 200 large cities broken down into five tiers.

How it works: The annual rankings from Milken — a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank — are based on its Best Performing Cities index, which takes into account cities' labor markets, tech industry growth and economic access.

• The report doesn't explicitly look at other quality-of-life factors people may consider when picking a place to live, like traffic congestion, public transit access and park space.

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