It’s no secret that Naperville is considered an excellent city to live in — and residents tend to agree.
But while residents are satisfied with everything from public safety to educational offerings and community design, there is still room for improvement in areas like affordability and ease of transportation, according to the 2026 community survey results.
The survey — sent to 5,000 randomly selected households and yielding 760 responses — will be used by the city to help update its community priorities plan, which is used to ensure the city’s goals align with those of the residents.
On Monday, Mayor Scott Wehrli said one of the big themes for him from the results was “price sensitivity,” something he is keeping in mind as the city prepares to update its priorities plan.
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“People like certain things and that’s identified throughout (the survey),” he said. “But at the same time, they’re sensitive to price and cost, so as we look through these different items, I’m certainly going to be cognizant of what the impact is going to be on people’s ability to … afford to live in our city.”
Overall, residents offered high praise, with 95% of respondents saying they were satisfied with the city as a place to live and 96% satisfied with it as a place to raise a family.
The results were organized into ten categories: economy, mobility, community design and housing, utilities, safety, natural environment, parks and recreation, health and wellness, education, arts and culture, and community connection.
The highest ratings went to public safety, parks and recreation, economy, natural environment, and health and wellness. Each received a score of 90% or above, meaning that 90% or more of the surveyed residents rated those areas as good or excellent.
Mobility, which included everything from ease of getting around Naperville via different modes of transit to city services like snow removal and street cleaning, scored the lowest out of all the areas analyzed, receiving a score of 63%.
The survey results also examined trends, essentially looking at increases and decreases in satisfaction from the last community survey conducted in 2023. Three areas with upward trends in satisfaction were overall respondent health (up 9%), feeling safe from flood, fire or natural disaster (up 6%) and attracting people from diverse backgrounds (up 6%).
As for downward trends, employment opportunities saw the biggest decrease, falling from 84% satisfaction in 2023 to 60% satisfaction in 2026.
“I hear from a lot of residents that their recent college graduates are having a hard time finding employment,” Wehrli said.
That statistic only reinforced for him the importance of creating jobs and revitalizing major commercial areas in the city, like the Interstate 88 corridor, he said. Earlier this year, the city hired a consultant to study future development along the corridor.
“(Survey respondents) rate our economy as one of the best in the country, but at the same time, they’re worried about jobs and opportunity,” Wehrli said. “There’s a lot of worry out there about the national economy and the cost of living … to that end, we have to be cognizant of what we can do right here in Naperville.”
On affordability, respondents were asked about issues ranging from the availability of affordable quality health care and food to housing and overall cost of living.
Affordable housing and cost of living received the lowest scores in that area, with satisfaction ratings of 31% and 37% respectively, results that were similar to the 2023 survey.
Meanwhile, availability of affordable quality health care, food, preschool and childcare and mental health care all received higher ratings, though food fell from a 78% satisfaction rating in 2023 to 70% in 2026 and preschool and childcare fell from 72% to 61%.
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“The people here are already happy,” Wehrli said. “The question is who can afford to join them and whether young families and (the) workforce that the businesses need can get in the door, so that’s something that we’re going to continue to work on.”
Mobility services scored well, but ease of transportation varied by method. On the higher end, 78% of survey respondents were satisfied with ease of travel by car and 75% were satisfied with ease of travel via walking. However, ease of travel by bike scored 52% and ease of traveling via public transit scored 32%.
While one Naperville councilman expressed enthusiasm for improving Naperville’s bikeability at the Aug. 18 city council meeting, Wehrli said biking is only one part of the equation.
“Biking to the downtown and going shopping or biking to the grocery store and going to grocery shop is not going to be practical for a lot of our families because they have to have a way to haul their stuff home,” Wehrli said.
To that end, he would like to see Naperville improve transportation around the city on multiple fronts and is hopeful that the creation of the new Northern Illinois Transit Authority — overseeing Metra, Pace and CTA — will allow for creative solutions to a better mass transit system in Naperville and surrounding suburbs.