The Best Skylines in the United States

Ranker Travel
Updated June 23, 2023 52.7K votes 7.4K voters 308.2K views
Over 7.4K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of The Best Skylines in the United States
Voting Rules
American cities only. Vote up the most breathtaking during both day and night.

The United States has some of the coolest cities in the world, and awesome cities bring forth awesome skylines. Whether you see them during the day as a massive urban jungle or an array of twinkling lights at night, these skylines are the best the U.S. has to offer.

A great skyline doesn't necessarily equate to a large city skyline, so don't be surprised by some of the smaller cities you might see on here. Many of the smaller cities have picturesque mountains or bodies of water in their cityscape. Vote up your favorite skyline, both during the day and at night for the best American skylines. 

Don't see your favorite US skyline on here? Make your own list by reranking it!
Most divisive: Minneapolis
  • 1
    3,327 VOTES

    Chicago

    Chicago is the third most populous city in the United States, after New York City and Los Angeles. With 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in both the U.S. state of Illinois and the Midwestern United States. Its metropolitan area, sometimes called Chicagoland, is home to 9.9 million people and is the third-largest in the United States. Chicago is the seat of Cook County. Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed, and experienced rapid growth in the mid-nineteenth century. Today, the city is an international hub for finance, commerce, industry, technology, telecommunications, and transportation, with O'Hare International Airport being the busiest airport in the world; it also has the largest number of U.S. highways, and railroad freight entering its region. In 2012, Chicago was listed as an alpha global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and ranks seventh in the world in the 2014 Global Cities Index.
    3,327 votes
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  • 2
    2,857 VOTES

    New York City

    New York – often called New York City or the City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part – is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York metropolitan area, the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States and one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. A global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which is a county of New York State. The five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a census-estimated 2014 population of 8,491,079 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles, New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States.
    2,857 votes
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  • 3
    2,632 VOTES

    Seattle

    Seattle is a coastal seaport city and the seat of King County, in the U.S. state of Washington. With an estimated 652,405 residents as of 2013, Seattle is the largest city in both the State of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America and, as of July 2013, the fastest-growing major city in the United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of around 3.6 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the United States. The city is situated on a narrow isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, about 100 miles south of the Canada–United States border. A major gateway for trade with Asia, Seattle is the 8th largest port in the United States and 9th largest in North America in terms of container handling. The Seattle area had previously been inhabited by Native Americans for at least 4,000 years before the first permanent European settlers. Arthur A. Denny and his group of travelers, subsequently known as the Denny Party, arrived on the schooner Exact at Alki Point on November 13, 1851. The settlement was moved to its current site and named "Seattle" in 1852, after Chief Si'ahl of the local Duwamish and Suquamish tribes.
    2,632 votes
  • 4
    2,192 VOTES

    Philadelphia

    Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its only consolidated city-county, the fifth-most-populous city in the United States, and the core of the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the country. Located in the Northeastern United States at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, Philadelphia is the economic and cultural center of the Delaware Valley. The population of the city was counted at 1,526,006 in 2010 and estimated at 1,560,297 in 2014, according to the United States Census Bureau. The four Pennsylvania counties nearest Philadelphia had an estimated total population of 2,510,793 in 2013; while by 2014 census estimates, the Philadelphia metropolitan area, also known as the Delaware Valley, is home to 6.1 million residents, and the larger Philadelphia-Reading-Camden, PA-NJ-DE-MD Combined Statistical Area contains approximately 7.2 million residents. In 1682, William Penn founded the city to serve as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony.
    2,192 votes
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  • 5
    2,165 VOTES

    San Francisco

    San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. The only consolidated city-county in California, San Francisco encompasses a land area of about 46.9 square miles on the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, giving it a density of about 18,187 people per square mile. It is the most densely settled large city in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City. San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in California, after Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, and the 14th-most populous city in the United States—with a Census-estimated 2014 population of 852,469. The city and its surroundings are known as the San Francisco Bay Area, part of the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland combined statistical area, with an estimated population of 8.5 million. San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established a fort at the Golden Gate and a mission named for St. Francis of Assisi a few miles away.
    2,165 votes
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  • 6
    2,278 VOTES

    Minneapolis

    Minneapolis, officially the City of Minneapolis, is the county seat of Hennepin County, and larger of the Twin Cities, the 14th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, containing approximately 3.8 million residents. As of 2013, Minneapolis is the largest city in the state of Minnesota and 46th-largest in the United States with 400,070 residents. Minneapolis and Saint Paul anchor the second-largest economic center in the American Midwest, behind Chicago. Minneapolis lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the river's confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Saint Paul, the state's capital. The city is abundantly rich in water, with twenty lakes and wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls, many connected by parkways in the Chain of Lakes and the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway. It was once the world's flour milling capital and a hub for timber, and today is the primary business center between Chicago and Seattle, with Minneapolis proper containing America's fifth-highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies. As an integral link to the global economy, Minneapolis is categorized as a global city.
    2,278 votes
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