Add another distinction to those collected by Naperville over the last 15 years:

Naperville has been ranked the richest city in the Midwest in a list by personal finance website NerdWallet.

The city topped the region — and came in at No. 19 in the nation — in the rankings announced Monday…

NerdWallet rated cities with at least 65,000 people based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Zillow Research and credit bureau Experian.

In the Midwest, the runner-up — Carmel, Indiana — bested Naperville in only one category, with a median household income of $109,375, according to NerdWallet.

For its size – over 140,000 people – Naperville is unusually well-off with a high household income, a low poverty rate, and plenty of good white-collar jobs. There are certainly wealthier communities in the Chicago region and the Midwest but many of them are quite small and have little interest in growth.

How did Naperville get to this point? Two articles I have published help explain the suburb’s rise: a 2013 article in Urban Affairs Review that compares Naperville’s growth to West Chicago and Wheaton and a 2015 article in the Journal of Urban History that examines narratives about Naperville’s growth.