Best Cities to Live

MSNBC web site ^ | 8/19/02 | Fast Forward

[plain talk]

Looking for the ideal city for your family? Chances are, you want a place where you can find an interesting job and afford a good house. An easy commute would be nice, too. To help in your search for a change of scene, we went looking for places that offered a lively economy, diverse cultural amenities, and abundant recreational activities.

The picture-perfect city would offer a balance of the best. But no one city has it all. If you're looking for a new city, big or small, review our list of best places to see if one fits your list of priorities.

The Best Big Cities

Austin, Texas. On the Colorado River, in the heart of the Hill Country, Austin offers an affordable cost of living, low utility costs, clean water, and easy access to outdoor activities in the surrounding wooded, rolling hills. You'll find an extensive park system with many recreational opportunities, such as boating. Austin boasts a low unemployment rate, and average commute time is only 21.4 minutes. Through its willingness to support economic diversification, Austin's job rate has grown fast in recent years and promises to grow even faster in the future, especially in the high-tech fields. Experts predict an incredible job growth rate (33.19% to 2010).

Love music? You'll love "The Live Music Capital of the World." Austin has become a center for live music and hosts the South by Southwest Music Festival. Home to the University of Texas, Austin offers many opportunities to take part in educational and cultural activities: museums, symphonies, and theaters, not to mention many good restaurants. Any negatives here? You have to like hot summers: average high temp in July is 95.9 degrees F.

San Francisco, California. This beautiful city on the Pacific Coast offers a rich and diverse array of cultural amenities: museums, theaters, symphony and opera, and fine restaurants. Add to that its abundant outdoor activities: hiking, sailing, and swimming, and you have the best of cultural and outdoor life. Looking for job opportunities? You'll be glad to know that the city has good job growth and a low unemployment rate. Public transit is great and commute times average 24.9 minutes.

The bad news? All these wonderful points are offset by a very high cost of living, which we considered enough of a negative to make Austin the overall winner. Housing prices in the Bay Area are steep. The city's schools have a high student/teacher ratio. And San Francisco residents must live with an ever-present concern about the possibility of earthquakes. But you can't beat the clean air and mild climate: the average low temperature in January is only 41.2 degrees F.

Boston, Massachusetts. If you move to Boston, you'll find an outstanding level of arts and culture. A city rich in history and tradition, Boston offers sites of historical interest, picturesque architecture, and beautiful parks and scenery. Job growth is good, due to a boom in the high-tech and electronic industries, and the unemployment rate is low. The city boasts excellent libraries, museums, theaters, galleries, and performing arts groups. A major center of higher education, Boston has more than 65 colleges and universities in its metropolitan area.

It's true that housing costs can be high, and it can get chilly in winter and humid in the summer, but that is more than balanced by low violent crime, access to good education, and a great public transit system (average commute time is only 23.1 minutes).

Statistics supplied by Fast Forward, a data consulting company located in Portland, Oregon.

[plain talk]

six best small cities: Austin, San Francisco, Boston, Boulder, Madison, Rochester. First three reek of liberalism. Not too sure about the other three.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Boulder and Madison are at least as bad than the first three, if not worse.

[Corporate Law]

What??? No Cincinnati???? (/sarcasm)

Seriously, my impression was that these picks seem to be a liberal dream team.

[CanadianFella]

Montreal has good weather, good public transit, affordable real-estate and a high-tech hub on the Upper West Side. The Old Port area is transplanted from Europe and some of the downtown zone is definitly bohemian.
Downside? Il faudra apprendre un peu de Français ;)

[benjaminthomas]

So is Rochester (if they mean New York) -- it comes with the territory of being a college town.

[Frohickey]

Bwahaha... best cities... bwahahaha...

San Francisco, with its smelly streets and crowded curbsides?

Best city if you are a welfare receipient, maybe.

[olivia3boys]

They've got to be kidding. San Francisco is a total overpriced, ugly armpit and people trying to raise a family there flee it in horror. I also have a friend who just moved her young family from Boston to a small CA suburb and says it was the best thing she ever did for her kids.

I'd live in Austin though, in a heartbeat; the "jewel of Texas."

[DallasMike]

Montreal has good weather

If you like lots and lots of snow.

[Belial]

San Francisco, with its smelly streets and crowded curbsides?

Guess what Buckwheat. Curbsides get crowded when people walk on them. People walk places when there's cityscapes worth seeing.

Not that you'd know about things like that in a city of cookie-cutter houses and strip malls like San Jose.

[Mr. Jeeves]

San Francisco itself is a place to visit, not to live. But suburban cities like Walnut Creek and Pleasanton might merit a place on the list - if you can stand the 105 degree summers.

[Still Thinking]

Picking the best cities in which to live seems to be a liberal preoccupation. The first time I saw one of these lists and was baffled by the choice of certain towns I was familiar with, I checked the ranking criteria. Almost every one was some kind of socialist thing, like lots of government paid child care, and employers that ensured alternative families, and like that. Not a single criteria for government at the mercy of the citizens, low taxes, pro entrepreneurial climate, skilled workforce, etc. I just ignore the lists now, except maybe as a warning sign.

[07055]

Austin, Texas...offers .... low utility costs

I think not.

[banjo joe]

North Central Alabama. Seriously. A not-so-best-kept secret.
High tech to cattle ranching. Low property taxes and utilities. An outdoorsman's paradise.

[wordsofearnest]

And Queers.

[desertcry]

If there is any doubt left on how biase msnbc is, this article should errase all of it.

[Inkie]

Maybe low energy costs compared with California??

Hey, what happened to Chicago? It's a great place to live!

San Francisco? Feh! It's tiny and uninteresting for what's supposed to be a world-class city; it's twee and full of homeless people urinating and defacating on the street. It's dirty. The only good thing about it is the BART.

[Ryle]

Montreal? I think NOT!!! If city living is unavoidable, try Calgary for way better weather than Montreal, great location, more conservatives ....... And if you miss Montrealers, there are lots of ex-pats out here who wonder why they waited so long to move west. Et il n'est pas obligatoire de parler francais ........

[ghost of nixon]

Who comes up with these ratings? These places all suck compared to my home town, Salt Lake City (I'm not a Mormon, BTW) - if the criteria best place to raise a family. The top six might qualify as best place to raise a socialist.

[austingirl]

Austin is liberal in the city itself because of the University, but I live just outside Austin and it is quite conservative. I love it here and wouldn't live anywhere else.