Today the second edition of “Cities Ranked & Rated: More Than 400 Metropolitan Areas Evaluated in the U.S. & Canada” (Wiley Publishing), 850 pages by Bert Sperling and Peter Sander, will thud onto bookstore shelves. Gainesville, Fla. (No. 1) will be cheering, and Modesto, Calif. (No. 373) will be fuming.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifesty...p-cities_N.htm
By
Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
Gainesville, a "right-sized college town" that's home to the University of Florida, is the best place to live in the USA, according to a new book.
(I suppose college sports championships are more important determinants than the heat, drug crime and persistent hurricane threat...what a fucking joke!)
Cities Ranked & Rated (Wiley, $24.99) gives high marks to several other "satellite cities" attracting telecommuters, including Bellingham, Wash., (No. 2) and Colorado Springs (No. 4).
At the bottom of the rankings of 375 metropolitan areas is Modesto, Calif.
The 848-page book by Bert Sperling and Peter Sander rates cities in 10 categories, from the economy to the arts. It gives the most weight to cost of living, climate and one subjective measure: quality of life.
It updates 2004 rankings by the authors, who have given more weight to affordable housing and reasonable commuting times. Sperling says, "Two-hour commutes, one-way, are no longer uncommon."
Charlottesville, Va., No. 1 in 2004 (in the 1st edition), dropped to No. 17 after median home prices doubled.
(Yeah, thanks a lot for that, Sperling.)
Gainesville (up from No. 56 ) benefits from "a strong concentration of young people and active retirees." With a population of 248,000, its only drawbacks are hot, sticky summers and a
relatively high violent crime rate, most of it drug-related.
(The fact that any
city in Florida is ranked highly (well, Jacksonville is okay, I guess) is ridiculous. Please note that no other Florida city makes the top 50.)
Sander says "one bad score on one key fact doesn't severely affect the ranking, so long as it isn't outside an acceptable range." But
the high-crime rate helped keep Gainesville off Money magazine's 2006 list of 100 Best Places to Live, based on a different methodology.
Modesto and several other central California cities suffer from high unemployment and crime and expensive housing.
The book, the most comprehensive rating of cities, relies on statistics as well as the authors' judgments of physical attractiveness and "ease of living."
The biggest losers since the 2004 rankings are larger cities with lower scores in the book's "three Cs — cost, commute and crime."
Atlanta dropped from No. 7 to 54, Minneapolis-St. Paul from No. 24 to 262, and New York from No. 40 to 251.
"Rapid growth and sprawl are starting to take their toll," says Sander, who lives near Sacramento (No. 183, down from No. 85). He says it's "expanding faster than the infrastructure can support."
Utah has three of the top 15 spots (Ogden, No. 6, Logan, No. 12, and Provo, No. 13), "affordable places with great recreational opportunities and low crime," Sperling says. "They are hot places for the foreseeable future, until overpopulation drives up home prices and drives down livability."