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December 28, 2003 SOULLESS....As Matt points out, Money magazine's "best places to live" is really nothing more than "places most similar to Money magazine's circulation demographics." Nothing wrong with that, of course, just as there would be nothing wrong with Biker magazine picking the best cities based on the number of motorcycle mechanics per capita. Anyway, I'm certainly pleased to see that my very own Irvine is #5 on the list for Western cities over 100,000 population, but Matt just lets his jealousy show when he calls it a "soulless exurban sprawl zone." Silly Matt. It's actually a master planned soulless exurban sprawl zone. In other words, that's exactly the way we want it. Kinda makes you tingly all over, doesn't it? Or is that hives? Still, there are bigger issues afoot: how did Anaheim beat us out for the #2 slot with a measly $52,000 median income? Sure, they have Disneyland, but they also have the wretched California Adventure — and it's been literally months since the Angels won the World Series and the Ducks won the Western Conference. What were Money's computers thinking? (And Anchorage? What's up with that?) Posted by Kevin Drum at December 28, 2003 01:35 PM | TrackBackComments
Well, let me just say that any survey that lists Cary, NC (acronym: Containment Area for Relocated Yankees and you will paint your house EXACTLY what color we tell you, dammit) as the best place to live even in central NC, much less the entire eastern US, has some serious methodology flaws. Posted by: apostropher at December 28, 2003 01:43 PM | PERMALINKAh, now I know where to go for my annual list of places I Will Never Move To. Posted by: Atrios at December 28, 2003 01:50 PM | PERMALINKAnaheim? Irvine? These guys must be out of their minds. Posted by: freelixir at December 28, 2003 01:56 PM | PERMALINKAny place over 100K population is automatically out of the running for best place to live. And what's up with places like West Bloomfield, MI? Maybe under 100k, but smack in the middle of a several million population metro area. Posted by: sal at December 28, 2003 01:59 PM | PERMALINKThis is a pretty stupid list. What about quality of life? Posted by: four legs good at December 28, 2003 02:02 PM | PERMALINKI see that Tom DeLay's district makes the list. Clearly, the folks who put this list together have never been to any of these places, or seen any pictures of them. (Irvine is kind of nice, I'll admit). This is more like a list of hot single-family real estate markets than anything else. Posted by: praktike at December 28, 2003 02:13 PM | PERMALINKIt pains me greatly to mention that Santa Rosa, CA, where I live, is #4 in the West in cities over 100,000 and a point above poor Irvine. Of course, it's no Anaheim. It's an overgrown hicksville infested with cretins driving around in four-wheel drives with their caps turned backward, run by junior mafia capos bought and paid for by a corrupt construction industry, and a dim-brained electorate that votes for whichever candidate sends out the most colorful flyers before election day. There's definitely a lot of money in the county, most of it generated by a booming wine industry that never met an insecticide it didn't like. So come on, y'all...the Welcome Pickup's waitin' fer ye. Posted by: fyreflye at December 28, 2003 02:35 PM | PERMALINKWell, Plano has great schools and is a delightful place to live vis a vis Anchorage (where I've also lived). So there. And I'd live in Santa Rosa if I could afford it and didn't have kids in school. Posted by: Plano kid at December 28, 2003 02:52 PM | PERMALINKAny list of this sort that doesn't have Seattle as #1 is... well... wrong. Posted by: Realish at December 28, 2003 03:27 PM | PERMALINKRealish, it doesn't have Honolulu, either. Obviously flawed methodology, especially if that "hot real estate market" criteria is taken into account. Posted by: Linkmeister at December 28, 2003 03:33 PM | PERMALINKSorry to disagree Kevin, but Irvine bites. And so does Anaheim, or most other places in CA "developed" after 1980. Sell the Monopoly house now for a fistful of Monopoly money and move somewhere where your cats can be happy. Whenever I hear of "Master-Planned Communities", I'm reminded of a foreign exchange student I met in college who had lived in East Germany. She would point to McDonald's and the absurdly conformist "neighborhoods" of identical homes squashed next to one another--and comment about what a similarity this was to the goals of Communism: identical uncreative houses crammed next to one another, eating cheap processed identical food, and a general sacrificing of human identity on the altar of economic efficiency. I wonder where a cat-lover's magazine would say was the best place to live? Posted by: Tim B. at December 28, 2003 03:39 PM | PERMALINKAnchorage is great if you don't mind earth quakes, volcanos, and 9 months of winter . . . Posted by: rea at December 28, 2003 03:53 PM | PERMALINKA big problem with the list is that it chops up suburban areas in such a way that the wealthiest enclaves can be sectored off as their own "cities," while the central city in the metro area is a larger political unit so its scores are based on an average of all its neighborhoods. Therefore, even the "over 100K" category consists entirely of suburbs and exurbs because any "central" city will not be as homogeneous. Unbelieveably, the few smaller cities that are wealthy and homogeneous enough to make the list but aren't suburbs (say, Aspen) are explicitly excluded because of the requirement that a "major city" be no more than 60 miles away. If you're going make this kind of a list, your big/small city threshold has to be a lot higher than 100K in order for anything but a suburb to qualify. Posted by: ColoZ at December 28, 2003 04:04 PM | PERMALINKSeattle? It takes a special breed of human, like a mushroom, to grow and be happy in the absence of light. :) Try Portland. At least that would be credible. Posted by: freelixir at December 28, 2003 04:56 PM | PERMALINKThe requirement that the city be close to a major city is because of the art and cultural institutions in the nearby city. That's a bogus criterion. The requirement should be that the art institutions be *in the city itself* in order to make the correct comparisons. It's just like suburbia to leech off the city when it suits their purpose. If this is the same survey that appeared on the CNN-Money website, I remember them listing Richardson/Plano as making the top of the list in Texas. HAHAHAHAHAHA! I think this particular edition is some sort of practical joke. Seriously. If not, their standards must be based upon something like cookie-cutter housing developments gone berserk, combined with a heavy dosage of strip malls and corporate restaraunt chains fenced in by Interstate Highways under perpetual construction on all sides. Posted by: Waffle at December 28, 2003 05:36 PM | PERMALINKWhat a ridiculous list. Every one of the #1s had over 100% growth in the last decade. Looks to me that the primary criteria is real estate investment over the last ten years. And the best >100k towns in the West are either in Texas or California? Well maybe I shouldn't complain; let the Pacific Northwest remain forgotten. Realish, maybe for large cities Seattle isn't getting it's props. I have to work there frequently. Crossing the Hood Canal Bridge on Friday evenings on my way home to Sequim my blood pressure drops about 50 points, my teeth unclench, the seat back goes back a notch and the cruise control goes on. Ahhhh... Posted by: digital amish at December 28, 2003 05:41 PM | PERMALINKIt's actually a master planned soulless exurban sprawl zone. In other words, that's exactly the way we want it. That's a subtle dig at David Brooks and his goofy anti-foresight campaign, right? At any rate...I'd like to supplement the preceeding calpunditers with a quote from Vonnegut. Can't remember what book...but he wrote that his hometown Indiana had become "just another someplace where automobiles live." That's quite accurate for most of America these days. We build to accommodate automobiles with our right brains and wonder why 40% of the population is obese with our left brains. It ain't because of our genes folks...it is because we no longer use our legs. I hate to tell you that bad news...but I do so, because I know none of your leaders ever will. Indeed, this is what passes off as leadership on the local level: We need to solve our transportation problem by widening the roads (yet again)...blah...blah...blah. [Aside: exurbia is actually one of my favorite words. As it is the supposed to be the area beyond suburbia where the rich flee to enjoy nature (after they have buggered up the urban and surburban environments with their wealth-making polluting machinery. A wonderful...ironic word, no?] Posted by: -pea- at December 28, 2003 06:04 PM | PERMALINKANAHEIM? What the hell is up with that? It is soooo beyond souless sprawl of Southern California schlock. Posted by: surfk9 at December 28, 2003 06:59 PM | PERMALINKCary? North Carolina?? CARY, NORTH CAROLINA??? God in Heaven. Posted by: clio at December 28, 2003 07:07 PM | PERMALINKThe international list is more interesting. I think the Financial Times puts it out. According to them, the two best cities in the world to live in are Melbourne and Vancouver. New York was #37 out of 200, London and Paris slightly higher. The five worst were Phnom Penh, Lagos, Dhaka, Karachi, and Port Moresby. Posted by: Iceman at December 28, 2003 07:27 PM | PERMALINKFWIW, 4 of the top 8 in the Eastern category over 100K are suburbs of
Washington, DC. 8+ of the 26 under 100K are DC suburbs also. "In addition, the town had to be located no more than 60 miles from a major city. That ensures reasonable access art and culture resources." What a crock. My in-laws live in Fort Scott, Kansas and with a pair of round-trip tickets saw more Broadway plays than the average New Yorker this year. Those of us who live outstide 60 miles from a major city can get to one when we want to. Posted by: denise at December 28, 2003 08:50 PM | PERMALINKAnchorage is within 60 miles of a major city? Could somebody explain this one to me, please? Not that I have anything against the place, just asking. Posted by: bobbyp at December 28, 2003 09:26 PM | PERMALINKWhat, no St. Maries, Idaho? Good to see it's still a well kept secret. Oops. Posted by: bobbyp at December 28, 2003 09:35 PM | PERMALINKdigital amish, Quite frankly, I think most of you are way off base. Among the most tedious of life's experiences is to listen to self-styled "interesting" people hold forth with their "bold" and "iconoclastic" ideas about how the suburbs are boring, homogenous, and soul-destroying. Oh my God, your Original Thought (tm) is so blinding! First, by way of background, I myself live in Hyde Park, a very old and very ethnically diverse and very un-homogenous neighborhood surrounding the University of Chicago on that city's south side (I'm not a student at the University). In a few months I plan to move, in all likelihood to the Bucktown neighborhood on the north side, an area sought after by young educated people who like ethnic foods, the arts, and funky nightlife. I am by choice most certainly not a suburbanite. But what I can't understand is the vitriol that some people have for suburbs generally, and the newer variety specifically. True, I find many suburbs aesthetically unpleasing. But for that matter I find most of New York City aesthetically unpleasing. That doesn't make it souless. That makes it not my cup of tea. Yes, miles upon miles of brick on the bottom, siding on the top, 4 bedroom houses is a bit monotonous. But have you ever stopped to wonder what those "character" filled urban neighborhoods, with block after block of three story brownstones and graystones looked like when they were built? Yes those neighborhoods look more interesting today, because the once-cookie-cutter buildings have had several decades to mature and grow distinct from one another as different owners have left their mark. But that's a matter of time, not at inherent difference between the urban neighborhoods and their suburban counterparts. And the idea that suburbs lack for ethnic diversity is a silly canard that may have been true when it was hatched by disaffected bohemians in the late 1950s, but that's certainly not true today. Last weekend my wife and I went out to eat in Bucktown. Again, the neighborhood is probably the trendiest, most "cutting edge" in Chicago. And indeed we had our choice of cuisines: Thai, Sushi, Tapas, French-Asian Fusion, Southern Bar-B-Que, Arab, etc. But pop into any place in the neighborhood and you'd be lucky to find a non-white face. The dirty little secret of America's "interesting," "diverse," urban neighborhoods is that they tend to be playgrounds for young, well educated, slightly well off white kids with a Jones for new experiences. Go to South Street in Philly or DuPont Circle in DC and you'll see more ethnic eateries than ethnic families. Now, the very same weekend, my wife and I went Christmas shopping at the big mega-mall in Schaumburg, IL. Schaumburg is one of Chicago's favorite whipping boys: sprawling, ugly, plastic, dominated by a chaotic three level shopping mall, almost wholely given over to commerce and chain restaurants. The kind of place with no center city, no history, no culture to speak of. And you know what? No more than half of the people walking the mall were white. Indians, Mexicans, Black people, Koreans, etc. And a sizable percentage of the white people were, judging by the snippets of conversation I heard, recent immigrants from Eastern Europe. I actually counted 6 languages other than English being spoken by people I passed while walking through the Sears store: Spanish, Urdu, Korean, Polish, Japanese and a West African langugage I couldn't quite place. If you really want your kids to grow up around people who are different from them, move to a solid but not luxurious suburb of a huge city. Granted the toniest communities tend to still be dominated by white people. But people move to the Schaumburgs and Palatines and Downers Groves of the world not because they want to eat white bread sandwiches but because they want their kids to go to good schools. And Blacks, Hispanics, and recent immigrants from around the world want good educations for their kids just as much as any one. You may have to put up with the "shocking" indignity of a Saturday night out at Applebee's rather than a charming little Veitnamese bistro now and then. But what's more important to you: that your children have Indian friends, or that they have lots of options for good Indian food? If you live in DC, where are you more likely to have a neighbor who was born in Mexico: Georgetown in the city or Tacoma Park in the suburbs? If you answered the former then you're living with a stereotype passing for social criticism that self-important smart kids were using to denigrate their parents' suburban lifestyles back when LBJ was President. Yes, I know, IN THE AGGREGATE, cities tend to be much more diverse than suburbs. But that's because they tend to be composed of a bunch of relatively homogenous neighborhoods. I live in a city that has about equal numbers of black and white residents. Yet my current neighborhood (Hyde Park) is the only one (out of dozens) in the entire city that has anything close to an equal number of black and white residents. There are white neighborhoods, and black neighborhoods, and Mexican neighborhoods, and even the occaisional Indian or Chinese or Arab neighborhood. But mixed race neighborhoods happen a lot less than the profusion of restaurants and shops of different colors and textures would suggest. Posted by: sd at December 28, 2003 09:47 PM | PERMALINKI wonder where a cat-lover's magazine would say was the best place to live? My house, of course. At least that's what all the cats seem to think. i live in maryland, and i would say that every place they list in
md/va is a horrible place to live. i mean seriously. chantilly,
virginia? i guess it would be ok if dulles international airport wasnt
there. alexandria is ok if you have an income of several million dollars
a year. go ravens Posted by: Olaf glad and big at December 28, 2003 10:46 PM | PERMALINKHey sd, You posted the same "essay" on Matt's site. What do you do? Sit around writing little rants, making sure all the words are spelled correctly before you have the guts to post them? And you manage to inform us that we are all cultured snobs, too. Nice touch. FYI, I live in the suburbs. It sucks. Really. SD, I think the problem with suburbs isn't that their ethnically homogeneous, but that they're boring as fuck. I mean, by their own statistics, Gaithersburg, MD (near my home area) has 11 bars within a 30 mile radius. Compared to a national average of 202! (Actually, I don't quite believe this...surely Bethesda is less than 30 miles from Gaithersburg...do restaurant/bars not count?) But, in any event, Gaithersburg is amazingly dull, and Bethesda, which is certainly more expensive to live in, but also considerably more interesting, and much closer to DC, doesn't make the list...Come on, this list is lame, whatever you think of suburbs. Posted by: John at December 28, 2003 10:54 PM | PERMALINKjohn, im serious about gaithersburg, but i havent been there in about 5 years. back then every white boy in the area was a gangsta wannabe. very pathetic. for a while i would even criticize crap hip hop by saying that the artist had a gaithersburg accent. Posted by: Olaf glad and big at December 28, 2003 11:03 PM | PERMALINKsd mentioned a "west african language he couldnt quite place". it was probably english. i know a lot of people from west africa and almost all of them speak english as their first language. the rest of them speak french. Posted by: Olaf glad and big at December 28, 2003 11:19 PM | PERMALINKit occurs to me that i may be coming across as some sort of baltimore chauvanist. i really am not like that. for instance, i will give the steelers defense props for holding jamal lewis to only 115 yards last night. the steelers d performed extremely well and they can be proud of themselves for the way they handled jamal. kudos to them. Posted by: Olaf glad and big at December 28, 2003 11:33 PM | PERMALINKGeographical determinists may be interested to know that Irvine in California is named after Irvine in the West of Scotland, which is ... a horrible exurban sprawl full of Glasgow overspill. Posted by: dsquared at December 29, 2003 12:37 AM | PERMALINKsd : I'm with John in that the problem with suburbs is not their diversity, but the boredom. The 'homogeneity' that some people refer to with regard to suburbs is not ethnic homogeneity, but lifestyle homogeneity. I live in Hyde Park too (Lake Park and 57th), and I appreciate it for the same reasons you do; the diversity, the ability to hear six languages in a grocery store (though part of that has to do with the university student body). But it's also not boring, and Chicago as a whole never runs out of excitement. But I grew up in a suburb of Miami, in a swath of the city that is at least 80% Hispanic, in a county where the nearly the majority of adults are not US-born, where most of my high school friends had at least one parent from Cuba, Colombia, Puerto Rico, India, Iran, Pakistan... and while it's no doubt edifying for a child, it doesn't make a place fun to live. Miami sucks. The suburbs are worse. There's nothing to do. In the unincorporated suburb where I live - a quarter million people lived there in 2002 - there are *NO* live music venues and one or two bars. There are five-lane streets between gated communities with high walls, and this goes on for miles and miles, until you hit the everglades. They don't even bother to build sidewalks on the streets any more since the distances are too far to walk and cars are so dominant anyway. You say that this area may develop richness and life at some point; you may be right. But I've looked hard, and it sure doesn't have any now. And the depressing thing is that as you move inward, towards Miami's older suburbs, you still find a wasteland. There's something about modern suburban patterns that I think *really do* preclude vibrant development. Anyway, this is a tangent. So my point is that ethnic diversity has little to do with why suburbs suck. It's great to have, but it's the norm in large metropolitan areas anyway. I haven't really thought about either suburbs or urban areas from the perspective of a parent - something which I am many, many years away from - so I can understand how things may be different for families. Posted by: CG at December 29, 2003 12:46 AM | PERMALINKLaguna Niguel, but not Laguna Beach? Please. Posted by: bad Jim at December 29, 2003 01:34 AM | PERMALINKSequim has a definition? I grew up a few miles from that little berg, I never heard anything about this. Posted by: DJW at December 29, 2003 02:26 AM | PERMALINKDJW, I'm with you. The only definition we had for it in my youth was "speed trap". In the late 70's it was assumed to be Californian for "cheap land". I think the Chamber of Commerce has come up with something like "still water" or some such thing. Posted by: digital amish at December 29, 2003 02:54 AM | PERMALINKThe #2 town in the northeast is Ramapo, NY, which is one township over from where I grew up and basically one community. It was actually a great place to be a kid in the 70s -- although I can't say what it would be like now. That's really the point of the suburbs. It's not a place for hip 25 year olds, its a place where your kids grow up. But what's really interesting about the choice of Ramapo is that its has a fairly high black population. The high school was about 50% black years ago, and suburban NY is one of those rare places where everyone sends their kids to public school. Again, I don't live their now, but it seems unlikely that it has suddenly become a white enclave. Posted by: pj at December 29, 2003 02:59 AM | PERMALINKCary, NC?? I lived in the Research Triangle for about five years, and could not go to Cary without feeling physically and mentally ill: nothing but malls, four-lane streets without sidewalks, apartment complexes, prefab housing. No town center or anything cultural; to do anything one had to drive (no public transportation) twenty miles to the mostly-undergraduate-students Chapel Hill. All the employers were in or near Research Triangle Park; massive traffic jams on the interstate every day. And the thing kept growing; more farmland and forest replaced by all that crap month after month, year after year. Of course, now that the RTP economy has collapsed (Cisco, IBM, telcoms) one can likely get housing there for almost nothing. (Hmm... maybe that's what's happening here - the real estate industry wants a "Best Place in America" as an excuse to raise prices) Posted by: Jon Meltzer at December 29, 2003 05:14 AM | PERMALINKThank God they listed Cary. It'll keep all those tight-assed HOA-lovers with their sweaters tied around their necks (those are sleeves, people) from polluting my beloved Durham. Posted by: cosmic grappler at December 29, 2003 06:11 AM | PERMALINKwhat you said, Jon Meltzer. I live in Durham--all I could say was "CARY?? ugh." Woodbury? Plymouth? The two blandest, lily-whitest suburbs in existence? Looks like they were putting together a list of places that actively banned nonwhites from entering their sacred Caucasian precincts. Posted by: Phoenix Woman at December 29, 2003 06:12 AM | PERMALINKIf you see a Land Rover, that's strike one. If it's sporting a Land Rover of Cary ID, that's strike two. If the driver is talking on a cell phone, that's strike three and in Durham, it's legal to shoot them. Posted by: cosmic grappler at December 29, 2003 06:35 AM | PERMALINKMy wife was born in Alexandria, VA, for what it's worth. I actually think that IS one of the nicest places to live. Lots of old stores and shops..old Alexandria has a lot of character going for it. But most of the places on that list seem..well..souless. Very sad.
I just wanted to give a shout out to all the other Durham residents on this thread. Represent, comrades! Posted by: apostropher at December 29, 2003 06:50 AM | PERMALINKrea: "Anchorage is great if you don't mind earth quakes, volcanos, and 9 months of winter..." Hey! It's only 6 months, from first snow to break-up. And we haven't had a good volcanic eruption in over a decade, and even then, it was only once every 3 years. As for earthquakes... I hardly see how that compares unfavorably with Irvine. It's fair to say Anchorage is sub-par in its city-ness. But it is superior in those things which we have in addition to being a "city over 100,000." Our wild backyard, our miles of trails... did I mention our wild backyard? And the $1000 every year from the government. Posted by: Grumpy at December 29, 2003 06:56 AM | PERMALINKAnd now for a comment from a professional city planner: Fascinating comments from all. I haven't read the Money article, but the comment that it reflects its readership makes perfect sense. These are whitebread communities that reflect common, middle-class American values. Although I'm sure selected suburbs of Chicagoland are quite diverse, the reality is that most suburban areas elsewhere are quite homogenous, and perhaps do resemble East Germany at their worst. However, that doesn't make planned communities automatically bad. The ideas of New Urbanism, although not perfect, are an attempt to incorporate the best design ideas of the past into newer communities. Some of them work pretty well, some of them are, well, very Stepford Wives-like. But, to summarize wildly, many of our cities and suburbs suck because of how automobile-based our economy is. Portland, OR is an increasingly interesting exception. But will it make it into MONEY magazine? Doubtful, until they change their criteria to include the availability of public transportation, walkability, bicycle-ability, green consciousness, etc. Posted by: a_retrogrouch at December 29, 2003 07:01 AM | PERMALINKGood God, Thousand Oaks, Calif. is on the list? These people are insane. Posted by: John Gorenfeld at December 29, 2003 07:05 AM | PERMALINKOh, God - and I didn't even mention the Cary Towné Mallé. (National Geographic did a Cary story a couple of years ago as part of their "zip code" series. It got the same response as here, Yglesias, Atrios ... ) Posted by: Jon Meltzer at December 29, 2003 08:39 AM | PERMALINKJon, houses in Cary aren't dirt-cheap now - prices are still going up all over the area. if you want a cheap house, you're going to end up looking in places much farther out than Cary (like Holly Springs, Garner, Sanford, Apex, Youngsville) - small towns that now grow houses instead of cotton or tobacco. and since this part of NC does have the highest growth rate of Hispanic immigrants in the US, right now, once you get into some of those small towns, you're as likely to meet a person speaking Spanish, as you are a person with a southern accent - ie, you start finding the those people who build and maintain all those new houses. and that makes for some good food. Posted by: ChrisL at December 29, 2003 08:43 AM | PERMALINK"As Matt points out, Money magazine's "best places to live" is really nothing more than "places most similar to Money magazine's circulation demographics." Nothing wrong with that, of course," Nothing wrong with that? I take exception to the suggestion that there is nothing wrong with a magazine essentially providing advertising space in its editorial pages. Illustration: I used to subscribe to magazines such as Bon Appetit and Gourmet. Until it became clear beyond peradventure that their articles were nothing more than advertisements. The magazines were not like that when I first started subscribing to them. They didn't become like that (or at least it wasn't so blatant) until after Conde Nast bought them. I can do without spending money to receive things like that, thank you. So please don't suggest that there is "nothing wrong" with a magazine that is essentially nothing more than an advertisement. Particularly if it expects one to pay for it. Posted by: raj at December 29, 2003 08:55 AM | PERMALINKWell, I knew the list was a joke when Anaheim is #2. *Maybe* they meant Anaheim Hills, which is nice in that gated-community sort of way, but Anaheim proper? A nightmare. Miles of strip malls, hotels, crowded streets and Disneyland. The only good things there are the House of Blues (which gets some great bands), The Pond and The Ed, but even they can be awful due to traffic. What I'll never understand is how when people get coupled, they instantly decide that the best thing to do is to move 30 miles away to a Kevin-eque "master planned community". I've seen it happen over and over; in the case of Los Angeles, that means moving to Thousand Oaks--yikes, as John G. says--or Calabasas or Newhall. I've worked with people who did that and they'd spend almost 2 hours on the freeway each way just so they could "live someplace that's quiet". Translation: we want to cocoon and if you want to see us, YOU have to drive all that way to come to us as we're not going to drive in to the city anymore. One couple I know moved back because they found out that--DUH--there's nothing to do in their little town on a Saturday night. Give me a vital urban core with all its problems over a faraway, cookie-cutter environment anyday. Posted by: Jim at December 29, 2003 08:55 AM | PERMALINKi'm a minnesotan -- minneapolis resident -- and i can attest to the dreariness of the three choices from the great white north. the three are difficult to distinguish from one another, huge tracts of malls and shoddy mcmansions. and what ain't mall or mcmansion is getting leveled to become one or the other. sd says that all the cool neighboorhoods in cities have row houses and that when they were built, they too all looked the same. true enough, perhaps. but now that they're getting to be 100+ years old, they have stood the test of time and their craftsmanship has survived along with it. these tracts in the soulless 'burbs will not last 100 years. hell, there was a series of articles in the paper this summer describing the woes of new home owners as their precious mcmansions have become overrun with mold and mushrooms. these areas were not built to last the test of time, but were constructed with the cheapest materials, uncaring workmanship and raised in the quickest possible time. they are a testament to the disposible nature of our culture. when these houses and neighboorhoods begin to decay, the residents will flee farther out and start the whole process over again. more farmland and forests will be scraped away in order allow "exurbanites" to get away from the "bad things" going on in their former neighborhoods. i couldn't afford to build a house like the one i live in now. good lumber, lathe and plaster, radiators. i really just need to replace the windows and i'm set for life. my brother, on the other hand, lives in a characterless suburb north of the twin cities in some toxic tupperware of a house. he lives up there because it's convenient to get to things. i can walk to movie rental stores, grocery stores, my vet, liquor store, hardware store, restaurants, etc. whereas he has to drive everywhere. where's the convenience in that? anyway, money's picks for life in minnesota are as bleak as the weather in february. but then, a banker friend of mine describes money magazine as "the people magazine of the finance world." 'nuff said Posted by: yam at December 29, 2003 09:22 AM | PERMALINKI tell Irvine horror stories. People from Europe and other habitable
places think I'm exaggerating for effect, or simply making things up.
I'm not. Just before I finally got out of Irvine, I spent the summer subletting a friend's trailer in Irvine Meadows West, the carefully hidden trailer park on UCI campus. Irvine Meadows West is this little breath of funky, hand built, motley-cobbled individuality in what is otherwise a monument to the spirit of Albert Speer. It was the pleasantest, most human, most genuinely connected community I ever experienced South of the Orange Curtain. Naturally, UCI has slated it for destruction, to be replaced with a parking structure. "They pave paradise, and put up a parking lot." Of course, Irvine isn't really soulless. It's just that it keeps its soul very strictly zoned. It's all clustered around the parking lot at the Worship Center. But Kevin, your politics and your choosing to live in Irvine has always been a great source of cognitive dissonance for me. Try getting around Irvine without a car for a week, and maybe you'll see what I mean. Irvine is physically arranged to oppress the underprivleged, or, preferably, keep them out altogether. Posted by: Ulrika O'Brien at December 29, 2003 10:11 AM | PERMALINKYo, another Durham, NC resident here. I'm surprised there are so many of us. When I moved to the triangle area the agents kept pushing the shoddy
new tract housing in Cary. Luckily I ignored them and their attempts to
scare me off of Durham with their obliquely racist comments on crime. My politics are similar to, if not more left-leaning than Kevin's, and I also live in Irvine. OK, I used to live in Laguna Beach, and prior to that, Portland, Seattle, London, Los Angeles, and Laguna Niguel. Yes, I'll admit it. When I got married, my husband and I moved to an apartment in Irvine because it was close to work. We hate driving in traffic. And I was afraid to live here, because I heard all of the horror stories about Irvine. But, to be honest, while it may not be the most happening place on the planet, it is as ethnically diverse as some of the larger cities which I've previously called home. I don't think we'd buy a house here, though. If I could afford it, I'd love to own in Laguna Beach, my favorite city in the area. But I really don't mind Irvine for the time being. I can be happy anywhere. I've had miserable times living in London, with a higher per square mile ratio of bars (erm, pubs) than any American city. And I've had exceedingly fun times here in Irvine. And vice versa. Where you live is relative. If you are happy, you can be happy anywhere. And now that most of my free time is spent working on my novel, I don't have much time to go bar-hopping, anyway. And since when do your politics have to mesh with where you live? Posted by: dawn at December 29, 2003 10:49 AM | PERMALINKSnots-dale, AZ? best place to live? ... please... the West's most
Western land-rape is more like it... drought afflicted desert with too
many damned golf-courses sucking up water and too many SUV-driving
wingnuts taking up space Gee, I'm hardly shocked to see where I live, Carmel, Indiana, on the list. Having been to Cary, NC, I can say that the only difference between the two is the weather. I must say I'm surprised that Lawrence, another Indianapolis suburb, but with a paltry 52k income average makes the list, but Fishers, which is probably richer than Carmel, does not. I'm not shocked to see Granger, however, which I've often described to people around Indy as the Carmel of South Bend. It's pretty much where all the Notre Dame grads who don't leave the city wind up living. And those of us in both Carmel and Granger laugh at both Cary and Irvine's piddling 77k annual income. :-) It often surprises people to find out how much wealth there really is in Indiana. I live in the 5th richest county in the *country*. (I also may as well not vote, since I'm like one of 5 Democrats in the county, but that's offtopic.) Posted by: aelph at December 29, 2003 11:32 AM | PERMALINKt any rate...I'd like to supplement the preceeding calpunditers with a quote from Vonnegut. Can't remember what book...but he wrote that his hometown Indiana had become "just another someplace where automobiles live." Vonnegut grew up in Indianapolis, and yeah, we resemble that remark. :-) Posted by: aelph at December 29, 2003 11:36 AM | PERMALINKthat's exactly the way we want it. Breath deeply; drink of the stream; eat of the land... Posted by: johnx at December 29, 2003 12:42 PM | PERMALINKthose of us in both Carmel and Granger laugh at both Cary and Irvine's piddling 77k annual income. I can't speak to the Indiana cities, but $77K goes WAY further in Cary than it does in Irvine. Low cost of living in NC is one of the prime reasons for all of the in-migration. Posted by: apostropher at December 29, 2003 01:09 PM | PERMALINKHey, I grew up in Ramapo Township, Rockland County, New York (no. 2 in the East! Go! Team!) I'm also a Raleigh resident...and a native to boot (I think there are maybe 40 of us left). Cary is every bit as grim as people as people here said. As far as getting real estate here for nothing...LOL!!! It's still enormously overpriced. The cost of housing here is higher than in Atlanta. Still, all things considered, Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill are still pretty nice places to live. But CARY?? Please. Posted by: Elyse at December 29, 2003 01:41 PM | PERMALINKTo follow up on PJ above (who says he grew up in the town next to Ramapo-- #2 in the East, about 30 miles out from New York--), the dominant demographic in the town these days is Orthodox Jews, who by and large do NOT send their children to the public schools... I had no idea so many Orthodox Jews subscribed to Money magazine... Posted by: the talking dog at December 29, 2003 01:42 PM | PERMALINKWhy is everybody being so polite? Anchorage, 9 months of winter, AND NO NEGROES! Isn't that the single most important criterion? Oh, and the great fishing. Money goes in big for fishing. Posted by: the moving finger at December 29, 2003 01:58 PM | PERMALINKIrvine is ok. On the one hand, it's got the master planned thing going on. HOAs are the bane of my existance. And the home prices are out of this world. On the other hand, you have to admit it has some things going for it. Location is one. I'm near Laguna, Newport, all the major freeways, three colleges in town, major theatres (OCPAC, SCR, etc), museums, shopping, good jobs, great schools, very low crime, great libraries, and so on. Irvine gets under my skin at times, believe me. But I've gotta see the glass as half full. Life's too short. Ron Santa Rosa is "an overgrown hicksville infested with cretins driving around in four-wheel drives with their caps turned backward, run by junior mafia capos bought and paid for by a corrupt construction industry, and a dim-brained electorate that votes for whichever candidate sends out the most colorful flyers before election day." Word. Posted by: Dean Wormer at December 29, 2003 02:38 PM | PERMALINKHousing prices in RTP are still going up? I'm shocked ... all the news I read about or hear from people there is that the economy is still very, very bad - even SAS is outsourcing. What's driving the housing market? (Pawnshops?) And are any of the Money ratings credible or are they all as outrageous as Cary's? Posted by: Jon Meltzer at December 29, 2003 03:17 PM | PERMALINKAnd since when do your politics have to mesh with where you live? I guess that depends on whether you support giving money to people who support causes you disagree with. Or living in accordance with your own politics. As to the diversity of Irvine. Not. Except maybe in comparison to, say, Norway. You get the illusion of diversity because Irvine runs seamlessly into more diverse places, like Costa Mesa and Santa Ana. But actual resident diversity? Certainly not income diversity. Which was part of my point. Certainly not transport-choice diversity. Try taking a bus from Costa Mesa to UCI some time. Or changing buses in the Office Land section of town by the airport, where they don't even bother with freaking sidewalks. Thus leaving the pedestrian the happy choice of walking in the road -- those lovely 50 mph high speed arterials Irvine has everywhere -- or on the over-watered, squelchy grass verges. Better not be wearing heels of any sort. Irvine is also the only town I know of where the police stop white people for walking. Walking. Highly suspicious activity, that. Or where citizens form community groups to fight the building of a miniature golf course. Because it might bring in the wrong element. Pretty scary people, those miniature golf players. If this is your idea of diversity, I'd hate to see homogeneity, ya know? I'm still croggling at Ron's suggestion that Irvine has great libraries, unless he's counting UCI, for that matter. Posted by: Ulrika O'Brien at December 29, 2003 04:02 PM | PERMALINKI find the "housing premium ratio" metric to be the most disturbing aspect of the article (although I also groan at many of their selections). Money magazine gives more points to cities where people are willing to spend a higher percentage of their income to live because they consider that an indicator of their desirability. I would hope that a financial magazine would instead encourage fiscal responsibility and not view the fact that many of the residents in a city have overextended their finances to be a positive factor. I find it interesting that they consider this a positive factor after recently highlighting the book "The Two Income Trap", which argues that rapidly rising housing costs as a percentage of a total income are one of the main causes of suburban bankrupcy. Posted by: Rebecca at December 29, 2003 07:49 PM | PERMALINKWeird survey. I live in both the 100,000 + (Sully District of VA) and in the under 100,000 population (Centreville VA). I don't really understand how they broke things up. For instance: The Sully District is a district of Fairfax County. Centreville is part of it. Why should it be counted in that way? I could understand Fairfax since that is the local level of government but not Sully....weird. Posted by: Jim at December 30, 2003 12:54 AM | PERMALINKI used to live in number 25 on the eastern region list. Stepford didn't believe in building additional apartment complexes (aka "low income housing"), so it was next to impossible for the people who worked at the mall, pumped your gas, delivered your mail, poured your drinks, and gave you your restaurant menu to live in the city. We lived just over the city line, so we didn't have to pay the city residential fee, but we were able to take advantage of all the goodies, whatever they were. All the benefits of the zip code without the fee. However, we still had to have pre-approval from the Community Association before painting the house or door. Trash cans could not be visible from the street. NO - I repeat NO - window air conditioners. No in-ground pools. No clutter on the front lawn. If you violated any of these numerous rules you got a nasty-gram from the CA - plus sometimes a fine. It was exactly like that X-Files episode, but without the sewage monster. And the residents didn't mysteriously vanish for sticking a pink flamingo on the lawn. I now live in a tiny New England rural coastal town that didn't even register in MONEY's search engine. Goody. Posted by: Trish Wilson at December 30, 2003 08:56 AM | PERMALINKAnaheim? I don't understand that one, but then again I am fortunate to live in Orange, CA - think Bedford Falls without the snow, or Mr. Potter. I suppose it all comes down to whether you like your house, neighbors, and neighborhood. Best wishes, I grew up in Irvine (and the rest of my immediate family still lives there!), and here's what I can say for it: 1. The public schools were great. East Denmark, Maine, population under 1000 not counting the deer and the occasional moose. I chose this over someplace in Florida for my retirement. It has a general store, JimBob's, a tiny P.O., and a volunteer fire brigade. For schools the kids get to use nearby Fryeburg Academy. Hey, what's wrong with this? I've even got a DSL connection. 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