Best Places to Live
 

Some towns have everything any family could want

When you're young, the big city is a great place to be. There comes a point, though, when you're ready to trade night life for shade trees, sushi for pizza and roommates for children.

It's time to find the place where you'll spend the better part of your adult life -- raising your kids, climbing the career ladder and building your family's future. For most folks who have the option, that means a place that's smaller, safer and greener.

But there's a big difference between a gated McMansion subdivision and a town where you can put down roots and participate in a community that has a broader list of concerns than the height of the hedges. The latter are the kinds of places MONEY looks for in naming America's Best Places to Live.

This year we focused on smaller places, between 7,500 and 50,000 in population, that offered the best combination of economic opportunity, good schools, safe streets, things to do and a real sense of community.

We made a few tweaks to our methodology adding a ranking for ethnic and racial diversity and -- with the cost of housing an issue for so many families - paying extra attention to home prices and property taxes. That meant a few expensive locales that have been on past lists slid in the rankings, while some more affordable places moved up. And the winner is...

http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate...Places-to-Live

Nice as it may be, I'm just not a midwest kind of girl.

I hear ya there.

Looks like a lot of the areas are 300-500k

Vancouver BC is the best place