Best city to raise a family?

Well, Des Moines has done it again.

They've come out on top of a list of "best"--this time, the "Best City to Raise a Family." It comes from Forbes Magazine.

I have to say, as an aside, this is fairly clever on Forbes' part as the magazine repeatedly gets quoted for these rather arbitrary rankings, first, and second, Americans love rankings and competitions, if even phony ones. Also, they only rank the "top ten", it seems, so we have no way of knowing where Kansas City ranks.

So hats off to you, Des Moines--great job.

The cities were ranked on cost of living, crime rate, commuting, household income, home ownership, homeowner costs and education.

There are some notable points of this list:

First, New York State was the one state that had more ranked cities in it than any other: Buffalo-Niagara Falls (10), Albany/Schenectady/Troy (9), Syracuse (4) and Rochester (3). For one state, that's fairly outstanding. New York State gets kudos, too.

Second, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh-7 and Harrisburg-2) and Utah (Ogden-6 and Provo/Orem-5) each had 2 top ten rankings. Not shabby.

Third, I'm thinking our local political and city leaders shouldn't maybe mosey up to Des Moines in the near future, to see what they're doing right that we could emulate.

Fourth, I think we should try, if anything, shrinking our city limits so the core of the city is valued more and we don't keep sprawling. It hurts us maintaining all of it (sewers, streets, schools, etc.) and makes commuting that much worse, too.

Finally, I know our local crime rate hurts us, of course, in this ranking but I'm wondering if those same local political and city leaders (hear that, Mr. and Mrs. Mayor, etc?) might look at these and, after addressing our most pressing problems (especially the shootings, murders, murder rate, drive-by killings, etc.), they might not try to get us higher on these categories, for our own benefit.

That would make this list a valuable assist to us, at least here in town, so we could make this a better place to live yet.


Link to original post:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/04/best-places-family-lifestyle-real-estate-cities-kids_slide.html?partner=yahoore