23 Measures: Rating Suburbs For Quality Of Life

"For generations now, the American Dream has meant a home in the suburbs. But today, there are so many to choose from. Which ones offer the best overall quality of life? The Kansas City Star newspaper set to find out. The result was a comprehensive analysis of suburban life. The newspaper studied suburbs as places to live and rated them on 23 statistical measures, from school test scores to neighborhood diversity scores, from crime rates to property tax rates. The 23 measures were grouped into 9 categories that were then weighted, based on results of an opinion poll that asked suburbanites what they considered important to their quality of life. This found, for instance, that they considered safety to be twice as important as commuting and traffic. In the end, the paper did stories counting down the top 10 suburbs, highlighting a different theme in each suburb, and presented a full list of how all suburbs ranked. This was done to help residents understand what makes a good suburb and so they could come to know disparate parts of their metropolitan region better."