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Fort Collins Ranked Best Place To Live

Posted by: Christian Peralta Madera

25 July 2006 - 2:00pm

Money Magazine's annual ranking of the best places to live highlights Americans' desire for big-city amenities, small-town charm, affordable housing, and green space.

Fort Collins, Colorado, has it all -- at least according to the editors of Money Magazine, who released their annual ranking of the Best Places to Live in the United States. Nestled high in the Rocky Mountains, the city of 128,000 people has good schools, low crime, high-paying jobs, and plenty of outdoor recreation opportunties -- all high on most Americans' wish list.

Other cities that made the list include Naperville, IL,, Scottsdale, AZ, Sugar Land, TX, Boise, ID, Columbia/Ellicott City, MD, and Cary, NC.

Among cities with a population over 300,000, Colorado Springs, CO was the winner. Runners-up include Austin, TX, Mesa, AZ, Raleigh, NC, and San Diego, CA.

Full Story: Best Places to Live 2006
Source: Money Magazine, July 23, 2006
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The Press Loves Rankings

Submitted by Charles Siegel on Wed, 07/26/2006 - 11:03.

For some reason, the press loves this sort of ranking article. It always works the same way: to appear objective, you have to come up with a set of criteria, and the criteria always leave out factors that are very important but hard to rank.

They do it themselves and the love to report on it when groups do it. If you wrote a study of the 10 worst rankings in the press during 2006 and you made this survey #1, you could probably get lots of newspapers to report it.

If they say that New York and Wichita are about equally livable, that alone shows that the have failed to come up with objective criteria. People who love New York might hate Wichita, and vice versa.

Charles Siegel

Objective Criteria

Submitted by Michael Patrick on Thu, 07/27/2006 - 13:37.

It's doubtable that these lists are consistently compiled properly and objectively -- they don't typically release their exact formulas and methodology -- but certainly the use of objective criteria could correct misconceptions about places by showing that some unfairly maligned cities and others described in the rosiest terms are really not very different when you look at the facts. But then, it's unlikely in these rankings that the weights given to all the variables perfectly match how most people would weigh them.

Fort Collins

Submitted by jcshepard on Wed, 07/26/2006 - 10:58.

I used to work in Fort Collins, and agree that it should be considered the best all-around city in America. Since the dot.com crash, tho, jobs have become mighty scarce. Adjacent suburbs are also using "urban renewal" incentives to build big box sprawl on greenfields, poaching sales tax revenue and plunging the City into multi-million dollar annual budget cuts.

Patently ridiculous

Submitted by BeyondDC on Wed, 07/26/2006 - 05:33.

Completely absurd. These may be the best places to live for one narrow demographic with its own narrow needs, but any claim beyond that is worse than disingenuous.

High Population = Immediate Disqualification

Submitted by Michael Patrick on Tue, 07/25/2006 - 15:53.

When I read this last week, one thing that really stood out to me was the fact that "Best Places to Live" systematically omitted all cities over 300,000 in population. The feature gave a separate list ranking big cities but inexplicably disqualified from the master list 300,000-plus cities, which appeared on a separate list. According to the "how we picked" page, the main list, despite the title, is all about "livable locales that combine the best of city and suburban life" -- not very objective. It could very well be that the members of this "10 Best" list still be the 10 best if big cities were counted, but we will not know because the magazine considers high population an overwhelming flaw.

Additional High Population Thought

Submitted by Michael Patrick on Wed, 07/26/2006 - 10:48.

As an addendum to my earlier comment, I see New York City is in the top "10 Best Big Cities." 8.1 million residents -- hugest city in America by population, very old by American standards, the name of which having both positive and negative connotations to different people. By the survey's logic, though, population alone should make the city sink like a cannonball to the bottom of the list -- yet there it is in the top 10, next to Wichita, which barely exceeds the 300,000 mark. Again, it appears population itself is not a restraint on quality of life.

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