2009 BEST CITIES: OUR TOP 10

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Reader Comments (8)

Posted by: Alan D at 05/26/2009 03:03:13 PM

We lived in Raleigh for 5 years, this must be wrong. Terrible schools so overcrowded they must go year round. Highest gas tax in the area and still building toll roads around the city. Perpetual water shortage when people used less water the city raised rates. We moved back to Arizona due to the low pay scale for Nurses. There is a tax or fee on everything you look at, only property tax was reasonable...

Posted by: Daryle at 05/26/2009 04:19:05 PM

Albuquerque is a desert. You can't grow anything. It's nowhere. It's outgrown its roads. Many $'s wasted on marketing (why do they need marketing?). Windy as all get out. Infrastructure, like many cities out west is bad. A city hall that's nonresponsive. A high crime rate. So how the heck does a city with all of this going for it, end up ranked 2nd for best cities? Rank indeed.

Posted by: RSRob at 05/26/2009 04:55:01 PM

I moved to Raleigh from Boston 2 years ago and agree that Raleigh is a great place to work and live. However, it is my opinion that the school assignment issue for Wake County is done very poorly. The county says it gets rave reviews from around the country for its innovation but when pressed for data that demonstrates that its efforts re: integration (via an onoing dynamic school assignment process) pay off in terms of better scores, etc. no data can be produced. I believe the constant moving around of kids is a major headache - and so do alot of other parents.

Posted by: JD at 05/27/2009 03:38:33 PM

Gee, what a nice picture of the Flagstaff skyline.

Posted by: JP at 05/29/2009 12:39:03 PM

You are way off-base about Flagstaff. The cost of living is very high and the pay low. I left there because few could afford my reasonably priced skill, dentistry. The pop. you cite is for the entire county, Coconino, which is the 2nd largest (in geographic size) in the US. Half of that pop. lives outside the reasonable range of utilizing services in Flagstaff. The pop is just barely 60,000. The adjacent low-income Navajo reservation, with 50% unemployment, is a major part of the local population. Many of the adjacent towns are 60-100 miles away, only come to Flag 2-3 times pre year. I lived there 11 years, be wary of this glowing report. Thought Kiplingers got their facts straighter than this.

Posted by: NAU Student at 05/29/2009 06:39:47 PM

Flagstaff is a beautiful place to live and certainly has no lack of creative minds, but Flagstaff has too been hit by the hard economic times. Being a college town and a popular summer vacation spot for Phoenix residents, cost of living is very high and pay for most jobs is just above Arizona's minimum wage. A lot of places hire college students, most of whom use their pay for partying, while their schooling, room and board is paid for by parents or scholarships. And the housing market is still horribly inflated, what with many houses in Flagstaff being the second home of people from hotter climates. Right now there are many stores going out of business, hours being cut at others and the school is ready to implement drastic budget cuts before the beginning of the coming school year. Tourism, Flagstaff's second largest industry, has also dropped. Normally by this time of year you can't find a hotel room for under $60/night or a parking spot in historic downtown, but currently it looks a bit like a ghost town, at least comparatively. In summary, Flagstaff is a beautiful place to visit, great views and so much history, but until the economy picks up, it's a difficult place to live.

Posted by: beeper812 at 05/30/2009 01:05:28 PM

What's the attraction with slide shows? Spending ten seconds waiting for the name of a town to crop up...and waiting another ten seconds for another...and so on. It's just me, I suppose. I'm an old goober.

Posted by: Andy Richardson at 10/13/2009 07:24:35 PM

What factors did they use to come up with this list? They need to go back to the drawing board...Information like Athens GA having jobs... not true... there are more foreclosures in GA than any other states. Alabama being in the number one spot... please, education there is a joke and there are so many people living out of shacks, it looks like you are in a third world country. It may be true for one particular city but not for the overall state...

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