My town borders #1 and #11, but didn't make the list. Maybe because I live here.
I lived in #1 for 20 years until 5 years ago. Interesting choice, and give some insight into how these things calculate I guess.
On the positive side...phenomenal schools, safe, and tons of programs for kids as far as sports, scouts, all of that kind of stuff. And a good hospital with all the associated medical stuff surrounding it is convenient. It is diverse with a high Asian and Indian population.
Flip side...it's absolute suburban hell, nothing but Chipotles and Starbucks and nail salons for as far as the eye can see. The entire place is 0% walkable, designed around landlocked subdivisions of cookie cutter $500-750k home that look exactly the same. There is no central area or town center. The description of it as tight-knit is deceiving...it is not tight knit in terms of a "community" or town as there is no center. The festivals it describes are absolutly nothing. But can be tight-knit within subdivisions I suppose. Tons of traffic. While it's ethnically diverse, its extremely economically homogeneous - upper middle class and wealthy.
It's a good safe place to to raise kids in a fairly exclusive place with great schools and youth programs, but it's boring as shit, the parks it describes are boring. If you are not in that life stage where your entire lifestyle revolves around your kids, which all of us parents do go through, it's hella dull.
I worked in #11. It's better than #1 in a lot of ways, it has small a city center with cool restaurants and shops at least, and it does have regular festival type things there. It's got a decent arts center that does plays and things.
Where I live is much better, even though its adjacent to both. Has a much bigger city center with a ton of good restaurants and bars and a lot of parking. Regular Lots of walkability around the city center...I can walk to Publix, Walgreens, a hardware store, a huge park, and probably 15 restaurants and bars within 10 minutes. About a mile away (still the same town), walkable on a nice day, is one of the most successful upscale live/work retail centers in the country.
I don't care about whether my town makes the list or not, but by the parameters it talks about in the description, it far exceeds the other two, which gives insight into how sketchy the lists can be. I mean, directionally, I'm sure these places are all nice, but it's kind of silly to single out individual places like its that definitive. With two cities in the top 11, it's pretty easy to determine the entire northeast suburbs of Atlanta are pretty attractive.
livability.com
