These are the best places to raise a family
2015-06-09When it comes to picking the best place to raise your family, good schools and a safe environment often top the list.
The website breaks it down by cities, towns and suburbs, giving the biggest weightings (20% apiece) to ... schools and safety. So Plano, Texas, near the northern edge of the Dallas area, tops the list of cities, while Carmel, Ind., outside Indianapolis, heads the list of towns, and Scarsdale, N.Y., a tony New York City suburb, leads the third list.
Perhaps not surprisingly, many of these communities tend to be on the wealthier side — think, Cupertino, Palo Alto and Mountain View in California, for example. University towns such as Boulder, Colo.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and Cambridge, Mass., also rated highly. But so did Bentonville, Ark., home to Wal-Mart Stores Inc.WMT, -0.62% .
MarketWatch has mapped the top 20 in each category. California, home to 12% of the nation’s population, takes half the spots among cities and six among towns. Five of the top 20 suburbs are in New York.
A city is a principal municipality in an urbanized area (as defined by the Census Bureau) having more than 100,000 people, while suburbs are those that aren’t considered a principal city. Meanwhile, a town is like a city but with fewer than 100,000 people or is an “urbanized cluster,” also defined by the Census Bureau, of less than 50,000 people.
Still, said Mark Tressler, vice president of product development at Pittsburgh-based Niche, there’s more geographic diversity than usual in the list.
“For example, for the Best Towns for Families list, we see much less domination by California and Colorado as we do in the Best Towns in America list,” he said. “The top 30 has towns from 17 states from all regions of the country: Indiana, California, Washington, South Dakota, Massachusetts, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Tennessee, Utah, Illinois, Alabama, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York. We think that’s pretty powerful and is a testament to how many great places there are across the U.S.”
1. Carmel, Ind.
2. San Ramon, Calif.
3. Redmond, Wash.
4. Snoqualmie, Wash.
5. Cupertino, Calif.
Here are the top 5 cities:
1. Plano, Texas
2. Santa Clara, Calif.
3. Naperville, Ill.
4. Round Rock, Texas
5. Carlsbad, Calif.
And the top 5 suburbs:
1. Scarsdale, N.Y.
2. Narbeth, Penn.
3. Upper Uwchlan Township, Penn.
4. Great Neck Estates, N.Y.
5. Bronxville, N.Y.
In assessing schools, Niche says it goes beyond state test scores to include SAT and ACT scores as well as the pass rate for advanced-placement classes, among other factors.
Among Niche.com’s other criteria access to libraries, day care and grocery stores — all items that young families care about. It doesn’t get into the cost of a baby sitter, but UrbanSitter says the most expensive city is San Francisco, at an average of $15.93 an hour for one child and just over $21 for three.
Stick to the library.
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