It sort of looks like the criteria was “upper middle-class white flight destinations”.
The list seems to be focusing on things like good schools/infrastructure, high (but not too high!) median income, predictable stripmall amenities and general whiteness.
I would have, in the past, said that this was absolutely true of Naperville (the city on the list that I know well). But, in the past couple of decades, there’s been a significant influx of Asian Americans (particularly South Asians), and Asians are now 22% of the city’s population. It’s still only 5% Black and 7% Hispanic, however.
That’s pretty true of Naperville. Naperville has a nice riverwalk area, a decent city center, and a bit of character. It’s not as bland as most suburbs in the Chicago area, but it still has a reputation for being a bit boring. It’s one of the last places I personally would be interested in living around here, but I can see why folks like it. It’s your typical pleasant upper-middle-class suburb.
Sounds like the top criterion was “incredibly dull”.
I live in coastal North Carolina, a couple of hours away from Cary, so not too near. The backronym I’ve heard for the town is Containment Area for Relocated Yankees. There’s a perception that the research triangle has attracted educated outsiders who have driven home prices up to where the local population can no longer afford to live there. I have no idea how true it is, but it’s common.
These lists are mostly meaningless but fun to discuss.
Here is a 2022 list (from U.S. News & World Report):
ETA: No city appears on both top tens
mmm
In the Twin Cities, Edina has the reputation of being wealthy and snobby, to the point we have an epithet- “cake-eater” for them. But there’s probably just as many wealthy people living in Eden Prairie, more “new money” as opposed to “old money”. It’s typical low crime, McMansion, cul-de-sac, miles from the nearest store suburbia but with a lot of mature trees around. I’d gladly live there if I could afford it.
The Asian population of Sugar Land has been increasing for decades, and sits at 38.4% in the last census.
Objection – “Raleigh/Durham” is not a city, it’s an airport. The two are 25 miles apart. And they haven’t effectively grown into each other like Minneapolis/St. Paul or Dallas/Ft. Worth, there’s plenty of unincorporated land (and a major state park) between them.
Yeah, these days, “middle/upper-middle class” flight might be a better description. I was in Houston to shoot an Indian wedding in March and all the at-home events were held in the father-of-the-bride’s house in Sugar Land. It seems to be the same in the Chicago area: the nicer suburbs tend to have mostly white populations with a sizable Asian (particularly South Asian) contingent.
If you were asked to speculate where the Cleavers or Bradys live, these are the kind of places that would crop up.
That whole part of the Houston area has been pretty ethnically diverse for decades. For a long time, the Chinese and Vietnamese populations were centered in Alief, and the Indians and Pakistanis were more in Sugar Land/Fort Bend County.
I imagine that with the white flight out of Alief in the 1980s and 1990s (mostly westward), there was some Asian flight as well, and it apparently went toward Sugar Land.
But you’re right- it does seem to be middle class/upper-middle class flight more than specific ethnic flight- anyone with any kind of money fled Alief and Sharpstown (about a decade apart), and now both areas are low income, high crime, and predominantly hispanic/black.
Sugar Land is one of those areas that grew dramatically and for the moment has a lot of wealthy-ish people, and not a lot of the problems that come with being a city/area that large. So it tends to score high on those sorts of surveys/tests.
This is where your objection goes.
mmm
Minneapolis and St. Paul are contiguous to each other, but the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth are even further apart than Raleigh and Durham (~30 miles).
Raleigh and Durham are part of the same Combined Statistical Area (along with Cary), and the same Designated Market Area for media, such as television; they may be separate and distinct cities, but demographers consider them to be part of the same market area.
Besides being highly subjective, lists of Best Places To Live tend to vary a lot between whoever compiles them and over time.
Their main utility is in allowing listed cities/communities to put up signs or otherwise publicize their wonderfulness. It’s like when restaurants boast of getting awards - should we be impressed that you got a Top Choice citation from Modern Restaurateur (or the Daily Bugle’s Hot Places To Live) in 2007?
Sure. I am not saying it is a good list, or bad. As a Canuck my knowledge of the US is limited. What struck me was the modest number of these places I had heard of (even compared to the 2022 list.).
Canadian lists by similar magazines tend to highlight pleasant suburbs which are somewhat dull and have good amenities. But how many Americans have heard of (say) Burlington, Ontario?
I live near here (I live on the DC side of Maryland, Columbia is the Baltimore side), I’ve heard it mentioned as a wonderful place, but I really don’t get it based on my visits there. Maybe I’ve never visited the nice bits on my handful of brief visits but it seems like a completely generic Maryland “exurb” to me, no better or worse than any of the generic commuter towns between DC and Baltimore.
There are a couple of very nice breweries but they are located in generic out of town strip malls, and you could literally be in a micro brewery pretty much anywhere in the US.
Fort Collins is “close enough to Denver that I don’t have to live in Denver”. Which actually covers a fairly large geographic area; there are a surprising number of people that live in Cheyenne, Wyoming for the same reason…
Pretty close, but not exactly. They do in fact include some amount of “diversity” as a plus for a city. So, as people have pointed out on this thread, most of these cities actually have a substantial non-white, usually Asian, population.
I have family in Columbia, MD and I agree with this assessment. It is not peculiar in any way. It is your typical white flight suburb within a commute distance from Baltimore or D.C. and like all such suburbs the cost of living is high. It is filled with liberals who live there because they want their children to go to “good schools” or “A rated schools” which seemingly means few if any minority students, but they would never admit it.
IOW, nothing fancy, nothing special. I don’t know why it would make any list except “What is the most typical suburban bedroom community in the country?” list.