Money Magazine just named their Best Places to Live. The top 10 list includes cities with populations between 50,000 and 300,000. Beginning with 823 cities they narrowed down the list by throwing out cities with high crime rates and low projected job growth. Cities with statistical data showing more than 90% of the population being of a single race were also disqualified as Money wanted to highlight cities with a strong ethnic diversity.
From there over 60 different elements were considered when determining rankings for this list. Extra weight was given for cities who had high scores on the financial criteria Money ranked. Reporters were then sent to the top 50 cities so that residents could be interviewed helping narrow the list even further.
Plano Texas came in #3 on the list boasting the lowest crime rate of any Texan city. Plano also scored well because of their corporate tax incentives which have helped to bring a lot of big companies (and jobs) into the area. For example Toyota is moving their North American headquarters into Plano within the next year. Multiple other large companies are also making plans to open offices here and there are an expected 20,000 additional jobs coming to Plano over the next five years due to this growth.
Although not in the Top 10 three other Texans cities were listed as great places to live by Money Magazine. Austin’s suburb Pflugerville was just two spots shy of the Top 10 list. This small town of less than 60,000 showed a great community vibe centered around their high school football team. Euless another suburb of the Dallas-Fort Worth area was rated at #18. Spring Texas which is just outside of Houston came in at #44.
See the full list of Money Magazine’s Best Places to Live to find out which other cities made it into their Top 10.
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