Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #85149 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 662 pages

Amazon.com
Looking to live somewhere where houses are cheap? Head to Waterloo-Cedar Falls, Iowa, where the average home costs $75,700, and annual property taxes for that home are about $960. Perhaps a good job market is a higher priority. In that case, pick Phoenix, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; or Riverside, California, as they top the list of places projected to have the highest-percentage increase in new jobs by 2005. Most of those jobs, by the way, are expected to have above-average pay. This and other detailed information can be found in the sixth edition of Places Rated Almanac, a helpful resource for people thinking of relocating as well as those with a desire to learn about cities and towns. Metropolitan areas are rated in nine categories: costs of living, job outlook, transportation, education, health care, crime, the arts, recreation, and climate. But don't go looking for statistics on Podunk--the focus remains on 354 metro areas, metro defined as a city or urbanized population of at least 50,000, located in a county with a total population of at least 100,000.

Places Rated is laced with intelligent and, unexpectedly, witty writing. The whole concept of judging places, the author notes, may seem the utmost of brass. "Yet everyone does it, privately. Some suspect that culture in Omaha or Des Moines or Saskatoon is a contradiction. Others surmise that daily life in Miami consists of surviving drug-trade shoot-outs..." Organized intelligently, Places Rated acknowledges that "livability" and "quality of life" are moving targets. Livable for whom? The artist who wants mountain vistas? The entrepreneur who wants low taxes and no red tape? With these limitations in mind, the book ends with a chapter titled "Putting It All Together," where the reader is invited to rate cities with a customized list of priorities. Arriving at your customized list, however, requires answering 72 questions that force you to decide once and for all what you value most--a low cost of living or good school districts or mild winters or some other criterion. And should you find that climate matters most, head for Santa Barbara, California, where winters and summers are mild and natural hazards are few, and stay away from Rochester, Minnesota, unless you're willing to endure 35 days when it's 0 degrees Fahrenheit, and 165 days of 32 degrees Fahrenheit, annually. --John Russell

Review
"Part fodder for trivia contests, part handbook for people and businesses seeking new homes, this perennial best seller offers everything."   —The New York Times

"A ratings bible for companies and people looking to move to America's nicest cities."  —Denver Post

"[Rating places] goes back to the venerable Places Rated Almanac, which has surveyed metropolitan areas since 1981."  —Los Angeles Times

"The most famous of the 'quality of life' guidebooks."  —Orange County Register

"One of the most well-established and popular sources for measuring quality of life."  —Newsday

"Every two years the publication of Places Rated Almanac sets off a round of preening from mayors of winning cities and huffing and puffing from the losers.”  —The Times


"A splendid compendium of facts about nearly every urban area in the United States. The armchair geographer can spend hours, perhaps days, browsing through this statistical smorgasbord and uncovering nuggets such as those mentioned here."  —Omaha World Herald

"Place ratings can be traced to the publication in the U.S. of Places Rated Almanac (1981). This best selling publication . . . appealed to companies interested in business or family moves."  —Urban Studies

Book Info
Provides a collection of interesting, odd, and useful information about metropolitan areas and rates and ranks the metro areas on nine factors that greatly influence the quality of place: costs of living, job outlook, transportation, education, health care, crime, the arts, recreation, and climate. Softcover.

Customer Reviews

List-o-philia!
As long as Americans are in love with lists and insecure about keeping up with their neighbors (in some far off state in this case)...books like this will continue to prosper, regardless of whether they actually make sense.

I found the weather section less than helppful as it didn't give any real information (days above 90 degrees snowfall etc) but opted for a 50 page breakdown of "regional weather environments"??

Not taking into concideration that weather can change signifigantly between neighboring cities just a few dozen miles apart.

I wrote them to express my dissatisfaction with this and other aspects and I was told that a new edition will be on shelves next year and that I should just buy the next one and hope for the best.

I donated the book to my local library.

A must-read when you're going to move
My family is in process of moving, and this book has been a great help in figuring out where is a good place, and where isn't based on what we think is important (crime rates, school systems, etc) and things we don't think are important. Other lists from magazines are loaded with "totals" of what they feel are most important, but that doesn't mean it's relevant or most important to us. With the breakdowns by category of the "best places" and why, it makes it easier to understand, too. And, it's nice to see that where I grew up rates so well, too. The only thing I thought that should be added or different: growing up in the Northeast, within an hours' drive, there are many other rated regions that rated better (or worse) than others. For example, it would have been nice to see that although some areas didn't have a high concentration of universities, that within a 30-mile drive, there actually were a lot, might help people who aren't as familiar with the areas as some that lived there or grew up there.

Great Resource
I ordered this book to give me some idea of where I wanted to move to and settled down for retirement. It was very informative with a lot of great information. It gives you a wide range of info from traffic, schools, jobs, housing, cost of living, things to do, etc. This is a very useful resource if you are moving or retiring to another area or state. Excellent research tool!