Still better than Dallas
Which Texas city ranks 24 spots higher than Houston on America's Best Citieslist?
Plano ranked No. 11
Austin fell in at No. 12
Our own city ranked No. 35. Would you have placed it higher?
Businessweek.com, with the help of Bloomberg Rankings, released its first "America's 50 Best Cities" list, and you may be surprised which Texas towns made it to the top.
Houston was ranked the 35th best place to live in the United States. Although the Bayou City has nearly four times as many restaurants, museums and libraries as top ranked city Raleigh, N.C., and a whopping 49,643 park acres per 1,000 residents, our high rate of poverty and violent crime, as well as our low education level, affects our placement on the list.
Several cities in the Dallas Fort-Worth metropolis made the cut: Irving — former home of the Dallas Cowboys' since-imploded Texas Stadium — ranked No. 50. Dallas ranked No. 42, but would have placed closer to the top were it not for the "low median household income and poor air quality." Plano's wealth placed the suburb at No. 11 on the list, thanks to its status as the corporate headquarters of Frito-Lay, J.C. Penney and Rent-A-Center.
Austin fell in at No. 12 on the list. With great live music and nightlife, low unemployment, clean air and lots of green space, Texas' capitol would have made it in the top 10 if it weren't for the city's high rate of property crimes.
Low unemployment and an abundance of restaurants earns San Antonio a place at No. 40, despite its astronomical property crime rate.
Businessweek.com factored the rankings using a number of quality-of-life metrics, including restaurants, museums, air quality, parks, colleges and professional sports teams. The magazine added that data to education level, poverty percentages, crime rates and air quality indices to determine the placement of each city on the list.
Look through the full list here. Would you have ranked the cities differently?
