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Friday, March 05, 2010

Best Affordable Suburbs in America 2010

Business Week has released their study of the best affordable suburbs in the United States. One can navigate the report's website by clicking on the map of the states. Each state has a brief profile of the best affordable suburb.

The criteria was chosen by "the selected suburbs were limited to towns within 25 miles of the most populated city in the state, with populations of 5,000 to 60,000, median family incomes of $51,000 to $120,000, and lower-than-average crime rates. We weighted a variety of factors including livability (short commutes, low pollution, green space), education (well-educated residents, high test scores), crime (low personal and property crime), economy (high job growth, low unemployment rate, high family income), and affordability (median household income, cost of expenditures). Affordability was most heavily weighted in our calculations. We penalized places with bad weather, a lack of racial diversity, high divorce rates, and few children."

I understand most of the variables except racial diversity. Who cares if the suburb is overwhelmingly ethnic Vietnamese or practically an enclave of Sweden?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Gotta be PC, even if its totally irrelevant and may actually decrease safety.