Another ranking of America's "Best Places to Live" is out, and this one appears to put Raleigh atop the list! Not Raleigh and Durham. Not Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. Just Raleigh. The Web site MSN.com lauds Raleigh for having "the warmth and charm of a small Southern town, while still being large enough to provide all the amenities of big-city living." In one paragraph of praise, it mentions the city by name five times.
MSN.com asked Sperling's Best Places to evaluate the country's 331 metro areas by measures that the Web site considers especially relevant to Americans now, including crime rate, education, home prices and weather. The Web site touts the region's low cost of living, high number of college graduates and "great air quality."
"You have to remember this is a relative thing," Sperling said. "The fact is, most metropolitan areas have what the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] would consider to be less than optimal air quality."
Sperling, whose father, Bert, started Sperling's Best Places 17 years ago, said the firm does various rankings for magazines and companies. "With this one, we were looking for safe, comfortable places that have good unemployment," Sperling said. "The criteria change with every study, so there is a fair amount of fluctuation." Still, area boosters eagerly crow when the region ranks high. The Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce's Web site trumpets a recent triumph: A publication called Employment Review named the Triangle the "No.1 Best Place to Live and Work in America."
Booster groups carefully track the accolades, some of them rather arcane. The Raleigh chamber lists 19 so far this year, including No. 3 on AARP Magazine's list of "best places to reinvent your life" and No. 9 on Forbes.com's list of "best cities for singles."
When magazines use the word city, they usually mean the entire metro area, with some exceptions. In 1997, Utne Reader magazine named Durham one of the country's "most enlightened towns," specifically excluding Raleigh and Chapel Hill.
The rankings are usually regional because Sperling and other firms use statistics the federal government compiles for entire metro areas. Until recently, the Triangle metropolitan statistical area covered Wake, Durham, Orange, Johnston, Chatham and Franklin counties.
But the government redefined the country's metro areas in June and split the Triangle in two: The Raleigh-Cary area includes Wake, Johnston and Franklin counties ; the Durham-Chapel Hill area covers Durham, Orange, Chatham and Person counties.
Sperling's Best Places has begun converting its data to match the new metro areas, ensuring that future rankings will split Durham and Chapel Hill against Raleigh and Cary.
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