From Movoto:

very year, hundreds of thousands of home buyers are moving to the country’s most booming metropolitan areas. For those that don’t want to deal with the traffic and other hassles of big city living, there are the suburbs. These smaller cities and towns offer proximity to everything their larger neighbors have to offer, while oftentimes being safer and less crowded.

For those looking to move there—whether from out of the area or from the cities they border—the Movoto Real Estate Blog has put together this ranking of the 10 best suburbs in America, based on criteria including cost of living, education, and amenities. At the top of the list is Westerville, OH, a suburb of Columbus, OH. The rest of the list is comprised of cities in states including Texas, California, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Tennessee:

1. Westerville, OH
2. Plano, TX
3. Georgetown, TX
4. Round Rock, TX
5. Cedar Park, TX
6. Cupertino, CA
7. Matthews, NC
8. Cornelius, NC
9. Newton, MA
10. Germantown, TN

To rank these cities, we relied on a set of criteria used to measure how safe, affordable, and—ultimately—livable they are. Before we talk a bit about each suburb, let’s look at how we decided which were the best.

How We Did It

We looked at the top 25 most populous cities in the country, then determined the three largest suburbs of each city for a total of 75 suburbs. Then, we ranked each suburb across several criteria, which included:

  • Amenities (shopping, dining, entertainment, etc.)
  • Cost of living (percent above or below national average)
  • Crime (percent above or below national average)
  • Education (student to teacher ratio compared to national average)
  • Employment (income and unemployment compared to national average)

Once we had that information—from sources including the U.S. Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics—we were able to see how each city did in the individual criteria (on a scale of 1 to 75, with 1 being best) and also on average to give them an overall score.

 

To read more, click here.