Pacifica Named One of America’s Best Suburbs

The Movoto Real Estate Blog has put together a ranking of the 75 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. Pacifica comes in at No. 18 sharing a three-way tie for the ranking with Stokie, IL and Carmel, IN. The rest of the list is comprised of cities in states including Texas, California, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. The top 10 are:

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, Movoto relied on a set of criteria used to measure how safe, affordable, and—ultimately—livable they are. They 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, they 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 they had that information—from sources including the U.S. Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics—they 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.

Pacifica ranked high for good schools, low crime and high employment. Not surprisingly, however, Pacifica lost points for its high cost of living, one out of five towns on the list considered to have a cost of living way above the national average.

To see the complete list, click here.