Finally, L.A. Gets Some Respect in List of Best Cities

Los Angeles has seen much mud slung in its direction over the years.

It has been called “the queen city of plastic” by Norman Mailer and “19 suburbs in search of a city” by an anonymous quipster.

So it came as something of a surprise to local boosters to see the city perched in the top 10 of Money magazine’s annual list of America’s best places to live.

In fact, after No. 1-ranked Danbury, Conn., California dominated the head of the list with San Francisco in fifth place, the Los Angeles-Long Beach area coming in seventh, Orange County in eighth and nine other cities in the top 100. San Diego fell from 22 to 52.

“That’s wonderful,” said Ray Remy, president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. “It’s a reflection of the economic center that Los Angeles has become.”

In last year’s ranking, Los Angeles weighed in at 17th while Orange County was 10th and San Francisco was 12th. New York, meanwhile, jumped from 82nd last year to 19th.

The difference this year was a change in preferences among the group of Money subscribers surveyed to determine the most desired attributes in a region, said Debra Wishik Englander, co-author of the Money piece in the August issue.

Last year, readers were particularly interested in a low crime rate, which boosted such areas as Beaver County, Pa., which was fourth last year and 25th this year, and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Pa., which was ninth last year and 114th this year, she said.

This time around, “they still cared about low crime but they cared about other things, including housing costs, the local economy, health care, arts and education,” Englander said.

The other spots on this year’s top 10 list were Central New Jersey, second; Norwalk, Conn., third; Long Island, N.Y., fourth; Nashua, N.H., sixth; Boston, ninth, and Bergen-Passaic, N.J., 10th.

The final rankings of 300 areas were determined by collecting government and private data on the nation’s 300 largest metropolitan statistical areas as well as information from Places U.S.A., a software program that helps people pick where to live that is produced by Fast Forward, a firm in Portland, Ore. Staffers then visited the top and bottom 10 on the list.

Los Angeles was tied with Long Island for the best ranking in arts and with San Francisco for leisure. “It’s kind of ironic,” Englander said, “but in all our top 10 cities the housing costs are outrageous.”

“Clear to me is that the Los Angeles metropolitan area has made just a quantum leap in the area of art and culture,” Remy said. “Part of it is due to, I think, the economic vitality that we have to support these institutions.”

But, Remy added, “we can do a little better job cleaning our air.”

Rounding out the bottom of the list were Yuba City, Calif., Benton Harbor, Mich., Jackson, Mich., and Atlantic City, N.J.

Last year’s ranking, the first time Money attempted the feat, produced some controversy, particularly in Flint, Mich., which garnered the 300th spot.

The citizens of Flint “were pretty steamed up,” Money Managing Editor Landon Y. Jones wrote in the August issue. Some even burned copies of the magazine in front of a cheering crowd.

This year, Flint moved up to 293.