Daily Blog: St. Augustine and Other "Best Places"

When U.S. News and World Report revealed their ten best places to live for 2009, size was clearly not a major factor. Among the list were:

St. Augustine, Florida -- 13,000
Auburn, Alabama -- 50,000
La Crosse, Wisconsin -- 50,000
Loveland, Colorado -- 56,000
Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania -- 20,000
San Luis Obispo, California -- 45,000

Six of the ten cities had populations of the five-figure variety. (The other four were Albuquerque, Austin, Boise and Durham.)

Among the determining factors were crime rate, strong economy, low living cost and “plenty of fun things to do.”

Cities such as these six should serve as encouragement to other four- and five-figure cities to remember bigger is not necessarily better.

Read more at U.S. News and World Report, July 2009, p. 32