Cities Ranked & Rated: More Than 400 Metropolitan Areas Evaluated in the U.S. & Canada

If you have ever considered relocating to another part of the country in the USA, this book is a must. I loved all of the different categories, from cost of living and job opportunities, to quality of life.

If it's a location found in the United States or Canada, odds are that inside this hefty paperback colossus of a book (with a friendly green cover!) you'll find it ranked, rated, profiled, cross-sectioned, detailed, written-up, compared, contrasted, broken down, dissected, described, critiqued, praised, criticized, explained, considered, pondered, investigated, turned inside and out, and then in the end set before you with neat little charts and data that give you a good idea of what living in one of the featured areas would be like. Want to know the chances of a hurricane hitting Fairbanks, Alaska in any given year? It's in there! How about the number of library books per resident in Canton, Ohio? Yup, you can find that out, too. (It happens to be 3.96, according to page 248.) How many Hispanics live in El Paso? Cities Ranked & Rated will enlighten you in mere seconds. Whether you're a realtor, a would-be re-locator, or an average Jane who happens to absorb naked trivia like the parched soil of Las Vegas, Nevada absorbs its meager 4.0 inches of annual rainfall (page 487) this is a reference book for you! Can I hear three cheers for the minutia-obsessed geeks who made all this raw information possible?

This is a great reference manual for anyone that wants, needs, or is forced to relocate. It's also a great book for those grads that might be considering several different geographical areas (guidance counselors and human resource folks need this book). The book ranks about 400 cities throughout the US and Canada. You could use "Cities Ranked and Rated" online, but the book is much, much better. The first 140 pages of the book delve into what, how, and the whys of the data, and believe me there is a bunch of data. I'm betting this is the company from which everyone else gets their data. You've seen those mags that list 10 Best Places to Retire, or 10 Best Places to Raise a Family, etc, etc. The amount of data crammed into the two pages per city is staggering. Everything about weather, taxes, education, outdoor activities, libraries, arts, Starbucks (who would have thought), transportation, demographics, housing, income, healthcare; the list goes on and on. We also own the first edition and this new one was worth the "upgrade."

This 2007 publication is based upon 2006 data and is an update of the 2004 edition. If you are considering relocation or retirement, you will find all the facts and data needed to facilitate an informed decision. I visited several of the cities my wife and I selected based upon "Cities Ranked", found the author's information to be spot on, and ultimately selected Colorado Springs (#18 in 2004 and #4 in 2007) as our new home.