From Men’s Journal:
Start packing. There’s a town in the following pages for every interest — and for every budget. And this year we made great strides in how we came up with our rankings — including more data (almost 50 variables in all, from stress levels to the number of bars per capita), newer data (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, and other official sources), and a greater emphasis on active living (we’ve weighted certain variables, such as the amount of wilderness nearby, more heavily). But a few things remain the same: The west still dominates; college towns sure rate highly; and, if you move to anyplace on this list, you’ll have no excuse for getting bored.
Number one overall: Boulder, Colorado (Flagstaff, Arizona, is second.)
Best big city: San Diego
Best adventure town: Bend, Oregon
Least stressful: Santa Fe
Healthiest: Portland, Maine
Smartest: Minneapolis
I’ve been contemplating moving my family to either Albuquerque or Tucson, so in the interest of being objective about it, I did some research on best places to live. Ironically, one of the places that turned up in an MSN article from 2003 was Punta Gorda, which was flattened by one of the many hurricanes which hit Florida last year. :-/ C’est la vie…