America's Top 10 "Dream Towns"

Robyn Erlenbush
CRS, GRI, CRB, Broker Owner
Phone: (406) 586-1321
Send me an email

America may be a metropolitan nation, but most of us don't seem very happy about it.

A total of 252 million people -- 83.5 percent of all Americans -- live in metropolitan areas. That includes 164 million in the 51 biggest metros, the ones with populations above 1 million.

Yet a substantial number of these residents of big cities and inner-ring suburbs don't have their hearts in it. They would prefer to live on the suburban fringe or in small-town America, as repeatedly shown by surveys during the past decade:

• A 2005 poll by Where to Retire magazine found that only 8 percent of respondents were planning to spend their golden years in urban centers. The other 92 percent were opting for retirement in rural towns or suburbs.
   
• Thirty-nine percent of Americans surveyed by Adweek in 2002 chose small towns as the best places to live, citing "sense of community" and "friendlier people" as the key reasons. Suburbs and big cities were picked by 27 percent and 21 percent, respectively.
   
• A 1998 poll by Professional Builder magazine asked participants to select the ideal site to build a home. Two-thirds said they would break ground far from any major city.
   

Most people never follow through with these impulses, of course, which is why metropolitan areas continue to dominate America.

But some do manage to escape congested cities and sprawling suburbs. The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that 235,000 families moved from metropolitan areas to nonmetropolitan regions in 2006 -- an average of 640 families per day.

But where's the best place for them to go? The answer is provided by a new bizjournals analysis of 140 micropolitan areas. It identifies America's 10 "dreamtowns," the small towns that offer the best quality of life without metropolitan hassles.

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