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Yorba Linda Ranks 21st - CNN/Money Best Places To Live 2005
Yorba Linda is ranked 21st in a survey by Money magazine and CNN/Money.com of the best places to live. The survey took into account household income, schools, safety, job opportunities, real-estate appreciation, and arts and leisure activities. Yorba Linda was the only city in Orange County to rank among the top 100. Information: http://money.cnn.com/best/bplive/.
Reported in the Yorba Linda Star by Amy Taxin, July 14, 2005
Behind the best places
Which towns were in contention; where the data comes from. July 13, 2005: 12:57 PM EDT
Compete Text - CNN/Money
Excerpts
Money magazine and CNN/Money teamed with data researchers at OnBoard to research the Best Places to Live for 2005.
OnBoard maintains a database of nearly 40,000 cities. To narrow our search, we began by considering only those with population above 14,000, above-median household income, population growth and real estate appreciation over the past 5 years.
Those restrictions led to a list of 1,321 places.
From there, we eliminated places that aren't within 60 miles of a major airport and 30 miles of a major teaching hospital.
We also eliminate towns with low education scores or that fall below the 25th percentile in any two of the following: unemployment, income growth, crime, or arts resources.
That left 100 towns, which we ranked, weighing economic, education and safety factors twice as much as arts, leisure and park space.
We limited any metropolitan area to one or two places.
To pick the winners, we culled more data on education, environment, housing affordability, taxes, commute times and job market. MONEY writers also interviewed residents and community leaders.
Our focus on income, crime rates and education rendered meaningless any comparisons between big cities and the relatively affluent suburbs or small cities that make up this list. Big cities couldn't compete on those particular numbers and, of course, they offer plenty of quality-of-life benefits that suburbs don't have. We'll look at big cities as part of another project in the future.
Also, a note on the definition of "place:" In assembling this list, we examined data from the zip codes that correspond to a place name designated by the postal service.
We do this because we can get more and better -- that is, more accurate -- data about an area using zip codes than by using Census designations or by looking only at an incorporated area, which often is a small part of what most people would consider a "place."
That's why our list gives an area population and not just the population of a municipality. In a few cases, in fact, there is no incorporated municipality corresponding to the place name.
Compete Text - CNN/Money
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