I Am Shocked To Learn Fort Worth Is Not One Of The 50 Best Places To Live In America

I was shocked today, shocked I tell you, to learn that Business Week and Bloomberg worked together to evaluate 100 of America's largest cities to come up with a list of the 50 Best Places to Live in America. Shocked I tell you, because the town that regularly makes the world Green with Envy, Fort Worth, is not on the list.

Dallas made the list, solo, not linked together with the other towns in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metropolitan zone. Dallas was deemed to be the #41 Best Place to Live in America.

Other Texas towns fared better, like Austin at #8, Houston at #22, San Antonio at #30.

Looking at the criteria upon which the rankings were based, I can see why Fort Worth does not show up on the list of the Top 50 Best Places to Live in America.

The rankings were based on leisure attributes, like the number of restaurants, bars, museums, libraries, pro sports teams and park acreage per capita. Then educational attributes were factored in, taking into account public school performance, the number of college graduates, and the number of colleges. Additionally, economic factors, crime and air quality were factored in. The order of emphasis was leisure amenities, educational quality, economic factors, crime and air quality.

Years ago a Washington, D.C. lobbyist group named Fort Worth as one of the Most Livable Communities in America, or something like that. Having lived in a part of the country where towns regularly showed up on legit lists of this type, I was struck by a big HUH?

Like a homely girl suddenly finding herself named a beauty queen, Fort Worth totally overreacted to the bogus award, with the city sponsoring a City Wide Celebration. I think this may have been the most embarrassed I have ever been for Fort Worth. It just seemed really pitiful to me.

Then, a short time after Fort Worth won this "prestigious" honor I was up in Tacoma, a town which was also honored by this bogus award. I happened to be dealing with Tacoma's Deputy Major at that point in time. I told him Fort Worth had a city wide celebration when they got that award. He giggled, asked if I was kidding. I said, no, I'm not kidding. Then I asked if Tacoma had a city wide celebration. He said, no, they just politely said thank you and that was the end of it.

Tacoma is located in a bit more sophisticated part of the planet than Fort Worth.

So, what was the Best Place to Live in America as determined by Business Week and Bloomberg? That would be San Francisco. The second Best Place? Seattle.

I had no idea til reading the Best Place to Live in America article today that the per capita income in San Francisco and Seattle, at over $90K, is around double the per capita income in Dallas.

You can view a slide show of the towns that make up the 50 Best Places to Live in America.

A partial list of the 50 Best Places to Live in America is below, with one of my favorite towns, Phoenix at #44, and another of my favorite towns, Los Angeles, at #50. I guess #50 is not that bad. It could be worse, as in not showing up on the list at all, like the forlorn town I'm currently typing in....

1. San Francisco
2. Seattle
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Boston
5. Portland, Oregon
6. Denver
7. New York City
8. Austin, Texas
9. San Diego
10. St. Paul
11. Pittsburgh
12. Minneapolis
13. Nashville
14. New Orleans
15. Kansas City, Missouri
19. Honolulu
22. Houston
23. Oklahoma City
24. Chicago
30. San Antonio
41. Dallas
44. Phoenix
50. Los Angeles