17th Best Is Plenty Good Enough
Gaithersburg Surprised by Rank
The Kentlands community is an example of modern Gaithersburg.
(By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)
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Thursday, September 1, 2005
The initial reaction was: "Wow!"
When Gaithersburg was recently ranked the 17th best place to live in the country by the online magazine CNN/Money, Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney A. Katz was "very surprised."
According to the magazine, Gaithersburg excelled in real estate appreciation, housing affordability, economy, education, environment, crime, leisure, population growth and weather, among the magazine's major ranking criteria.
"We are flattered and honored," said Katz, who first heard about the ranking from local television news. "It was not something we had applied for or that they had really contacted us about. It was done strictly on numbers."
Other criteria included unemployment, income growth and arts resources.
Of the 100 places ranked in the magazine's Aug. 1 issue, Vienna in Northern Virginia was named the fourth best place to live, and Ellicott City in Howard County came in 20th. Moorestown, N.J., topped the list.
With the help of OnBoard LLC, a real estate information company, the magazine started with a list of 40,000 places. That list was culled by considering only places with populations exceeding 14,000, within 60 miles of a major airport and within 30 miles of a major teaching hospital.
Many affluent suburbs didn't make the cut because they couldn't meet housing affordability criteria. And many big cities fell off the list because of poor crime statistics.
The magazine's editors decided to define "place" by Zip codes, rather than by census designations or incorporated areas, because those designations are often "a small part of what most people would consider a place," the editors wrote in the accompanying article.
Thus, while Gaithersburg's population is 58,091 in the 2004 Census estimate, the magazine lists the population of Gaithersburg as 132,508.
Patricia Andersen, a librarian at the Montgomery County Historical Society, also was surprised by the ranking.
She said Gaithersburg has changed dramatically in the last 30 years, from being a rural town to becoming a busy, ethnically diverse city, with a growing population of Hispanics.
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