Almanac puts Orange County on top in livability

SURVEY: Authors cite especially strong job growth in rating the county No. 1 out of 351 metropolitan areas.

By ANN PEPPER
The Orange County Register
Dec. 11, 1996

Orange County is ranked the best place to live in North America, according to the latest edition of the Places Rated Almanac, which arrives in bookstores today.

The almanac rated 351 North American metropolises on nine criteria: jobs, weather, quality and availability of higher education, the arts, health care, recreation, transportation, crime and cost of living.

"Despite all your fabled financial troubles, you're looking good," said Geoff Loftus, a professor of statistics and probability theory at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Loftus, who has joined David Savageau as co-author for the almanac's fifth edition since its inception in 1980, revised the way the nine criteria are scored into what the authors believe is a more telling system.

His new system doesn't necessarily account for Orange County's jump from No. 23 in 1992, the previous edition of the almanac, said Loftus; it could be that things in Orange County just got better relative to other places. (The county ranked as high as No. 8 in a Money magazine study in the late 1980s.)

"Orange County has a lot going for it," including its proximity to the transportation and cultural venues of Los Angeles, Loftus said. "And you must be creating a lot of jobs down there."

Orange County received its highest rating -- a 100 -- in the jobs category. That means no area has a better job picture.

Not all is good news, however. In the cost-of-living category, Orange County scored 3 percent. In other words, it costs less to live in 97 percent of North American's other metropolitan areas.

Orange County knocked the Seattle area from the top of the livability heap, while Mansfield, Ohio, took the worst-place title from Yuba City, Calif

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