NEW YORK (MONEY Magazine) - What makes a place great to live in? Some people naturally gravitate toward suburban subdivisions with lush lawns, comfortable homes and school districts where everyone's above average. Others crave the stimulation of busy downtown streets and a rich variety of people, ideas and diversions. And whether you prefer a desert vista or a skyscraper view, well, you're right.

Questions of taste were very much on the minds of money's editors when we sat down to select this year's Best Places to Live. With the help of On Board, a New York City firm that collects information on real estate and demographics, we pulled together yards of data on more than 1,200 American cities. But how to weigh it all? Certainly, everyone cares about safe streets, for example, yet that doesn't mean a very low local crime rate will be everyone's top concern. A lifelong Chicagoan may take in stride crime statistics that a suburbanite would regard as too high a price to pay. Likewise, not everyone is going to be moved by the fact that there are twice as many public golf courses in the vicinity of West Bloomfield, Mich. as there are in and around Pittsburgh. Finally, we concluded that the best way to understand what Americans really care about when deciding where to live was to look at how they've already voted with their feet -- and their wallets.

To simplify matters, we started by narrowing our list to the 57 cities with populations above 300,000, the economic and cultural magnets not just for city dwellers but for suburbanites too. We ranked these cities first by their rate of population growth since 1990 -- a big plus for Las Vegas and bad news for St. Louis.

Next, we looked at demand through the prism of the real estate market. We compared the average 2002 home sale in each city to the median income of city residents, creating a "housing-premium ratio" for each city. (You can't simply assume the median wage earner pays the average price for a house, but these scores are a good way to compare expensiveness among cities.) The bigger the gap between home prices and income, the higher a city ranked. That may sound a little perverse -- after all, most people would count high rents and fat mortgage payments as pretty clear negatives -- but we figure that when people are willing to pay a lot to live in a city, there must be something about it that justifies the sacrifice. Just ask any New Yorker. And as you'll see in a moment, even in the most expensive areas we were able to find neighborhoods that offer good value for the money.

We then combined these scores to create a single Money Popularity Ranking. A top Popularity score alone wasn't enough to make our final list of 10 top towns, however. For example, one high scorer, Honolulu, missed the final cut; although real estate prices are high in this beautiful island city its far-flung location and tourism-based economy limit its appeal as a full-time residence. We also tried to adjust for a couple of the unavoidable biases in our statistical first screen. As the third-largest city in the country, Chicago is naturally going to have a lower population growth rate than say, Las Vegas, which doubled with the addition of 250,000 new residents. Still, Chicago is one of the handful of midwestern cities that has added residents instead of losing them, and the city's real estate market has long been one of the country's most consistent growers. So the Windy City makes our short list.

Of course, most of those who say they're from Chicago, or Denver, or any other big city actually live outside the city limits in a nearby suburb. So we decided to get really local and identify the neighborhoods and suburbs that make these cities great. money writers and reporters did exactly what you would if you were moving to someplace new. We talked to everyone we could find -- city residents, real estate agents, schoolteachers, area businesspeople -- about where they live, as well as where they wish they could live.

We sought out attractive streetscapes, good schools, community spirit and plentiful recreation. With real estate prices at or near historic highs, we avoided areas that were speculative or too early in their transition from rundown to rehabbed. But we tempered that bias with an eye toward affordability -- after so many years of rising home values, many prime family neighborhoods are priced to perfection. We finally selected three top communities -- including city neighborhoods as well as suburbs--for each of the cities on our list, or 30 in all. They range from virtual wilderness retreats to well-planned subdivisions to dense urban centers. No one of these picks can suit all tastes, but we're confident that you'll find some place on this list you'd be happy to call home.