Money's list of America's best small cities


Cities
Rank City Population
  Gainesville, FL 127,800
23 Gaithersburg, MD 63,400
  Garden Grove, CA 171,300
  Gardena, CA 59,400
  Garland, TX 225,000
  Gary, IN 95,900
  Gastonia, NC 72,500
  Georgetown, TX 50,300
24 Germantown, MD 88,000
33 Gilbert, AZ 216,400
  Glendale, AZ 251,500
  Glendale, CA 197,200
  Glendora, CA 50,400
  Gloucester, NJ 64,300
  Goodyear, AZ 61,800
90 Grand Forks, ND 53,100
  Grand Junction, CO 60,100
  Grand Prairie, TX 163,300
  Grand Rapids, MI 193,400
  Great Falls, MT 59,300
  Greeley, CO 98,100
  Green Bay, WI 104,700
  Greensboro, NC 277,100
  Greenville, NC 89,300
  Greenville, SC 60,200
28 Greenwich, CT 62,100
  Greenwood, IN 50,600
  Gresham, OR 107,600
  Gulfport, MS 70,100
From the September 2012 issue
Due to erroneous job, cost-of-living, and test score data for a small number of places, two cities were left off this year's top 100 and two were mistakenly included. Other cities moved up or down slightly once all data were corrected. Details.
Best Places Winners
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Home price trends
Hover over any of the 10 Best Places below to see how real estate prices have changed in the past year.
City Avg. listing price
(July 2012)
1. Carmel, IN $304,340
2. McKinney, TX $245,917
3. Eden Prairie, MN $413,566
4. Newton, MA $850,117
5. Redmond, WA $518,982
6. Irvine, CA $904,753
7. Reston, VA $467,934
8. Columbia/Ellicott City, MD $406,943
9. Overland Park, KS $278,204
10. Chapel Hill, NC $376,660

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Video
How we picked the Best Places
Using statistics from data services company Onboard Informatics, we crunched the numbers in order to zero in on America's best small cities for families. (Last year, we looked at small towns, with populations between 8,500 and 50,000.) More

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