Money's list of America's best small cities


States
Top 100
Rank City Population
13 Allen 83,700
32 Flower Mound 69,300
30 Mansfield 59,000
2 McKinney 136,100
46 Pflugerville 56,700
Other cities
  Abilene 118,985
  Amarillo 192,756
  Arlington 383,300
  Atascocita 68,101
  Austin 797,215
  Baytown 75,226
  Beaumont 120,719
  Brownsville 178,677
  Bryan 79,419
  Carrollton 125,595
  Cedar Park 62,308
  College Station 98,058
  Conroe 58,385
  Corpus Christi 313,319
  Dallas 1,279,910
  Denton 119,454
  Edinburg 82,357
  El Paso 667,868
  Euless 52,579
  Fort Worth 730,019
  Frisco 98,507
  Garland 225,038
  Georgetown 50,285
  Grand Prairie 163,275
  Harlingen 66,580
  Houston 2,242,193
  Irving 216,378
  Killeen 134,963
  Laredo 241,492
  League City 84,716
  Lewisville 96,457
  Longview 81,765
  Lubbock 235,029
  McAllen 134,765
  Mesquite 138,358
  Midland 114,922
  Mission 78,371
  Missouri City 74,723
  New Braunfels 55,374
  North Richland Hills 65,078
  Odessa 98,801
  Pasadena 150,898
  Pearland 84,848
  Pharr 73,665
  Plano 267,480
  Port Arthur 55,910
  Richardson 101,589
  Round Rock 109,127
  Rowlett 56,057
  San Angelo 94,334
  San Antonio 1,365,256
  Spring 55,223
  Sugar Land 83,673
  Temple 68,945
  The Woodlands 97,968
  Tyler 99,659
  Victoria 62,901
  Waco 124,127
  Wichita Falls 105,686
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.
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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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