West Hartford Ranked as One of the Best Places to Live in the Nation

West Hartford was selected as the 45th “Best Place to Live” in America by MONEY Magazine in its 2014 “Best Places to Live” edition.

West Hartford and Fairfield, which was ranked 44th, was the only other community in the state to earn the prestigious honor.

West Hartford was also recently ranked as the ninth best place to live in New England by the Movoto Real Estate Blog.

This year, MONEY Magazine chose the 50 best municipalities throughout the nation with populations between 50,000 and 300,000 using 50 factors including local economy, housing market and schools.

In choosing West Hartford as one of the “Best Places to Live” in the country, MONEY Magazine noted the following:

“Suburbs often compete with their big city neighbor when it comes to nightlife and entertainment. Not so with West Hartford, which borders the state capitol Hartford. Blue Back Square, named in tribute to West Hartford native Noah Webster’s blue-backed spelling books, draws people to the town center with its upscale shops and weekly concerts. Popular nightlife options include shows at the regional theater Playhouse on the Park and classical concerts with the West Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

For daytime, there’s the Children’s Museum, which has a nature center and planetarium, five public pools, two public golf courses and several reservoirs where you can run, bike or picnic.

Living in West Hartford isn’t just about having a good time, though. Its two high schools, Conard and William H. Hall, are ranked #5 and #11 in the state, and West Hartford schools are noted for their arts and music curriculum.”

Data for West Hartford’s ranking included population, median family income, projected job growth, median home price, average property taxes, colleges, universities, reading test scores, and math test scores. Additional data included quality of life such as air quality index, public safety, and the percentage of the population who commute, walk or bike to work. Regarding leisure and culture, data included restaurants, public golf courses, libraries, and museums.

According to MONEY Magazine, “Starting with a pool of 781 cities, we used data from Onboard Informatics and other sources to comb through several criteria, looking for a sense of community and other intangibles. Then, we narrowed down the list further to 100 places by excluding places with a median family income of more than 210% of the state average or a median home price of $1 million or more. Then, we used a proprietary formula to rank the remaining cities (or towns) according to 45 factors in eight categories: economic opportunity and jobs, housing affordability, education, crime, health, arts and leisure, ease of living, and diversity. We give the most weight to the first four factors, and evenly represent the major regions of the country (West, Northeast, Midwest, South) limiting our final list of 50 to three places per state and one per county.”

Read MONEY Magazine’s full rankings here.

(Pictured: West Hartford Town Hall, image via Wikimedia Commons)