Downers Grove Named Among Top 10 Chicago Suburbs for Families

Image via the Downers Grove Park District on Facebook.

The Village of Downers Grove is one of the best Chicago suburbs for families, according to a recent study by real estate blog Movoto.

Downers Grove ranks No. 8 in the Top 10 list, right between Winfield and Lake Forest.

Here are the key stats the blog used to rank Downers Grove:

• PlayScore: 72 out of 100
• GreatSchools.org Score: 9 out of 10
• Unemployment rate: 7.4 percent
• Average commute time: 28 minutes

This isn’t the first award for the Village of Downer’s Grove—recently it was named one of America’s Friendliest Towns by “Forbes” and even one of the Top 10 Livable Cities for Kids by Livability.com.

Of course much of this has to do with its stellar schools and more than enough activities to keep your kids busy year-round (think soccer, summer camps, art classes, dance, etc.), but it’s also a great place to be a parent.

There are over 150 restaurants in the community for a nice night on the town, the unemployment rate is low and stable, plus living here likely means you’ll be making more money than most outside of Chicago.

Among the 90 suburbs ranked in the study, Buffalo Grove came out on top as the No. 1 suburb for families. Brookfield received the worst score on the list.

Also on Patch:

• Downers Grove Fire Department Ranked in Top 1 Percent Nationwide
  
• Downers Grove Ranked Among Most Family Friendly Cities in Illinois
• Downers Grove Among 50 Happiest Small Places in America

Methodology

Researchers at Movoto used data from AreaVibes, GreatSchools.org, PlayScore.org and the U.S. Census to create the Top 10 list. They gathered places near Chicago with populations of 5,000 people or more.

Suburbs were researched in terms of the following family-friendly criteria:

• PlayScore
• GreatSchools.org Score
• Total crimes per 100K people
• Cost of living
• Unemployment rate
• Average commute time
• Median household income
• Median monthly housing costs

Each of the 90 places with complete data were ranked from 1 to 90 in each category. The ranks were averaged into what Movoto calls a Big Deal Score for each suburb. Lower Big Deal Scores are better, and the lowest 10 were named the best suburbs for families. See the full ranking of suburbs from Movoto.