Westwood Near Bottom of 'Worst Places to Live in MA' List

You may already be aware, but now people outside town are, too: Westwood is a pretty nice place to live. In fact, it’s one of the top 20 towns to live in Massachusetts, according to a new study.

A recent list published by RoadSnacks ranked the worst places to live in Massachusetts, and Westwood came in near the bottom of a list you don’t want your town leading. Westwood is ranked at at No. 211, just behind Needham and just ahead of Sharon. Looked at another way, that means Westwood ranks in the top 20 places to live in Massachusetts.

The list assumes people wanted “low crime, solid education, great weather, things to do and a stable economy” in their towns and then looked for statistics that showed the opposite of those things in order to come up with a “worst places” list from among the state’s 224 most populous cities.

So who topped this not-so-illustrious list? That would be New Bedford, which is, according to RoadSnacks’ data, “by far the worst place to live in the state of Massachusetts,” with its high crime rate (fourth highest in the state), high unemployment (10.4 percent) and the sixth lowest salaries in the state. Fall River came in at No. 2 with its fifth-highest crime rate, 11 percent unemployment and median income of just more than $34,000.

Wondering who made the top 10 among the worst? Check out the list.