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You must know by now that we love Scottsdale, as we are constantly shouting from the rooftops how great our city is, even if we don’t always agree with its leadership. Along with myriad options for recreation, beautiful scenery and a high standard of living, it’s also a great place to have a family. This is why we love it when we have data that backs up our love for the city.
We are referring to a recent survey by WalletHub that places Scottsdale in 10th place out of the 182 cities it studied when it comes to places to raise a family. The survey used 46 metrics, including housing affordability, the quality of public schools, median income and poverty rate.
Interestingly enough, it ranked 12th in affordability, although we must assume that rent costs weren’t included in those calculations. It also ranked well for education, health and safety and access to family fun. Regular readers have seen us break down all of these (with a special thanks for the strong guidance of the Scottsdale Unified School District) and as such, few strong arguments against their ranking come to mind.
While we don’t want to highlight the negative, we were slightly surprised that Phoenix only came in at #103. With any city livability survey and ranking, there is clearly a major bias towards the particular questions, and a high degree of subjectivity attached, but it would see as though our neighbors have some work to do. However, it’s worth it to mention Gilbert, whose transformation over the last few decades has been enough to bring it to number 13 on the list. They have a pro-growth city council that has learned about the holistic power of pro-economic development policies.
We save our thoughts and prayers for Tucson, which finished last amongst Arizona cities, and will save any Wildcat jokes for any UofA grads who may be reading this.
There is no news here; if you live in Scottsdale, you already know. We are always happy to receive recognition however, in our beautiful little slice of America. Those of us who reside here should thank our lucky stars that we are so fortunate, and we find it fulfilling to periodically spend a little time to reflect on that.