Naperville residents are justly proud of their city which consistently ranks at or near the top of the best places to live in the United States. Money Magazine just rated Naperville the third best place to live in the country based on factors like income and taxes, education quality and accessibility to institutions of higher learning, pollution and crime, and leisure and cultural activities.
Some of the highlights:
“The city library has been named the best in its population category six years running. There’s a six-acre swimming area located in a former rock quarry, and for adults a thriving bar scene downtown, plus city-sponsored concerts and other events nearly every weekend.”
Naperville did better than most top-ranked places in categories like household income and tax rates, educational availability and grade school student to teacher ratios, low crime rates and leisure and cultural amenities. These are some of the great attributes of the city - and they really do make our community great!
Where can we improve? Three areas were notable in Money Magazine’s analysis: transportation congestion/travel times, pollution and affordable housing. I’ve discussed all three of these quite a lot - and they are in many ways inter-related. Providing more and better quality mass transit would more take people off the roads (and into buses and trains) reducing congestion for those who drive, reducing air pollution and likely increasing incomes from reduced gas consumption and reduced taxes (mass transit is often less expensive, with a better return on investment, than the hundreds of millions we’re spending on new roads). A more complete path system for bicycles and walking would have a similar effect (and through exercise improve our health too). Affordable housing is necessary to keep local products and services affordable, and reduce congestion, by locating people closer to the places that they work.
There’s no doubt Naperville is a great place to live (as is DuPage County generally). I’m approaching my tenth year living in Naperville and I really like it. My wife and kids like it too. But just because we live in a great place doesn’t mean we can’t make it even better. We can improve mass transit to reduce travel times and pollution (while reducing taxes). We can work creatively to make housing more affordable. We can make Naperville such a great place to live that in the coming years Money Magazine will move our ranking from #3 to #1. We can do it, and if we do, then we’ll really deserve to be ranked the best place to live, because we will be that good.
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