This is down from 5 last year. Apparently CNN/Money changed the formula when choosing the Top 100 "Places to Live" to favor small towns, including a population cap of 50,000 which automatically excluded all of last year's (and previous years') towns on the list: Columbia, Ellicott City (both tied at 8th), Gaithersburg (29th), Germantown (81st), and Rockville (66th).
This year only Eldersburg (a pretty sizeable suburb of Baltimore in Carroll County) and Mt Airy (a small town located at the meeting point of Frederick, Carroll, Montgomery, and Howard counties) placed 47th and 53rd respectively. Both were the only towns in the Balt-Wash area to place on the list (the 3 VA towns included, down from 6 last year, were far from the Wash. Metro Area).
Also the "
25 Top-Earning Towns" ranking list is gone and replaced by an ambiguous list of 28 "6-figure towns," which are presumably similarily restricted to towns with smaller populations. North Potomac placed 3rd on this list, the only other town in the Balt-Wash area is Chantilly, VA (11th). In previous years the towns were ranked by median income without the population cap and Potomac and Bethesda were ranked 7th and 11th respectively.
Best places to live 2008 - States: Maryland - from MONEY Magazine
Best Places to Live 2009 - States: Maryland - from MONEY Magazine
25 top-earning towns 2008 - Potomac, MD (7) - Money Magazine
25 top-earning towns 2008 - Bethesda, MD (11) - Money Magazine
6-figure towns 2009 - North Potomac, MD (3) - Money Magazine
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