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Old 08-20-2012, 01:56 PM
 
Location: Reston, VA
2,090 posts, read 4,252,296 times
Reputation: 1331

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Reston made Money magazine's list of best small cities at #7 (besting Columbia, MD that came in at #8).

Best Places to Live 2012 - Money Magazine
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Old 08-20-2012, 02:06 PM
 
9,884 posts, read 14,157,560 times
Reputation: 21828
Other NOVA towns to make the top 100:

Centreville - 17
Ashburn - 30
Arlington - 45
Dale City - 46
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Old 08-20-2012, 02:24 PM
 
810 posts, read 1,026,324 times
Reputation: 1010
My first thought is.... "Reston is a city?"

I guess I just call the whole NOVA one huge suburb...
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Old 08-20-2012, 02:43 PM
 
Location: among the clustered spires
2,380 posts, read 4,519,777 times
Reputation: 891
Nice! I lived in Reston for a few months, so that's why it was only #7.
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Old 08-20-2012, 03:14 PM
 
Location: DMV
10,125 posts, read 14,001,790 times
Reputation: 3222
This list is a joke. How can you consider Waldorf, MD to be better than Arlington? Based on what? Their criteria is jobs, safety, schools and health care. Waldorf has 70k people and doesn't even have it's own hospital, has nothing but retail jobs, has had more murders than Arlington and yet it's better? And they also said Dale City is right behind Arlington. What do Arlington and Dale City have in common?
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Old 08-20-2012, 04:15 PM
 
Location: Brambleton, VA
2,186 posts, read 7,951,820 times
Reputation: 2204
I would agree that the list is a joke. For one thing, how many of those cities (use that term very loosely in that Reston and Ashburn are not cities, not sure about rest of "cities" ranked on the list) stay on the list from year to year? Very few...wasn't Leesburg one of the top cities last year? The research just seems skewed. Because although I do love a lot of this area, I would think that the traffic issues would automatically get us all knocked off the list.

Money magazine clearly just needs more website traffic and subscriptions...
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Old 08-20-2012, 05:49 PM
 
373 posts, read 871,231 times
Reputation: 180
Yes, I'm not sure how they came up with this list. The first thing that caught my eye was also Waldorf at number 20. Having lived there, there is no way. It lists "safe streets" as one of the positives. It might be safer than SE DC or parts of baltimore, but there is much more crime than your average area. Its not even a city (or even a town) so I'm not sure how you can make the "America's best small cities" list and not even be one.

They always change up their list from year to year. They probably rotate it so that they get more magazine sales.
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Old 08-20-2012, 05:50 PM
 
Location: Tysons Corner
2,772 posts, read 4,322,255 times
Reputation: 1504
All of these magazine lists are funded via shady funds in my opinion. The other week Forbes told us that Houston is the "coolest city to live in". I've been to Houston, I've seen its inhabitants of which my family is some. I have seen the night life. I have seen the downtown. I spent far longer than I ever want to there. I can assure it doesnt come anywhere close to the coolness of NYC, Chicago, DC or even Philly, San Fran, Austin, St Louis for god sake was more fun than houston is.

That being said I think Reston, if properly filtered for certain criteria such as "small city" is actually a pretty cool one, but I would tend to agree that it isn't a small city, its an urbanized suburb. For the most part the people who live in Reston work outside of Reston by percentage, therefore it is not a self sustained urban economy (it has to be near another area with jobs).
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Old 08-20-2012, 05:53 PM
 
Location: Lincoln, NE (via SW Virginia)
1,644 posts, read 2,176,024 times
Reputation: 1071
Reston blows....."they paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Soon NOVA's tentacles will be down into north carolina. That place is like a malignant tumor slowly destroying all that once was virginia.
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Old 08-20-2012, 06:05 PM
 
Location: Tysons Corner
2,772 posts, read 4,322,255 times
Reputation: 1504
k, coming from the person who lives in Phoenix. Thanks for the update chief. I dunno if you know anything about what you are talking about. Tell that to the residents around RTC who love living there.

Virginia is a massive state, hell Fairfax is 300 times bigger than manhattan and 50% of it is untouched in rural conservation easements. Developments like reston kept much of the county from becoming a southern california sprawl style tract. Unfortunately it was too little to stop it completely and we still face that problem. But railing against Reston and its planned density is antithetical to your end result.

Either way, you live in fricken Phoenix Arizona... I dont think you have any room to talk about paving paradise to put up a parking lot there buddy.







Talk about car centric hell on earth give me more parking lot design standards
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