Rating: 
Summary: Good idea however data slightly offbase.
Review: The whole concept of the book is an excellent idea howveer we have found that the data has been less than accurate. for example, in the first edition the cost of living differnece between Syracuse NY and Baltimore Md was roughly 5-7%. add'l the average cost of a house was roughly 100K. when my wife and i mived from Syracuse to Baltimore we found the increase was more along the lines of 20% and you could not find a townhouse in a livable area of town for under $125,000. Understanding that the cost for housing is a composite average, this is not a true measure of the actual cost as the majority of the housing in midlle class neighborhoods is substantially more. Add'l the rental unit figures were skewed similarly as well. We went from renting a 3 bedroom home for $500 to having to get an apt for $1000. Aslight difference than what was suggested in the book. Add'l they list the average snowfall in syracuse in the 100 inch region, I lived in Syracuse for 20+ yrs and I can't remeber a winter where we didn't have at least 140-150 inches.I applaud the authors efforts, however the data is slightly, and in some cases grossly inaccurate.
Rating:
Summary: A city may be "great on paper" but beware!
Review: These books are full of extremely helpful information, but I warn my fellow readers to take a place's culture into account before making a life-changing move. The books will not help you here. My husband and I bought a previous edition of Places Rated and devoured it while looking for a place to relocate from Los Angeles. We settled on a southern capital that seemed to have everything going for it, including consistently high rankings in Places Rated and every other city ranking we could find. Unfortunately, a city that looks great on paper may not be the place for you. Despite having lived in several states, we were unprepared for the surprising difficulties we experienced as "yankees" living in the south. From petty social and work discrimination to routinely being screwed over by one business after another hired to work on our home or car, etc., it became evident that we were identified as "yankees" on sight and treated accordingly. So much for southern hospitality! I assure you that we did our best to fit in and make friends, as we have successfully done in every other region of the country. After 2-1/2 years of this, we sold our home for a loss and got our "unsweet tea" out of there. Perhaps we were naive, not realizing that the yankee business is still such a potent issue in the south, but we will make future relocation choices with this experience in mind.
Rating: 
Summary: Love this book
Review: This book is just great. I have bought every retirement-places-rated type of book that I can get my hands on and this author is by far the best. The millennium edition is twice as big as the last edition and every subject is covered that anyone would want to know about an area; cost of living, transportation, jobs, education, climate, crime, the arts, health care, recreation. I can't wait for the next edition to come out! We're not retiring any time soon so it's helpful to really be able to study and evaluate where we are going to want to retire.
Rating:
Summary: Love this book
Review: This book is just great. I have bought every retirement-places-rated type of book that I can get my hands on and this author is by far the best. The millennium edition is twice as big as the last edition and every subject is covered that anyone would want to know about an area; cost of living, transportation, jobs, education, climate, crime, the arts, health care, recreation. I can't wait for the next edition to come out! We're not retiring any time soon so it's helpful to really be able to study and evaluate where we are going to want to retire.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good Reference
Review: This book was the best source I've seen so far on (re)location to cities within the USA. It not only categorizes all major cities by everything from crime to the arts but discusses the weather and political climate in a scientific but easy-to-understand manner.
Rating: 
Summary: Liked my '89 edition better...
Review: This edition is not as user friendly as my old one (thats been very well used). The print is faint..my old one is very bold, and I miss the graphs and monthly average temps in the climate section. I liked the way the transportation section was set up in the older version..everything reached out and grabbed you..you have to strain to pick up info in the new one. All that blue background has got to go! The area with city contacts-emails was a nice touch. All in all, I still love this book..all the ways you can compare different areas, yes armchair traveling. No, you won't be able to tell how nice the people are in each area.. isn't that expecting a bit much from a book?
Rating:
Summary: Great concept, but simplistic analysis limits value
Review: This has been a wonderful series, and I was looking forward to this edition, especially after the '93 edition gave us a program to let us do our own analysis. That, while limited and awkward, gave the reader a means of going beyond the extremely simplistic analysis in the book.But this version comes without the disk, a MAJOR step backward in usefulness. I'd have paid twice as much and been happier. With this version, comparisons are far too simplistic. It should be obvious that different readers will care different amounts about categories, and that the categories don't provide enough detail for most people. This means that the comparisons/rankings are fairly useless, except as broad guides. Perhaps the problem is that the authors/publisher don't really have a vision of who the audience is. After all, people who truly have control over where they move next are probably rare. Less rare are people evaluating some corporation's move offer, and for them, this volume does contain some very useful information. But even for them, the layout is wrong. The detail information is organised by category, so a reader interested in a given city has to find its entry in nine different sections. I was really hoping that this edition, besides having more up-to-date facts, would give us another level of detail, and especially, would include an expanded version of the '93 edition program. The review on the cover calls it a "knockout". I'd call it a letdown. Pity.
Rating:
Summary: fascinating with room for improvement
Review: This is a great book. I thouroghly enoyed it and have taken into consideration a great portion of it's contents in my own relocation plans. I will say however that 2 things could/should be added by way of improvement. First, How about terrain/topography? Yes, they give a shallow treatment of the subject in conjunction with their climate chapter, but I found it extremely lacking. I live in a region of Texas where the terrain is, I think, boring and barren (which combined with the weather, creates, in my mind, a highly undesireable place to live) I want to know what a prospective place to live LOOKS LIKE. Also, how about pollution? Air, water etc.????? As another person mentioned in His/her review, this most certainly, absolutely, plays a key role in the decision making process. Still, notwithstanding, loved the book.
Rating:
Summary: A superb statistical summary of diverse N. Amer. locations
Review: This is an excellent statistical reference for evaluating and comparing N. American communities on the basis on the nine categories listed. But a key ingredient of 'Places Rated' should also include a ranking of the general 'quality of life' above and beyond these nine statistical categories. For example, I live in the Riverside-San Bernardino, CA, given an overall ranking of 13. Relative to the 350 other communmities evaluated, 13 is clearly a superior ranking. But the real 'quality of life' issues of this region go beyond these nine categories. For example, San Bernardino, a community of approximately 180,000, lists 39.7% of its citizens on some sort of public assistance. This statistic was published in the San Bernardino newspaper during the past two years. The impact of every 2 of 5 citizens on welfare out of a community of 180,000, suggests a social climate not measurable in any of the above referenced nine categories, but may influence significantly the '! quality of life' in this region. This is not to suggest these citizens are necessarily 'lawless derelicts'. If they were, the crime category would reflect this condition. Nevertheless, their socioeconomic circumstance may impact where other more fortunate citizens shop, travel, when and how frequently they shop, what public functions they attend, etc., thus, impacting the quality of life of this region for many. Further, today was a 'first stage' smog alert day. Environmental variables; air, water, noise, etc., are not factored into a 'quality of life' standard. For example, nowhere does 'Places Rated' account for the significant number of days which are heavy smog days in this region. Nor can we necessarily assume that all metropolitan regions produce and live with the same levels of air pollution. Air pollution is, however, an integral component of any quality of life standard. Air pollution, taken by itself may be sufficiently significant to encourage citizens to! resettle elsewhere. Finally, a congestion component m! ay necessarily impact the quality of life for many. Given a high ranking for its climate, the Riverside-San Bernardino region is home to thousands of mobile homes, boats, assorted RVs, off-road-vehicles and two or three commute vehicles per many families. Freeway traffic may be stop and go occasionally even at 2 am. Congestion is fierce, frustrating and occasionaly even violent. In summary, a 'quality of life' category might signifcantly influence the current metropolitan rankings of 'Places Rated'.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but Procede with Caution
Review: This is an outstanding book that's filled with tons of useful information. It's probably the best out there. Overall, it does a great job. Seattle, Winston-Salem, San Francisco, and Minneapolis-St. Paul are better places to live for most people than Waco, Stockton, Macon, and Lawrence-Haverhill. (Eden Prairie, MN, a suburb of the Twin Cities, was listed in 50 Great Places to Live, by the way.) It's nice to see the truth accurately told. For example, Florida is not the sunshine state. It rains there a lot. There are more lighting strikes in Florida than any other state. Minneapolis-St. Paul is a fabulous place to live, but few people know about the tremendous quality of life there. Salt Lake City is another example of a quality, but unknown, city. And most Deep South cities get bad scores for education and quality of life. But, as other reviewers pointed out, there are ommisions that you need to compensate for. First, the book is a statistical summary and does not mention the intangibles, such as character, for each area. These intangibles need to be considered. For example, I would never live in highly-rated Los Angeles because my experience is that the people there are rude and selfish - the land of lawsuits, the LAPD, the O.J. murders, and divorce. Yet, that may be just the lifestyle you may be looking for. Maybe you are a single, litigation lawyer. But you will not find those tidbits mentioned in the book. Personally, I would like to know those tidbits. They may be most important. Where are the people most friendly? Is Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love? (The answer is no.) Which suburbs of a major city are best for families? It would be nice if some essays are included, covering these intangibles. Second, you need to adjust these scores for your own preferences. There is a chart to use for that. Young graduates might have different preferences than young families and retirees. Finally, no matter where you are from, there's no place like home.
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