Money Magazine Names Rockville 24th Best Place to Live in U.S.

Bethesda is number one on magazine's "Top Earning Towns" list

September 22, 2014 2:53 p.m.

The city of Rockville was named the  24th best place to live in the country by Money magazine in its 2014 ranking of the top 50 places to live released Friday.

The magazine examined data from 781 small cities with populations between 50,000 to 300,000 across the country to create the list and then ranked each city based on factors such as jobs, housing affordability, education, crime, health, access to arts and leisure and diversity.

“Only 30 minutes outside Washington, D.C., Rockville offers small-town living for commuters to the nation’s capital. It’s also located at the heart of Montgomery County’s tech corridor; major local employers include Quest Software, Lockheed Martin and Westat, as well as Choice Hotels International, which created more than 400 jobs when it moved its headquarters to the area in 2012,” the magazine wrote on its website.

- Advertisement -

“The city prides itself on diversity—34 percent of residents were born outside the U.S. With 900 acres of parkland, outdoor activities abound, but the main draw for families is the public education system. Rockville’s schools rank among the top in the nation. Thomas S. Wootton High School, for one, boasts a 90 percent Advance Placement participation rate.”

The magazine also wrote, however, that the city isn’t budget-friendly; homes are more expensive when compared to the surrounding area and the cost of living is higher than that of most Maryland cities.

Other Maryland cities that made the list are Columbia/Ellicott City in Howard County, ranked at number six, and Bowie, listed as the 28th best place to live.

Bethesda didn’t make the “Best Places to Live” list, but it did come in at number one on the magazine’s  “Top Earning Towns” list.

“Bethesda tops our list of high-earning towns, with an eye-popping median family income of nearly $200,000. Not surprisingly, this Washington, D.C., suburb has great access to jobs, both in the capital and in town,” the magazine wrote.

Sponsored
Face of the Week

Bethesda bested other well-heeled locales such as Greenwich, Conn. (ranked number 2), Palo Alto, Calif. (3) and Brookline, Mass. (4).

It appears Bethesda was knocked off the “Best Places to Live” list due to the magazine’s self-imposed rule to eliminate any city with a median family income that’s 210 percent higher than the state average. Bethesda’s median family income, according to the data used by the magazine, is $197,622, or about 285 percent higher than the Maryland average of $69,272..

The magazine further reduced the number of contenders by eliminating cities located more than an hour away from an airport and where the population is comprised of more than 95 percent of a single race. The magazine limited its final list to three cities per state and one per county. Then reporters traveled to each location in the top 35 in order to better rank them individually.

Bethesda was also named the top earning town in 2012. In that year’s best small cities list Rockville didn’t make the top 50, while Gaithersburg came in at 23 and Germantown at 24. Neither made it this year, likely due to the magazine’s rule of only including one city per county. Gaithersburg made the 2010 list at 25.

The magazine only does the small cities list every two years. In between, it does a list of the best small towns, which includes towns with populations of 50,000 or less.

Digital Partners

Enter our essay contest