Bert SperlingAs co-author of the book Cities Ranked and Rated, Bert Sperling has strong ideas about where you should or shouldn’t live. In 2007, for example, he placed Modesto, Calif., at the bottom of the rankings (number 375 of 375 metro areas) in the book. Since then, he says,
It’s been the ground zero of the foreclosure mess, dragging down the surrounding economy.
We looked at the fundamentals and determined that certain areas of the country had conditions that were just unsustainable and due to collapse. Unfortunately we were correct.
Photo: Bert SperlingSperling, with a background in accounting and engineering, owned a software company in the mid-1980’s. When he spotted a study that ranked Pittsburgh as the best place to live in the U.S., he wrote some software that allowed people to generate ranked lists of places tailored to their preferences. After this system was written up in USA Today, Sperling was asked by Money magazine to compile its first “best places” list.
His franchise has since grown immensely. He’s done projects like “Hot Dating in Small Towns” for MTV, “The Healthiest Places to Retire” for the A.A.R.P., and “Best Places for Lesbians” for Girlfriends magazine. He’s co-author of the book Best Places to Raise Your Family. His research is available online here.
Sperling’s research has infected our cultural bloodstream, with mentions on The Simpsons, in a Leno monologue, and as Jeopardy questions. And yes, he’s been profiled by The Times.
Photo: Bert SperlingSo where does the “best places” guy choose as his home? He’s dividing his time between Depoe Bay, Ore., and Portland, Ore.; but he’s also lived in Kodiak, Alaska; Carmel Valley, Calif.; Key West, Fla.; Oslo, Norway; and Long Island, N.Y.
He has agreed to field your questions here, so fire away. (Wasilla, anyone?) As with our past Q&A’s, we’ll keep the comments section open for a few days and then post Sperling’s responses in short order.
Addendum: Sperling answers your questions here.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
isn’t there a non-arbitrage condition where people migrate around such that all cities tie for first (and last)?
has there ever been a city rated very high or low on some major scale (i’m talking a “best place to live” list, not “best place to start your own dog-friendly business”) that, when you visited, was wildly different from your numbers?
don’t real-estate prices already reflect how desireable an area within a region is? In the Bay area, for example, one can just as easily live in East Palo Alto as Palo Alto, or Sunnyvale for that matter. It seems you can crunch numbers until the cows come home to come up with rankings, or just pick up the real-estate section and see the results of people voting with their pockets.
Pollution from factories and cars and contamination of water are important things to consider when choosing a place to live. What place is the cleanest?
Do your standards change over time? For instance by now I’d figure public transport and water availability would increase rankings more than ever.
Secondly, let me say I promoted your work on http://www.fantopro.com/ as they helped me choose where to move!
Hi Bert. I grew up in Modesto. It’s not so bad. Of course it was 12 years ago when we moved. Actually, I’d like to know where the best place to live is if you’re you really like outdoors, especially skiing?
Why was Springfield rated so low? Was it the Nuclear power plant? The corrupt local politics? The ugly colors of the houses?
How do you look at weather in your rankings? Where I live, the summers are very cold but I can handle that a lot better than humid summers. It seems like all weather weightings in rankings just focus on how warm it stays in the winter and not how miserable some places are in the summer.