More On Places We Live

[plumtreeblossom]

Congratulations, residents of Malden, MA. Your city has been deemed by Business Week to be the best place in Massachusetts to raise kids in 2009. It happens that I have a lot of Maldenites on my f'list, and my boyfriend used to live there, so I thought this was interesting.

All of the other 49 states' Best Places are there, too. All of them are communities of 50,000 or more. A good read for me, since I'd never heard of some of them. Ha, it nicely validates my side of my ongoing teenage arguement with my parents, who believed that children were optimally raised in the middle of nowhere.

So Maldenites, um, get breedin'!

Comments

[joyeous.livejournal.com]

I hate to disagree, but as a teacher I actually don't think Malden has a great school system. I mean it's certainly better than Boston, but I've worked at several schools there (and one of my co-workers used to teach there) and I was less than impressed. Then again, parents might be looking at something different than I am looking at as a teacher. It's also hard to compare schools like Malden, to schools like Lincoln-Sudbury and Concord-Carlisle. Obviously, there's no comparision, so maybe they mean that you get a decent school that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

I agree with you that being brought up in the middle of nowhere is not the best option. However, it's often tough to reconcile living in a cosmopolitan area with getting a good school system. I think this is why, sadly, so many urban families (of all races) end up sending their kids to private schools.

[beowabbit]

.I agree with you that being brought up in the middle of nowhere is not the best option. However, it's often tough to reconcile living in a cosmopolitan area with getting a good school system.

Why do you suppose that is? I’d think that economies of scale would make education cheaper per-capita in urban centers. I know that in most of the US property taxes are the lion’s share of education funding, and urban areas have more people (and therefore more schoolchildren) per acre, but property values and therefore property taxes are higher in urban areas. It’s not superficially obvious to me that the balance of forces would favour rural schools.

[ron_newman]

I'm curious why they picked Malden, instead of Medford or Melrose or Arlington or Watertown.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised. Malden is okay, but there are other places with better schools. On the other hand, we're way more affordable than most of those places; maybe affordability was factored in somehow.

I'd prefer not to breed, so please don't jinx me! :-)

[hermitgeecko.livejournal.com]

Since I was just griping to vanguardcdk that Malden has few redeeming characteristics in my book (due, in large part, to massive chunks of my social circle living in Camberville), this is an interesting discovery. Thank you for sharing!

[jimmystagger.livejournal.com]

Malden is a nice town. I lived there for 3 years with my cousin. I lived near the Oak Grove T station (like, a 5-10 minute walk). It was a cute little town. My only complaint was that the locals had a real Charlestown-esque "us (born in Malden) vs them (people not from Malden originally)" mentality.