Burlington In “Cities Ranked and Rated”

Has anyone seen the book Cities Ranked And Rated by Bert Sperling and Peter Sander? You can click on the image below and read what they have to say about Burlington VT. It’s a little ridiculous.

The thing that gets my attention right away with the 307 ranking. That’s out of 500. This means there are 306 metropolitan areas in this country that are better than Burlington Vermont and only 193 that are worse off.  I can only imagine whose on that list.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of these people who thinks The Queen City is the greatest place on earth and you’d be crazy to live anywhere else. I just find it hard to believe that there are 306 better places to live!  Allow me direct your attention to some recent accolades the City of Burlington had racked up. This list doesn’t include the most recent Healthiest City in America ranking in Nov. 2008 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yes, the winters are brutal but the summers are beautiful.  Housing costs are high, but generally you get a lot of house for your money.

People look at these rankings before they move places. I know several people who quote these type of things all the time and they believe what they read even if they haven’t actually been there.  Burlington deserves a better ranking! I have been to a lot of cities that are about the same size as Burlington and have a College or University and none of them are as vibrant, and metropolitan feeling as the city by the lake. Burlington has a downtown grocery store (City Market), Pharmacy (Rite Aid), department store (Macy’s), and a full fledged Mall with a Starbucks, just to name a few things.  “Big deal,” you might be thinking. Very few cities of 40,000 residents can make this claim!

Lets take a look at a few that are about the size of Burlington. Concord, the capital of New Hampshire has a population of around 42,000 and has no downtown dept store or Starbucks. There is a small health food store (Concord Cooperative Market) downtown and a Market Basket at the bottom of the hill on the edge of downtown. I personally wouldn’t count this as a downtown grocery store, but I’m sure people would argue that one. There is a pharmacy right downtown (CVS). To be clear, when I say pharmacy I mean a large national type store with a lot of stuff in addition to a place to fill your prescriptions.  To be fair, I don’t know where Concord ranks in the book. It could be below Burlington. I welcome any comments on this topic especially from people who have this book. I just realized that Burlington also has a Movie theater and a performing arts space (several of them).

Flagstaff, Arizona has about 60,000 and I don’t even want to make the comparison because I don’t want to embarrass anyone from Flag. I love the place but it’s no Burlington.

Same goes for Prescott, AZ

I could go on and on but I think you get the point… Burlington Rocks!

I appreciate any comments on this topic.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Vermont Cities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.