A Chamber of Commerce Moment

So, a couple of guys, Peter Sander and Bert Sperling (who have something to do with Money magazine) wrote a book: Best Places to Raise Your Family: The Top 100 Affordable Communities in the U.S.

And it ranked my locale, Flower Mound, Texas, at #5!

Apparently this was based on research including demographics, standard of living, education, lifestyle, health and safety.

Now on their website and on Amazon I couldn't get full-blown analysis or any other of the cities on the list so I can't be exactly sure of what they included in their study or any other city to compare it against, but I'll give it a review based on what I THINK they mean by those things.

By demographics I'm guessing they mean things like race, education, religion, marital status/family households, location, etc. Flower Mound has good demographics, man. While we're not racially mixed by any stretch there are lots of good churches, a well-educated populace, lots of married families, 20 minutes from Dallas, 30 minutes from Fort Worth, 15 minutes from the airport. We're stacked in demographics.

Standard of living usually means the availability of goods & services as well as the income level to obtain those goods and services. Manalive, if you've seen all the digging around here to create more places to buy more goods and provide more of those services...and apparently there's enough belief that we can support all this retail--so I'm guessing folks around here make some pretty good money. Hard to tell from the cost of houses sometimes, but folks here can afford nice houses.

By education I'm taking to mean providing such for the public & private schools. Our community tends to bicker a bit over school board type stuff, but on the whole the public schools here, while large, give our kids plenty of quality education. We've been pleased to this point with our own kids, for whatever that's worth. Good private schools are available, too.

By lifestyle I'm guessing that because we have lakes and parks and the benefits of living close to Dallas we can enjoy the fruits of our labor. We've got a good lifestyle.

Health? We've got a hospital close by and several of those "doc-in-a-box" locations. Maybe they meant air quality and such (but I can't imagine that being near Dallas)...or maybe the number of health clubs. We dominate in that area. Maybe we just don't have lots of health concerns like heart attacks or diseases. I'll take their word for it, though.

And safety. Well, I really don't think there's much violent crime in our community. I mean, my kids go to the park and we don't think twice about their safety. So, yeah...it's safe.

Yep...life is pretty good here in FloMo.

And I think we could get to #1 if they could do something about:

Texas heat.--Maybe an awning of some type that we put up near Double Oak or just put a retractable roof on the city like they do in sports arenas where the weather is bad.

Lack of public transportation to connect us to Dallas, or at least the airport. The heat prevents biking, so that's out.

Wretched and uninspiring architecture.--Stop building functional boxes!

SUV's and minivans.--maybe gas at $4 a gallon will change that.

Busyness to the point of insanity within that "lifestyle."--maybe adopt a citywide siesta time like they have in Mexico. Or even go with a mandated stopping down for high tea like they do in the Deep South or London. Or better yet: actually take days off...both for adults & kids. You know, no sports or extracurricular activities or work once a month.

So, what else would it take for us to be #1?