Best Places to Live 2006

After months of comprehensive research, we ranked the top 34 places to live in 417-land. Where does your hometown fall?

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The Top 10 1. Springfield 2. Joplin 3. Fair Grove 4. Nixa 5. Battlefield 6. Highlandville 7. Willard 8. Rogersville 9. Nevada 10. Ozark

Welcome, friends, to our list of the Best Places to Live in 417-land. It’s based on hard fact, not any opinion of ours (or anybody else’s). Population leaders Springfield and Joplin both scored high enough to make the list, as did Highlandville, with just 918 souls. Several of the suburban towns near Springfield are there, too. There are a few surprises (“Honey, I think there’s a misprint in the Four Seventeen magazine. Where’s Branson on the top 10 list?”) and a few more obvious Best Places (“Ozark and Nixa? Are we supposed to be surprised?”). We also learned that pretty much every town on our list likes to say things like “we love having access to city services while still maintaining a small town, community feel.”

Unlike last month’s Best of 417 awards, this list isn’t a reader vote. Instead, the top 10 list of Best Places to Live comes from crunching numbers for each of the 34 towns we included. (The list—basically every place large enough to have a high school—is on p. 121.) We ran each town’s data through a formula that we developed, seeking to measure positive economic and lifestyle factors. No favoritism, either. We did our best to level the playing field between big and small towns. In addition to info about our top 10 finishers, we’ve also included extra material about up-and-coming towns, why Branson narrowly missed the top 10 and why so many folks are moving to the country.

When we ran all the numbers, it quickly became clear that the top 10 list can be divided into three categories: big towns with lots of economic growth and ways to be entertained, smaller suburban communities starting to (re)gain identity apart from Springfield and rural towns whose residents are looking to get away from it all.

Of course, this is just one way of looking at things. If you consider small population density or long commute times positive factors instead of negative ones, feel free to make your own Top 5 list using our step-by-step instructions on p. 126. Our main table of information lists 27 criteria for each of the 34 towns we surveyed, so if you’re convinced that where you live should be at the top, then we trust you can come up with some formula to make it happen. On p. 128, Editor, Gregory Holman, did just that with his hometown, Branson. But without further ado, now it’s time to discover the Best Places to Live in 417-land.