The 10 Best Places to Live The GOOD Life

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Look Well

Our admittedly non-scientific survey shows that areas vary greatly — often within short distances. Virginia residents living in the D.C. suburbs are not happy, but in the Tidewater area along Chesapeake Bay or out in the Appalachians, life is great! In Massachusetts, the Boston area is crowded and overpriced, while nontourist parts of Cape Cod are delightful. The urban areas of MOTHER'S birthplace, North Carolina, get mixed reviews but the Piedmont and shore are exceptional places to live!

In sum: Paradise is where you find it. So get started! We at MOTHER and the good readers who contributed to the survey all wish you good hunting and hope our efforts will help a little.

Methodology

In the previous two issues, readers were asked to return a questionnaire indicating their satisfaction with the climate, land, job and housing markets, and public services of their current or prospective country-home locales — together, indicating suitability of an area to a MOTHER-style life of independence on the land. Responses were received from southern California to British Columbia and Alaska, from Florida to Maine and the Maritimes, and in areas as diverse as cosmopolitan Las Vegas and parts of southern Alaska that are accessible only by air during the long winters. The map tabulates the findings.

By no means statistically valid, the survey neglects such major parts of North America as west Texas, all of North Dakota, and most of Canada. The wholly negative results from Tennessee and thin (if positive) results from much of the Far West are a fluke due to the informal nature of the survey (a statistically inconclusive, self-selected sample to use statisticians' jargon.) However, a broad enough scattering of MOTHER's readers responded to the survey — offering consistent-enough observations to reach the broad conclusion itemized in this article.

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