I agree. The Wash/DC area is a great place to raise families. The schools are top notch, there are parks galore, we have more free museums and cultural events than any other place in the world. The only hard thing is housing prices. I love it here and am not ready to move any time soon!

We moved out of Gaithersburg when I was pregnant with my daughter, in favor of a suburb of Raleigh, NC. Down here, the cost of living is so low that we can afford to live in a nicer home than we had in DC, but with a much smaller mortgage. It also meant that I'd be able to stay home for a few years instead of having to go back to work immediately.

The triangle area is incredibly kid-friendly. There are tons of museums, parks, and businesses aimed at kids. The library system is fantastic and well-used. In my current neighborhood, we can walk to a pool and a playground, and there are six kids my daughter's age just on my street. The schools are good, though redistricting and reassignment are persistent problems. The people are friendly, and even though my town is pretty big (over 100k people), it feels small -- I often run into people I know when we're out and about, something that never once happened in G'burg.

I liked living in the DC area when I was single and married w/o kids, but I'm very glad we're here now.

Why is business week making me click on a picture of some random person or building in each town, one at a time, and not post the whole list? Are they trying to increase ad revenue or something? I refuse :)

Much as I hated living there personally, Albuquerque was a great place to have little kids. The thing I miss most was their small zoo and aquarium/botanical garden -- $7/$3.50 entrance fee or annual family membership @ $50 (and membership at one would get you in the other half-price), and no lines, ever. It made it very, very easy to take a quick trip with a toddler without either feeling like you had to stay all day to justify the entrance fee, or getting annoyed that you blew a ton of money and only stayed for an hour. Plus home prices were affordable, there were tons of outdoor hiking/biking trails, many historical sites, lots of skiing within a 2.5-hour radius -- and our JCC had daycare, a gym, and an outdoor pool, which made life really convenient (not to mention cooler in the summer!). And the views were fabulous. And, of course, green chile.

I do think DC tends to get slammed because of the high real estate prices and traffic. But for kids, the easy access of Metro, together with so many different varieties of free stuff to do, is amazing. Unfortunately for us, the prospect of easy weekend kid fun was outweighed by the daily hassles (job locations would have left us both with hour-plus commutes in opposite directions) -- not to mention the pull of family in Baltimore. But if you can afford to live downtown and have a good school, I can't think of a much better place to live.

Of of the most important criteria was affordability and Fairfax County is not affordable. One bedroom condos selling for 150k and above? How do you raise kids successfully when introductory housing is so expensive?

We will make 6 figures this year. No credit card debt but we do have two car payments. We should be down to one by next year. My husband obviously pays child support so that takes a chunk of cash that might be available for the average family. We live in a one bedroom condo with no hope in the near future to upgrade to something bigger unless we cancel all contributions to our retirement.

I don't consider it a success to have 4 people living in a shoe box - even if it is only part time. And we aren't the only family in our complex living in said shoe box. Just in our building of 1 bedroom condos (16 units) there are two other families living there full time.

Fairfax County is not a great place to raise a family unless you were able to purchase a house before the housing market exploded or you have an excellent family income well into the 6 figures.

The best place to raise kids is around a shared dinner table.

We love DC, but we feel very drawn back to Birmingham. You can leave, but the iron in those mountains pulls you back. We have lots of family there, but we also have a huge group of friends, people that never left and people that got sucked back. It's incredibly affordable, there are a few great school districts to choose from, and it's a very educated population. The cultural activities are limited, but you can always get tickets, and they're affordable! There is, however, little diversity, and that's probably our favorite part of living in DC.

As far as living in DC, we know our neighbors pretty well (the ones who were our best friends moved, but we still see them on the weekends), and our neighborhood isn't particularly transient. We have a core group of parents that we see at the local parks, and we've become friends with a few of those couples. Obviously, we love the diversity. My job is a DC job through and through. There are very limited options in the rest of the country to do what I do. Since I love my job, that's a big plus. The big stinkers are the traffic, cost, and not having any family local.

@laura33 Amen! This is why we moved and why I continue to kick myself for not buying that 20 year old townhouse in Burke 8 years ago....

I love DC and miss it deeply. That said, we left DC because we didn't feel it was the best place to raise our family. We felt that the impact of housing cost coupled with traffic would significantly affect our quality of life. So, while we don't have the most cosmopolitan existance, my husband has an 8 minute commute, I am able to stay home and we have a nice big yard. I truly feel that what we have gained is greater than what we have given up. That said, I think the midwest is the best place to raise kids and a great place to be from, but I may be a little biased.

"The only one from the D.C. area to make the list? Gaithersburg, Md.

As far as I'm concerned, many, many more neighborhoods around the D.C. area could have made that list."

Oh, fercryinoutloud! Did you even READ the article?

Business Week selected towns/cities on a state-by-state basis. One city from each state, period. From Maryland, they chose Gaithersburg. From Virginia, they chose Virginia Beach; most likely the DC suburbs weren't selected because they're not very affordable.

They didn't pick DC because, well, there's only one town to pick from, so why bother?

Yeah, we can go all "rah-rah" on how this is such a wonderful place to live, but if you understood the premise of the BW article, we might not have to.

Of course that super high murder rate, crack cocaine trade and sky high crime do tend to skew things................DC sucks

We live in Burlington, Vermont. The schools are great, crime low, medical facilities excellent, scenery gorgeous. We also have a good university, 2 small colleges, bike paths and other recreational options, child-friendly museums, etc. We are also less than 2 hours from Montreal. Very cool.

I grew up in upstate NY, and I have to say, I think it was and still is a great place to raise a family. Three hours from NY or Boston, minutes to SPAC, the summer home of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the NYC Ballet, the racetrack, Lake George 40 minutes away, good, cold snowy winters so you can ski, skate, and sled, temperate summers, good schools, close to the Berkshires, Maine, Adirondacks. I'd move back there but all my family has left.

We left the DC area because of the cost of living. It is more affordable here in Raleigh but rather too "vanilla" for my tastes. And unbearable at times in the summer. However, in 15 years, the kids will be done with school and that's no time at all.

Down here in Miami it is terrible for raising children. I have two little girls, and I just want to get out. The schools are deteriorating with no money to pay for teachers, aides, supplies, or much of anything. Even in very good areas, such as where I live. Private schools are few and very expensive. I like the DC area, although it's a bit on the pricey side. Another area I am looking at moving to is the N. Carolina, Eastern Tennessee area. ;If you have kids, I would generally recommend against going too far South. Although they don't believe in taxes, that translates into few if any good public services, such as schools, parks and museums.

The best place I ever lived growing up was Munich, Germany. Great public transportation (U-Bahn, S-Bahn, national rail). Amazing culture and sports opportunities. The Alps are close. A lot of high-tech employment (Siemens, BMW,...) At the time there was significant pollution (Siemens, BMW... :-) but a lot of that has been cleaned up. The dependent schools were good and the medical care was fine. Loved it.

Now? We're in Howard County, MD. Why? Well, DW grew up in Montgomery County and wanted to stay here, so once I married her my decision was made. The schools here are better even than MoCo (although overcrowded). It's convenient to both DC and B-More with all those cities offer. The only real problem is the cost of living.

I live in Silicon Valley right now, and a lot of people consider the town I live in a great place to raise kids (evidenced by the huge proportion of families to single people). It does have a practically zero crime rate, and safe streets with no traffic. Unfortunately, it is completely devoid of character or fun things to do. There are some small parks, but very little else. No sports teams (unless you count the Sharks), few museums, an hour's drive away from the nearest city, a complete and utter lack of diversity (there are plenty of Indian families here, but very little mixing between ethnicities). I don't know personally if I would raise children here because I haven't thought about it that much, but I can see people wanting to do it in a quiet little town like this one.

For someone who wants a mix of urban and family-friendly, Seattle, WA is a great area for families. It's fairly expensive, but not outrageously so. My wife and I moved here from San Francisco when we were ready to start a family. While Seattle isn't quite SF, it's close (similar city with the outdoors, great diversity, etc.), but you actually see children here! Seattle is safe, educated, and people don't have a chip on their shoulder about status (e.g., I went to college "X"!) like on the East Coast--from where I am a refugee.

nb: Portland, Oregon is even better.

Seattle? Really. Guess if you don't mind going to the park with your kids and seeing old men's penis' flopping in the wind. No thanks.

"Seattle parks are debating whether nature really is an appropriate place for the au naturel.

Against all tradition in this non-traditional city, public nudity may no longer be permitted on park property — including skinny dipping, naked tanning and even barbecues in the buff, according to The Seattle Times."

Stacey, don't be so defensive and parochial. Of course there are other good places to live around washington.

Yup, Seattle. I will admit, it is true, I don't want my kids raised around a bunch of uptight conservative evangelicals, xenophobes, homophobes, or worshippers of Sarah Palin. We are remarkably free of those folks around here!

Oops, I forgot to add the piece about avoiding folks with developmentally stunted and repressed views about human sexuality!

We just moved from College Park to State College, PA and a big reason was to find a better place to raise our son who is three. State College is a hidden gem in PA, with no comparison to the metro DC area. Virtually no crime, no traffic, first class sporting and artistic events at Penn State...good schools, not to mention great housing...made this a no-brainer!

Oakland, CA has a lot of problems, including high housing costs and high crime rates and an overall very poorly performing school district, but I wouldn't uproot my boys for anything! Older son is in one of the best programs in the country for Aspergers Syndrome / high-functioning autism. Younger son is in the best public middle school in OUSD, and is getting cello lessons in the public school. All this in spite of the terrible, terrible mess the district has been in for five years since the state took over because of financial problems. Even in a bad district, we've been able to find what our Spec. Ed. kid needs, and get our neuro-typical boy a good education.

Yes, having speakers of more than 40 languages in D.C. schools sounds pretty good - but OUSD has students who speak over 100 different languages, and we do get a lot of mingling between different groups.

I don't know the current statistics, but when we moved to Oakland in 1995, it was the most diverse city in Alameda county. Alameda was the most diverse in the nine-county S.F. bay area. The Bay Area is the most diverse in the state, and California is the most diverse state in the country.

I wouldn't trade our hometown's diversity for anything less, because the 21st century is just going to keep mixing different peoples together, and my kids are learning about so much of the world's different cultures right here, and getting a great foundation for successfully living anywhere in the world they choose when they're adults.

We live in Burlington, Vermont. The schools are great, crime low, medical facilities excellent, scenery gorgeous. We also have a good university, 2 small colleges, bike paths and other recreational options, child-friendly museums, etc. We are also less than 2 hours from Montreal. Very cool.

I grew up in Burlington. It's not all its cracked up to be. There are no jobs outside of the service industry. You can be anything you want there, as long as you want to be a bartender.
How young are your kids? Are they in high school yet? Do you live in the new north end, the old north end, or the south end? If the answer is anything other thna the south end, the chances of your children being addicted to oxycontin before they graduate high school is very, very high.

We live in Burlington, Vermont. The schools are great, crime low, medical facilities excellent, scenery gorgeous. We also have a good university, 2 small colleges, bike paths and other recreational options, child-friendly museums, etc. We are also less than 2 hours from Montreal. Very cool.

Let me expand on my previous post.
Point 1) the schools. BHS is awful. Send your kids to Rice or another private school.
Point 2) Crime is low, you're right about that.
Point 3) Medical facilites excellent? Have you been to fletcher allen yet?
Pont 4) The lake is nice.
Point 5) UVM is a good school. WAY too many hippies. It's not "groovy U.V." for no reason.
Montreal is great though.
I can tell you're a flatlander. Where from?

Well, since Burlington came up, I gotta defend it. I grew up there (actually, I grew up in Shelburne, just south of there). Vermont is the best. If I could find a good job there, I would go back. It is a great place to grow up. But most of my friends, like me, ended up elsewhere because it's a tough place to make a living. But I miss it terribly!

I think Arlington and Reston could be good places to raise a family, or even the city of Alexandria. However the cost of living is a huge one for many families in the area. Education in these areas is good even South Lakes. However many other areas in this region have large county wide school systems with weird boundaries that leave students attending schools rather far from their homes even in many cases when there are schools located right near their homes ( Loudoun/ Fairfax are both good for this)In arlington and reston you can do alot with out hav ing to get involved in as much traffic, although getting from reston to dc can sometimes be a challenge. Loudoun would be good but its all the same, but with highly ranked schools and parks

I was not terribly impressed by the Businessweek list. I think the problem they ran into is that in many metro areas there's a huge problem with affordability when it comes to good neighborhoods in which to raise one's children.

I grew up in Massachusetts, and the town BW picked, Malden, is actually pretty crummy & not a place I would want to raise my family. I can think of any number of nicer towns in that area but they all cost $$$ to live there.

I just checked where the Malden, MA public schools rank on the statewide standardized tests, and they're 223rd out of 282 districts in math and 227th in English. Not exactly my definition of having "good" schools...